Savina

“White” – educational Flash application

Finally I can upload my very first Flash-based application “White – The theory of light and colors” 😀
One semester ago I created the concept for this educational program on the theory of light and colors in our Scientific Illustration seminar. I really wanted to carry it out so I started learning Flash and worked on this project over the course of the past semester beside my university seminars. Fortunately our university offers a Flash-course. I had someone to consult and help me specifically with my project 🙂

It was a lot more work than I initially thought it would be! Besides reading many different books on the topic and writing my own texts (plus I wanted the whole thing in English too, so I translated it) I created many icons to find the ones best suited. While working on the illustrations I went for a mix of artistic watercolors and precise vector graphics. This way I tried to bring in some visual variety and emphasize the different color mixture theories here and there. Finally I had to find proper free fonts and plan how to put everything together in Flash, code it and make an internet-friendly publishing. Although its only 2,6 MB big I decided to create a separate preloader for those of you with slower internet connections 🙂

About the concept: The main idea is to explain the theoretical essence of light and colors while discussing the question whether white is a color or not. Furthermore I wanted this to be a straight forward app teaching you the most important facts about the physics of light, the mechanics of the human perception and some of the most important fields of appliance for the different mixtures of color. It’s something to be used as an introduction to the topic. Or maybe you can use it to refresh your knowledge.

While working on the traditional illustrations for the app I had the pleasure to paint with some high-quality “Winsor & Newton” watercolors and inks! It really makes a difference what materials you use, especially when working with the very delicate medium that is watercolor. When you aim for good results you need good materials, that’s what we were taught in illustration class and I can only agree. If you’re just getting started with a technique or just want to experiment you can use anything I guess. And I’m not trying to imply that your paintings will be good just because you use good materials. But sometimes a painting will fail not because of your talent or skills, but because the materials you use won’t allow better results. Watercolors can be very capricious 😉

Now I’m just happy I pulled the whole thing through and I can share it with the world 🙂 If the app doesn’t start make sure to deactivate any ad blockers. And of course I would love to get some feedback! You can send me an E-Mail or a Facebook message. Comments are disabled on loyal2art.com

 

in Interactive  by Savina 0 comments

Before I talk about the new Semester

The new semester started last week and again I can’t decide which projects I should pick. There are just too many interesting ones! But before discussing how my 5th semester will look like I still need to upload some traditional paintings from last semester’s seminar in Painting Classes:

Of course there are more paintings but I only wished to share my personal favorites 😉 You might recognize some of the techniques as I actually used them for some of my Illustration course’s final exam artwork.

in Illustration  by Savina 0 comments

Illustration Final Exam Summer Semester 2012

Summer semester 2012 was full of landscape painting for me! I tried out traditional media and digital painting as well as all shades of mixed in-betweens.

For our final exam in Illustration we had to work on the theme “Weather, climate, environment” and I decided to keep the concept simple while searching for interesting artistic output at the same time! I wanted to see how far I can mix traditional and digital paintings – using both media’s advantages in combination. Some images are almost purely digitally while others are almost hand-painted only. More on the conceptual idea under the following paintings:

in Illustration  by Savina 0 comments

Magazine Layouts

I did some graphic design work for college 🙂 The first two examples are simply practice for A3 magazine facing pages. The third one is the cover (left page = back, right page = front) for a magazine I designed for the course. It got printed and was part of the final exam for the 4th semester (non-commercial and for personal use only). I won’t upload the whole issue because of the personal data it includes.

in Illustration  by Savina 0 comments

“Fairy-Tale-Worlds” – Some Paintings and Drafts

All creature concepts are very rough (but I kind of like that about them). By the way, *Chann* is my favorite 🙂 There’s a reason for the name but it’s hard to explain with text only. Let’s just say it’s a sound it makes *chann*

in Illustration  by Savina 0 comments

Painting Class 3rd Result

In our third painting session in class we were supposed to paint objects of the “same” color.

My group picked the color “blue” 🙂

Painted Blue Objects

Acrylics. I couldn't finish this one in class, so I took a photograph and finished it at home.

in Illustration  by Savina 0 comments

First results in Painting Class

The “Painting” class is all about traditional painting with gouache and acrylics. I painted a few times with gouache some time ago (for my application portfolio) but I wanted to get more used to the material. In my opinion painting and learning to see colors and experimenting with them is really beneficial for artists, even for digital paintings!

Here’s a short description covering some details:

  • only gouache and acrylics allowed (opaque pigment colors, so why not oils? because they need very very long to dry and because of the toxic aspect)
  • (almost) no photographs allowed for reference (sometimes you can make a photo of the object you are drawing in order to finish the painting at home)
  • we mostly paint in class (about 2 hours), but of course we get homework too 🙂
  • we do cover some theoretical aspects but in my opinion not enough…

But enough talking, here are my first results painted during class one and two only (I haven’t touched them at home BUT my scanner let out some soft color shades I couldn’t really recover digitally):

still life with 2 fruits and a coffee-thermo-mug

Gouache on watercolor paper. It's not as opaque as expected from the prof... I'm still thinking the watercolor-way 🙂

Fish in gouache

Gouache on toned cardboard. The blue rectangle was my cooling pad for the fish 😀 I actually ate this exact same fish a few hours later. It was a strange feeling but I didn't want it to go to waste 🙁

in Illustration  by Savina 0 comments

4th Semester Classes

Well, after a few weeks of searching for the right class-combo for this semester I finally found one that works for me 🙂

But first let me explain how the fourth semester works for students with a (partial) specialization in illustration:

  • the fourth semester is the first one a student can actually choose all of his/her courses absolutely freely
  • the student should decide on a project to work on intensively during the semester
  • additionally you need theory classes (I picked a really philosophical one “life-worlds“) and one complementary class on the appliance-aspects of your specialization (my specializations are illustration and media)

Up until now most of my classes were predetermined by the university. But to come back to my schedule, I started the only illustration project that actually consists of three smaller projects 😀 The first one is “Märchenwelten” (“Fairy-Tale-Worlds”). And I seriously went for sci-fi XD For now I haven’t been kicked out ~hehehe~ My appliance-classes are “Malerei” (“Painting with Gouache/Acrylics”), After Effects and Flash. That’s right, one wasn’t enough for me! 🙂 And concerning my theory class I already mentioned above, we’re mostly sitting and talking about different influences on one’s life-world. At the end of the semester we have to write a scientific homework on an individual topic still to be discussed.

Well that’s my schedule. And now it’s time for me to animate some horses…. only tween-style (-ö-)

in Personal  by Savina 0 comments