AUTOBOTS DIGITALIZE!

DESIGNING A DIGITAL PORTFOLIO
CHAPTAH SIX
DIGITALIZING TRADITIONAL WORK



Well, look at you. You've done work in the computer AND outside too? Hot damn you've done everything. Or so you thought.... What is truly awesome is putting the two together into the computer world or 'digitalizing' (which I didn't even know was a word).

There's a few ways to go about this. Wrong and right ways.

SCAN
If it's a flat painting or anything 2D, it's a good idea to just scan it. Some things come into effect here. First, if it doesn't FIT in the scanner, you can either scan it mulitple times and photoshop it together, or just photograph it. Also, if your scanner is pretty old/terrible/my scanner you might just want to go to a professional company like Kinkos or something similar.

Another bummer is that scanners usually don't do fantastic with a large value range, so you might have to touch it up in photoshop after scanning it.

PHOTOGRAPH
If your work is 3D, you will do much better with using photography to DITITALIZE it into your computer world. How the picture is taken is very important. In a sense, it has to be creative and interesting (aka: photographed well). Make it a composition, setting the object(s) in a certain manner that works best for the item.

For example, if Starbucks wanted to photograph their coffee, they're not just going to put a cup on a table and take a picture of it. They're gonna poor coffee beans arround it, put coffee bean bags with their fantastic logo on it next to the cup, and set some other items with it to make it a composition.

The background it important too. Don't forget about your negative space! It has feelings too! Something you might want to think about is to make the background consitant with the other pictures your taking if they will all be on the same webpage.

Another thing: If your digital camera is old/terrible/my camera you might want to buy a new one or borrow a good one.

DIGITIZING VHS TAPES
Thank god I don't have anything on VHS becuase the convertion to DVD looks painful. There's a lot of equipment you have to buy and software as well. (although if you do have work on VHS you ... probably have these things already). If you don't have the equipment, your best bet is to go to a company that can do it for you.

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BUILDING DESIGN PORTFOLIOS
p0-p40



This book is pretty rhombus - the cover is MAGNETIC and the pages are lined with shiny metalic ... stuff. Trust me, this image above doesn't show the awesomeness of this book. AAAAND the cover doesn't even describe how totally algebraic the contents of the book are. Sara Eisenman puts tons of imagery in this book, just flipping through the pages is inspireing.


AND FOR JUST 40 BUCKS
YOU CAN ADD THIS WONDERFUL BOOK TO YOUR LIBRARY

Something that eased my thoughts was that Eisenman notes that when first making your portfolio, it does not mean it will be your final one. You'll be redesigning it and editing it FOREVER BWAHAHAHA - which is a good thing. Because even if you're not entirely happy with it initially, at least its done, and you can then focus on improving it.

This segment shows the different methods and mediums of book like portfolios. This is really great and also really initmidating. You not only have to come up with a really eye catching idea, but also you have to MAKE IT in most cases.

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In other news: My kitten got neutered last week.

Poor Samson.