CTK 201: Basic Skills In The Digital Arts was an introductory course that I took during my first semester in the Creative Technologies program at Illinois State University.
In this course, we were encouraged to work in multiple mediums, and share our work with our peers!
For this assignment, we were tasked with creating a fictional artist, along with works to fit the narrative of our characters!
In my case, I decided to make an urban photographer focused on lighting, and making dramatic art out of the mundane.
For this assignment, we were tasked with working on a project of our choice for five minutes each day over the course of a week.
Though it's not as polished as I would like, I think this is a decent showcase of my illustration skills! It also showcases my experience with
art software such as Krita, the main program I used to make this piece!
This was a result of our emulation assignment, where we were asked to recreate the style of another artist.
I chose to make a poster based on the work of Jason Galea, the artist behind most of the album and poster art for the band King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard!
In addition to the photography showcased before, I created a second artist known for graffiti in the city.
Of course, I wasn't going to go and make real graffiti, so I decided to use this as a chance to test out my photoshop skills instead! I began by taking pictures, before drawing my own "graffiti" and editing it into my photos.
If you look closely, you might just spot it on the right side of the bridge's underside!
In CTK 240: Beginning Digital Audio, we learned the basics of sound engineering and learned to work in Adobe Audition.
Here's some examples of my work to show my progress!
Our first assignment, with the goal of getting us familiar with Audtion as a DAW, was to make two sounds:
one pleasant and beautiful, and another as abbrasive and objectively bad as possible.
Due to web compression, you might have to download the terrible sound for the full effect...
For our second assignment, we were required to use EQ filters to transform an existing song into three different styles.
In my case, I chose to work from Splatoon 3's character customization background music, with the goals of creating three segments which sounded withered, powerful, and distant respectively.
The third project in this class was to take a vocal track, and underscore it with three different tracks.
I chose to do so with the iconinc "I am the danger" speech from Breaking Bad, first underscored with an ambient track from Splatoon 1:
I also did so with the background music used for Nook's Cranny in Animal Crossing:
And the song "Bear With Me" from Splatoon 3!
For this assignment, we were tasked with editing an existing song to be less than two minutes. so of course, I decided to challenge myself by working with a piece that was 18 minutes long! (The Dripping Tap by King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard)
Of course, there was a lot more which I wish I could've included... But I guess you'll have to go listen to the full song yourself to hear all of that!
And now for my final assignment in this class...
To end the semester and show everything we learned, each of us was asked to create a narrative through sound effects. For my project, I chose to tell the story of a spy escaping a warehouse!
Or at least, attempting to escape...
I took CTK 301: Web Design and Development in addition to CTK 240 in the second semester of my freshman year!
This was a class focusing on the basics of HTML and CSS, along with the process of developing layouts and designs for web content. Below are some links showcasing my progress throughout the semester!
This first assignment was a basic introduction to HTML. It's nothing too special, but a good look at my starting point!
This was from a point that was still very early in the semester, so it's still just simple HTML. But now it has images!
A small page demonstrating basic block styling in CSS. This also was my first time using semantic elements in my HTML!
Another page showing off even more basic CSS! This was when I was starting to learn how to use CSS to limit element sizes so I can display multiple items alongside eachother.
It's still pretty rudimentary, but this site shows a bit more experience with link styling and borders.
This site was my first time using a grid layout! I also became a bit more familiar with the border and padding attributes.
This site was my first time using a grid layout! I also became a bit more familiar with the border and padding attributes.
The final step in learning the basics of CSS: this was a general review of everything we learned.
Following this assignment, I began work on the site you are looking at right now!