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Professor Karyn Jimenez will be giving a detailed and instructive demonstration on a very popular form of hand printing, lino-blocking and spray paint stenciling, Tuesday December 14th at 6:00pm in Westminister Conference Center in the Academic Center. Also be sure to come hungry cause there will be free pizza.

This will be a very informative and creative event that will help in future projects. It’s good to break away from the printer and do something with your hands, the results are amazing and it feels incredible to see the end result.

Lino-blocking, a variant of woodcut in which a sheet of linoleum(sometimes mounted on a wooden block) is used for the relief surface. A design is cut into the linoleum surface with a sharp knife, V-shaped chisel or gouge, with the raised (uncarved) areas representing a reversal (mirror image) of the parts to show printed. The linoleum sheet is inked with a roller (called a brayer), and then impressed onto paper or fabric. The actual printing can be done by hand or with a press (from wikipedia).

More information will be posted after the event in case you weren’t able to make it.

Here’s a sneak peak of some of Professor Jimenez’s demos:

Various Portfolio Forms:

1. Portfolio Box:
   A well constructed portfolio box, available in standard sizes such as 16″ x 20″, 14″ x 17″, and 11″ x14, is a relatively quick and painless presentation. Pieces are recommended to be mounted on black or gray foam core boards. A large box will allow a large collection without having to reduce pieces. A smaller box is easier to travel with and is simple to store.
2. Bound Portfolio:
   A bound portfolio creates a very professional and holistic presentation of your work. Project images will need to be reduced in size and restricted to paper but the finished project is often quite impressive. Process work can be incorporated in the page design to show the development of projects.
3. An Online Experience:
   Sending your book to as many people as possible is optimal. This is difficult when making physical forms of work, however sending a URL to a person is as easy as setting up a laptop in a Starbucks. (more…)

EDIT: I’ve reuploaded the necessary files to complete this exercise, as well as the completed tutorial files. If you have any questions please feel free to leave a comment below.

For the past month or so I’ve been reading a lot up on Augmented Reality in the flash environment. According to Wikipedia, Augmented Reality is “is a term for a live direct or indirect view of a physical real-world environment whose elements are merged with (or augmented by) virtual computer-generated imagery – creating a mixed reality.”

I observed many examples including useful applications like the United States Postal Service Virtual Box and GE’s Smart Grid. I wanted to develop something similar but on a simpler scale. After a couple of hours of work, and a few energy drinks later, I created a virtual world for my DME1020 class using Augmented Reality. I’d like to share this experience with the JWU AIGA community.

1 ) There are a few files we need before we begin the project. The Flash Augmented Reality Toolkit (FLAR), some attributes from the Flex framework, the Papervision3D library, and a small adobe air application to create our marker, as well as a .dat file that will control the parameters for our webcam. All of these files can be downloaded via this link.

2 ) We need a 3D object to load whenever we see our marker. Since it is so close to Thanksgiving, I’ve decided to use a turkey. Using Google SkethUp’s 3D warehouse I found a .zip of a turkey to use, which includes the necessary files and textures needed. First, click on “Download Model” and “download Collada .zip”. Extract the zip to a folder on your desktop.

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