Unit 2: Grade 10 Communications Technology

Unit 2: Grade 10 Vector Production

In this unit, you will be introduced to the creative design process including elements and principles of design. Part of that process, will be coming up with ideas, creating sketches using artistic sketching techniques, and organization into workable solutions/products. Using vector applications is a very powerful method to communicating graphically using points, lines, outlines, and fills along with digital related tools, to create digital and scalable graphical solutions. We will be focused on using Adobe Illustrator, the industry standard in vector design, creation, and manipulation.

Course Units and Descriptions

Use this table for an overview and navigate to each of the course unit pages.

Unit	Description
Review course outline for more details
1	Careers and Safety- Intro, organization, software, and careers
2	Vector Production- design, create, and edit illustrations
3	Raster Production- design, create, and edit photo images
4	Audio Production- design, create and edit audio files
5	Animation- design, create, and edit vector animation

Unit Content Activity Quick Links, Click to Jump to Specific Activity!

Unit 2, Act. 1: Onomatopoeia Brain Teaser

Situation:

Being creative in Cyber Arts you will need to learn and exercise a creative design process. This process includes several steps that allow you to start with an idea and come up with successful creative design(s). Using an onomatopoeia as our focus, we can go through the proper creative steps and also learn how to manipulate text in several ways working with the type tool and related editing tools.

Problem/Challenge:

Using the creative design process through hand sketching ideas and finalize with digital illustration, create two final onomatopoeia words to look like they sound. Start with a simple sketching assignment to build some basic sketching skills and experience. Then pick 4 unique words to sketch 1/4 page thumbnails showing possible onomatopoeia ideas. Using illustrators' type tool and related editing tools on a 1280 * 1024 landscaped standard web page format, create two separate onomatopoeias, one at a time, using just the text and related editing tools in Illustrator, with no additional graphics and/or background added. Product to be saved in .ai and .jpg formats for submission and also share jpg's on class JamBoard class page.

Investigation/Ideas:

This section will look at three major areas. First look at what an onomatopoeia is and some resources on it, then we will look at freehand sketching, why it is still an important skill to have whether on paper or a digital tablet, sketching techniques, and process. Last, we will look at Illustrator, a vector drawing program and its specific purpose compared to other digital graphic applications.

Onomatopoeia

What is an onomatopoeia... well in basic definition, it is a word that imitates or suggests the source of the sound that it describes. This means that the word you select needs to represent a sound and it is up to you to decide what that sound would visually look like graphically, based on how you see that sound graphically and apply it to the text, giving it a custom, creative, and graphic visual response. Some examples of words that could be used as onomatopoeias are: "Ping", "boom", "squelch", "bang", "click", "fizz", "hush", "buzz". Check out the links below for more details and ideas to use for your project.

Sketching Introduction

Sketching is a very important skill to practice and develop. This is more commonly used in the traditional art areas, but still has a place in digital graphics to save time Sketching allows you to quickly generate visual graphic ideas on paper. There are several techniques that can help you build and develop your skills for sketching.

pencil holding, spin, wrist, arm, shoulder
Layout and organization
weight light construction, heavy outlines
base lines and straight lines
clean curves, and smooth circles
basic shapes 2D and 3D
textures, shading and light sources

Here are some resources to check out showing how to build your sketching/drawing techniques and practice them:

Warm-up techniques, and more
Using Wrist vs Shoulder
Improve your Drawing
Traditional Drawing Techniques 13.33
Outlines, Edges, Shading 8.20
Tablet sketching 10.01
Sketching skills
Sketching exercises
Simple Exercises
Drawing Exercises
Line Drawing
Interesting M
Basic Geometric Shapes 25.5
Draw Anything with the help of basic shapes 14.14
Additive And Subtractive Methods -hand 26.12
Additive & Subtractitive methods -tablet ...17.04 - 21.07
Fundamentals: Shapes & Forms 15.59
In-Depth: Your best friends - Cube, Sphere, Cylinder 2.08.57
alphabet letters A - Z in 3D 19.31
Do 3D Letters 16.42
3D In Graffiti 9.37

Sketching Tips

lettering sizing is generally 6 mm for titles, 3 mm for normal
Using two parallel lines will ensure consistency and straightness
speed will smooth out your lines (remember bicycle analogy)
ensure circles are large (full size, using up most of the space)
create circles using cross-hairs first, then marking space from centre, then smooth circle hitting all space marks
try to keep page straight to practice different directions
include all text and sketching for full marks,some forget to fill in the two key points below the title and reference
don't erase, just keep practicing and use back or another sheet if necessary
start a new sheet and staple all of your practice sheets together, with final (best one to be marked) at the front
don't worry so much about stopping exactly at each corner of objects
practice on back and Astrix the ones you would rather the instructor mark
making shapes a light construction line for the base line will help with shape creation
for complex shapes, use additive or subtractive sketching methods

How to sketch 4 thumbnail Ideas

The below 4 freehand sketches in pencil, show the process, steps, techniques used to create 4 design ideas. The following four points go over the steps you should be taking to complete your sketch ideas correctly.

Start by slightly folding paper vertically and pinch ends, then fold horizontally bottom to 1 inch below top and pinch ends, then draw light construction lines (shoulder technique) for header area and your four equal quarter sections for your thumbnail sketches, then wire frame your four onomatopoeia words into those four spaces, maximizing the space available using light construction lines
Fill in your header using guidelines for text - title, date, name, section with light lines, then sketch your font/style letters, i.e. thicken up letters to what type of font you are considering with light construction lines
Now the fun creative part, add the special effects you want to show, so that your word will look like it sounds - remember you are only allowed to edit modify the text type only, no additional graphics or colour background, i.e. leave white background
Last step, darken up your object outlines to a thicker darker line weight starting with the title, date, name, and section number, then (if you are right handed) work on the first quad section - left top section, and darken up those object outlines, then top right, then bottom left and finally bottom right, make sure you label each idea with colour, design ideas, word and sound it is to represent

Step 1

Step 2

Step 3

Step 4

Illustrator Introduction

Review with your instructor the basics of Illustrator. It will take some time to learn how to use the different tools Illustrator has to offer. Once you have an understanding of the Illustrator common tools, start to experiment and see how different tools affect the graphics you create. Use the tutorials, video's, and Intro links to go at your own pace, reinforce and familiarize yourself with the tools and methods that Illustrator has. Once you have experimented with all of the different tools and methods to modify, edit, and change the type to create your onomatopoeia. Below are some key terms, tools, and process related to using type (text):

Below are some resource links for you that introduce Illustrator and also include some related tutorials, and videos:

Editing Type in Illustrator

One thing to keep in mind when working with Type text, is there is a number of changes you can do to text and still retain it's future vector modification ability, i.e. keep it reusable and editable. This is what you want to focus on first to get the design intent you are after. Changes such as font, spacing, kerning, baseline, effects, and even appearance tool pallet still allow you to go back and edit the base text and is considered as non-destructive and can be reusable or applied to other type.

If this does not give you enough flexibly and freedom to push your design to the next level, you would have to rasterize your text object or use conversion to outlines to edit . This will give you that much more custom unique control over your design, but at the same time you loose that ability to go back and edit your text, as the those tools are considered destructive and non-reusable.

Proper Illustrator Page/Art Board Set-up

Sample Layout

Opening up Illustrator for the first time you will be offered to to go to their website support page if you are interested. The following are some common things for set-up page and steps

Select create new file with a preset "Web" 1280*1024 landscape size with it's defaults and click create
Suggest you change workspace layout from Essentials to Layout (located by Adobe search bar) and you may want to go through Preferences in the Edit menu, to refine set up parameters for your environment workspace
Turn your Rulers on (found in View Menu), and name the current layer to "Guides", then pull boarder guides off of rulers at 20 pixels for boarder limit, and create a 100 pixel spaced header guide at the top, then create two guides marking the centre of page-body 562 (1024-140/2) and 640 (1280-40/2)
Create a new layer called "Text" where you can enter using your type tool, one line title (Arial 48 pt), date, name, section (14 pt) on top with right alignment and also create a paragraph box, titled "Type Tools and Effects Used" (Arial 21 pt) with bullets 1-10 (Arial 14 pt) at the bottom right or left - ready to put your effect technical names and what each was used for
Now you can create main layer for your Onomatopoeia, call it Ono1, and if you need more layers, then Ono2, etc
Using the text tool, type your onomatopoeia word, then select the font and size up to fit page. Experiment with different type tool settings, work with the Appearnce panel to adjust and add effects, experiment with other tools, and if you need more control try out the outline tool (remember it is destructive - no more font or type tool ablities) for individual custom object control
Remember you can only modify the text element itself and can't add any other elements and/or background - just work on the word and individual letters themselves using related Type tools, fills, outlines, related editing tools, and effects to get at least 10 different types of edits

Student Samples

The following are some examples of past projects done by students:

Sample 1

Sample 2

Sample 3

Sample 4

Create/Construct:

You will need to follow a process that should become habit when creatively designing something from scratch.

Sketching Basics & Shapes

Sketch the Sketching Basics practice using the techniques learned in the lesson and support resources from the sketching Intro and tips and submit for feedback before sketching shapes - will be looking for layout of page, using sketching techniques, light weight lines, clean straight lines, circles drawn based on 2 and 4 crosshairs with distance ticks, and completed header

Sketching
Basics

Sketching
Shapes

For the second Sketching shapes, use the feedback from your Sketching Basics, to improve your sketching along with lesson on drawing 3D basic shapes, and focus on light line weights for first pass on layout and shapes. Do a second pass with heavy thicker consistent weight for shape outlines. By learning 3D drawing, will allow you to add 3D to your future sketching

4 Ideas to Sketch

Using the sign-up sheet, select 4 unique onomatopoeia words to use for your project design
Take a blank sheet of paper, pinch ends into four equal spaces (landscape orientation) with space for header to include title, name, date, and section
Sketch in pencil, 4 different onomatopoeic thumbnail ideas, filing each section of the page showing visual details, labeling colours, and effects
With 4 finished ideas, narrow down to two final design ideas, to draw in Illustrator, and show your top two selections using an asterisk
Digitize your sketch to a PDF and submit to teacher for feedback, marks, and approval

2 Ideas to Draw in Illustrator

Using Illustrator, working with one idea at a time, create your onomatopoeia using the above Illustrator page-set-up and type tools practiced and support resources
Once you have created your page set-up, you can duplicate to other art boards so you don't have to redraw your page set-up for each, then "place" (import) your PDF of your sketched ideas on to the first art board, and your two onomatopoeia will be on art boards 2 and 3, so all your work is in one file
You may want to add more art boards to create various design versions, just remember your ideas should be with-in the scope of your original approved ideas, but can be improved with additional and/or technical effects and experience you have gained
The finished product design can only use the lettering object entities them self and no other added vector graphic objects, backgrounds, and/or colour fills may be used and must fill the landscape orientation of page, i.e. maximize the use of space you have
Teacher will be looking for evidence of proper page set-up (layout), guide lines/layer, a use of a minimum of 10 related type tools, manual and auto effects, whole and individual letter modifications, layers and art boards named appropriately, and a numbered bulleted list in 14 font Arial text box (3 columns), what those 10 technical tool names you used are, located ath the bottom of art board, with your design, header title, date, name, section at the top of each art board
Once finished the first idea, work on your second idea exploring different tools and effects for a your second design, again listing your 10 technical tool names at the bottom - note layers for your written text, layer for your guides, minimum one layer for your Onomatopoeia or more if needed
Save your file in the standard .ai file format and when done also export to a .pdf to hand in both file types for your production designs
Finish by creating a JPG of all three art boards to place in your class share JamBoard - Best way to do this, is re-arrange your art boards into one column with 20 px spacing, then use the Export, to Export for Screens tool, adjust settings for all three art boards, for full document, with no sub folders, with a 0.08x scale for a JPG 20 output

For your convenience, here is an example of the file names you should be using based on our tech info handout, for your submission:

File name: ct2-6a_d-joe_onomatopoeias.ai
File name: ct2-6a_d-joe_onomatopoeias.pdf

Evaluation:

Final ideas will be evaluated for process, designs, use of sketching techniques, use of illustrator type tools and related tools. Final product will also look at layout, tools used, design and creativity of your word onomatopoeias.

Evaluation Breakdown Component Descriptions	Marks
Always double check that you have completed all components for full marks.
Sketching Basics - page layout, line weights, straight, curves and circles	10
Sketching Shapes - page layout, line weights, shapes, lines, and angles	15
4 Ideas Sketched - layout, header, designs, sketching, labels, & notes	25
Design Illustrated - layout, design, creativity, 10 tool/effects, .ai/pdf	40
Design Shared - Export JPG placed in JamBoard - 7 and 3	10