Highlights from Sunday's Photoshoot

This past Sunday myself and a few friends went back into the woods beside the quarter mile at RIT to shoot for my final Intro to New Media project. The assignment was to create mood/style boards for opening credits to a movie or TV show or really any other cohesive idea, so as you can imagine we're all doing really different things. However for some reason almost all the projects contain a dark aspect to them. Our initial mid-way critique went well and I'm excited to see everyone's final project.

Mechanical Butterfly Layout

My third project for Intro to New Media was to design a 404 error page for whatever kind of website we wanted. I chose a steampunk theme for a personal website. It started out with a pretty simple sketch.

My first draft was well received in the half-way stage. And I was pretty pleased with the direction it was heading.


My final draft looked a lot more refined and actually got a really positive critique from the rest of my class and my professor.


I'm actually expecting a fairly high grade for this project. I'm excited.

-le petit kiwii

Shape Project Critique Assessment

Unfortunately the best photo I could get of my second 2D Design project was with my camera phone just before I turned it in the be graded. Not the best picture. I assure you it looks better in person.

This project was a shape-based project. We had to pick two adjectives and create a triptych based on the merging on those two adjectives. We started out with a list of something like 10 adjectives which we narrowed down over a few classes to the two we ended up working with. My final words were violent and wavy.

For my written critique (from other students) I got:

Good: flow & shape of design
Bad: transition kind of weird, look good separately.
Change: less negative space in 1st 2.

I'm supposed to critique my critique. Allow me to mention that we had something like 15 minutes to write these things. I think whoever did mine was feeling lazy. I by no means think my piece is perfect. There are a few things I'd change, like:

01. Adding another white bit at the bottom of the middle one.
02. Adding a few more knife-shaped bits on the first panel.

I personally don't think there's anything wrong with my transition. It was ridiculously hard to do considering it was made of cut paper. I mean, how do you think I got all my pieces to fit together so perfectly? Let me tell you, it wasn't by magic. And as far as the comment on the white space; triptychs aren't supposed to be viewed one panel at a time. I purposely placed everything the way I did for an overall aesthetically pleasing wave shape.

Here is the sketch of my original idea and some of my other ideas for the project.

A little RED

Part one of my second assignment for New Media is done! It's mostly a composite of stock images from several different sources. This is where I started.


The final image:



Part two is to remix with the same elements. I'm still not sure what direction I want to go in.

-le petit kiwii

With all my HURTS

My first REAL New Media assignment dealt with pairing text with an image. The text is taken from Kaya's "Rose Jail" and the concept is dealing with me as a human doll. I wanted to create something beautiful and also slightly melancholy. Overall, I'm pretty pleased with it. (I HIGHLY suggest you full view)



This image was at least 20 hours of hard work.. I painted/overlayed doll ball-joints over my skin, airbrushed everything and manipulated color, etc. My darling friend Tiff shot all the photos in this shoot, lending me her apartment and her time for which I am exceedingly grateful.

The original image is hideous and embarrassing, but it really shows how far I came from the original photo.

My next New Media project revolves around a Little Red Riding Hood theme! I'm simultaneously looking forward to and dreading it.

-le petit kiwii

Line Project Critiques

Our first project for 2D Design dealt with line. Here are a couple of my preliminary sketches for the assignment.



Here is my final piece (cleaned up in photoshop for improved viewing purposes). As you can see it's basically an edited version of my second idea.

I used a range of curved and straight lines of varying intensity to fill the space. The fluidity of the curved lines create a tension with the grouped straight lines and I feel like this piece completely fulfills the guidelines for the project. It's weakness, I'll be the first to admit, is in the execution. You can't tell from the photo, but this piece is enormous. And drawing clean, curved lines that are that long is VERY difficult. I utilized both india ink applied with a brush and micron pens to create the lines.

The lines themselves could have had a little more variance in boldness. Up close it looks fine, but from farther off it looks a bit skeletal and unfinished. I personally don't have a HUGE problem with that aspect, but it was brought to my attention in critique several times.

This was by far the piece receiving the most positive feedback. It's use of line was unique and definitely made it stand apart from the other projects. It was executed beautifully with excellent craftsmanship. What stands out to me was that it utilized the type of free, squiggly, thin lines that make up hair in a way that separates it from it's original context.


This is the piece that stood out to me as being somewhat weak, not so much dealing with craftsmanship or execution, but due to the fact that I hardly think this piece is about line. Yes, it is COMPOSED of lines, but so is Micky Mouse and you could hardly call either a work that speaks on line as an element of design particularly. It deals so much with shape and depth, I don't think it fulfills the requirements of the assignment.

Otherwise I also feel it suffers slightly from the same problem as my own piece. It's a bit, skeletal and gives the impression of being unfinished... like that of a coloring book.

Impressions of the first week

Hello to a new school year and to yet another blog. With a class to motivate me to post I'm hoping Atelier Rose will be much more successful than my past attempts at an online art journal.

Things you can expect from me:
01. Art postings (my work and work that inspires me)
02. Mundane things about college life at RIT.
03. Whining about being a poor art student.
03. Some interesting (and not so interesting) anecdotes from my personal life.
04. Sarcasm.

It's nice to be back at school after months and months of no classes. The transition from my basement studio to the apartment has been pretty decent. Of course there's less space in my room, but at least it's all mine.

I think I'm having a fairly decent go at being sociable with my roommates this year. But pretty much anything is an improvement over living in the dorms.

As far as classes go I don't have any glaring issues with any of my professors.. yet. [laughs] But only time will tell. I was fairly lucky last year, as most of them were amazingly friendly and fun to have class with. I can only hope this year will be the same.

This quarter I'm taking a total of 18 credits; the maximum allowed without special permission. My classes are 2D Design, Drawing 1, Principles of New Media Design, Japanese 3 & Fundamentals of Sociology. In truth all of my classes seem pretty challenging so far.. but nothing that I think I can't handle if I put in the hours I need to. Though, I strongly suspect that several all-nighters are in my not so distant future.

Sidebar: 2D fills me with an intense desire to paste 2D of the Gorillaz all over my folders for that class.


[cackles] Perhaps it's for the best that I don't. Already I suspect a few of my teachers are aware of my.. eccentric nature when it comes to style.

Upcoming posts may include pictures of my room now that I've officially stopped living out of boxes. We shall see.

-Le petit Kiwii