I won a contest and was interviewed on the radio

    My college decided to do a Giving Tuesday contest. To win people had to use the hashtag #CDIiskind and post pictures of themselves doing nice things for homeless people and society. I gave money to a homeless person and bought coffee and food for another. I also picked up litter from the ground outside and threw it away in the trash can. 

    I ended up winning on Twitter! There were two rewards to choose from but in my heart and mind I had already decided that donating was the best prize. I just wanted to give back to Canada and to Winnipeg so I chose a charity and asked CDI College to donate the funds there. CDI College loved my choice and decided to donate a thousand dollars to my charity, which is the downtown Salvation Army, Centre of Hope shelter.

    Word got around of my generosity and of the college's great contest reward. 680 CJOB decided to ask me if they could interview me about it and I accepted. I was very nervous but the phone interview was quick and painless. Over the phone radio interviews are actually pretty cool and fun. They connect my voice to what's going on at the radio station and then broadcast everything on the air. I really enjoyed this experience. I thank God and my college and Canada. Their really are angels in the (radio) airwaves.

    To listen to the short interview please click this sentence and once on the website click on "Jenna Bourgoing Donated..."

Click on the Jenna Bourgoing title

My interview was saved here too

Click to see my Twitter page

The charity I donated to

The door to the SA shelter

To donate please see above info

Tools to make Pixel Art

    Who knew pixel art was so easy and tough to make? I learned a lot while researching this project though. Adobe.com has some great tips on how to start your pixel art piece with Photoshop and Illustrator. There's a lot of Youtube videos that explain all this with more expressiveness. This Video explains how to lay out your pixel grid. And Megavoxels.com has this great tutorial to read and this one too that explains how to export your finished art. Finally, as a helpful guide Pixel-Stitch, this and Lunapic can show you what a finished pixel art may look like once it's all filled in.

    I don't know if I'll ever have to make pixel art for my clients in the future but at least there's a lot of resources out there to help me start.

Update!: I decided to buckle down and actually try to pixel an image square by pixel square in Adobe Illustrator and it came out well. Thank God! It took hours but now I can say I can make pixel art. I chose to pixelate a Blythe Doll character.

Making Digital Color Palettes

    Yesterday's assignment was fun and simple. I went to a popular mall and walked around taking photos with my iPhone of colorful objects. The furniture store had a lot of cool displays but they preferred neutral, earthy colors over bright, additive colors. Maybe in the spring or summer their colors will be more vibrant and bold. I still got some great captures though! It was fun sampling the colors with the color picker tool and then filling in the squares and organizing them in my palette. Very designer-ish 😉💛

Click on the pictures to enlarge them and then you can read at the bottom, the brief descriptions of my assessment of the color combinations used in the images.

The Gestalt Principles in Design

    Gestaltism was founded in the early 20th century by a group of psychologists. The Gestalt Principles describes how humans group similar objects, recognize patterns, and simplify complex images. These principles are divided up into five categories: proximity, similarity, continuity, connectedness, and closure. Artists and Designers of all types use it to organize content and make it appealing. It's also great for building logos.

    For this topic's assignment I had to take an object and simplify it. Breaking it down to abstract lines and shapes. This project was fun and stimulating! I will definitely use this method in the future to make logos and banners in business cards and websites.

    I stuck with my ladderback chair image and deconstructed it:

The Final image illustration of the Chair Story

    Design Assignment 1, Personality Personification of a man-made object. My story is about "The cycle of life from the perspective of a chair." This is the scene I chose to illustrate in greater detail: The senior couple living happily together in their home, watching TV still utilizing the man's childhood chairs that his father made. 3 artworks. 2 digital collages.

The rough draft

Storyboarding, The Story of a Chair

    Design Assignment 1, Personality Personification of a man-made object. I chose to draw a chair. The cycle of life from the perspective of a chair. The storyboard has 20 thumbnails. 5 strips.

    I wanted to create a cute love story. And this is what materialized.

Here's a quick summary of the story beginning with the first row: The chair is being made in a workshop by a man who then brings it home to another chair.

Second row: The chairs like each other. The man's family consist of a young child who grows into a man.

Row three and four: The son who is now a man, falls in love with a woman. They sit and live their lives by utilizing the chairs who are also in love with one another. Time goes by and the adults become senior citizens, then the old lady passes away. The lady's chair eventually breaks too and is used as fodder for a fire. The other chair is sad, and daydreams about past memories.

Final row: Eventually the old man passes away and relatives drive the furniture, possessions, and chair to a consignment store that sells furniture. The old man's chair is surrounded by new chairs and furniture. Eventually someone buys the chair and it is recycled to a new home. Life continues.

The last drawing page is a detailed rough draft that highlights moments that could be in the story.

Click on picture to enlarge it