Gilchrist's -Seeing in Black and White

After reading Gilchrist's introduction to Seeing Black and White what I gather from the introduction chapter was color perception, the perception of surface color, and human perception as opposed to machine vision.

The author describes that the contents of his book deals the humanistic ways of seeing. Either through reflectance, illuminance, lightness, brightness, and types of surfaces. Perception is the main topic from what gather from this book. Below is an attempt to define the some of the basic principles of seeing.

Distal Stimulus to me means the way light reflects off of a surface. Light reflecting from angles or directions can differ in amount on a matte surface or a glossy surface. A matte surface is a dull type surface and light reflected off of this type of surface is the same amount from any direction. As opposed to the matte surface, the glossy or shiny surface reflects light at an angle. Neutral or achromatic surfaces reflect the same percentage of light at all wavelengths as compared to matte and glossy surfaces.

Proximal Stimulus is described as where the pattern of light reflected from a surface meets the eye also referred to as retinal image. The intensity at each point of an image is called luminance. This can be confused with reflectance which is percentage, luminance is the intensity of light just before it hits the eye.

Percept is the way a person sees or perceives an object. One may perceive an object one way but in actuality it is a whole different look. This could be due to it's lightness or perceived reflectance.

Lightness and brightness differ in meaning according to Gilchrist, he states that both lightness and brightness are perceptual terms, only lightness refers to the perception of an objective property of a surface or its reflectance. Brightness refers to the perception of a proximal stimulus or the raw intensity of some part of the image hitting the eye .

Lastly, contrast can and has been used differently. Some refer to it as a ratio or difference between a light and dark color on a surface . Gilchrist describes this as contrast as an illusory phenomenon. Or better yet, the way complimentary colors on a color wheel is set up to show a color straight across from another color to be the most contrasting combination. At least that's the easiest way I can explain contrast. Gilchrist also describes contrast as a theory meaning a perceived darkening of a surface when it is placed on a brighter surrounding surface. More of a visual contrast of light and dark when placed next to each other.

What I took away from the introduction portion of this book is that there is a lot of thought or theory behind seeing colors. While reading this portion of the book, I knew what Gilchrist was talking about but I have never thought about the theory behind it all. I now know that I will see things in a new light when it comes to making color choices for what ever I will be designing. It will be a huge tool in my arsenal of design.

Wow it's been a really long time since i've posted

So, it's been a really long time since i've posted anything. A few things have happened since. I finally finished up my AAS degree, got a new car, flew back home (Hawaii) for my Gram's 1 year memorial, and did a lot of work on my house.

As of December 2010, I received my AAS degree in muti-media design and production from Lake Washington Technical College. It has been a long year and a half but so satisfying once I had that degree in my hand..The hard part now is finding a job position to use my degree. I have applied to a few places but no responses yet. Looks like I'll have to go back to network cabling for a little while so I can make some money and also since my classes are at night.

As for the new car I got a 2011 Toyota 4Runner. This rig is straight up awesome! It's black with black leather interior and 4 wheel drive. It has all the cool features, touch screen radio, mp3 player, navigation, back up camera, and a usb slot for my ipod. The radio in my last car died and I never got it replaced. I went for almost 8 months without a radio and that really sucked for long trips. So I'm stoked to have a radio on top of everything else..

House work wise, I have done a few lighting remodels at the house. I've roughly installed over 30 recessed can lights throughout the house. Tons of drywall patching which I really hate doing. We do have plans for redoing the kitchen and a major remodel in the basement. Everything is in the planning stage right now so it may be a few months before we proceed.

Well, that was the latest and greatest in a nut shell. I'll update as we go along with the project.. Stay tuned~!

In Design Project 2

Well here is a glimpse of my Indesign project #2. The overall objective was to make it a 2 spot colored brochure. We had to convert full colored photos to duo-tone. We could use tints to help "make" more colors.

**This is a revised/unfinished brochure for a friend's wedding planner business. It was built off of my original ID project. It is not fully complete but I think it looks good.

Ahhh, school is over for now!

Today was the last presentation/project for the fall quarter. I'm glad it's over, this flash project was the most time consuming and frustrating project out of all the class I took. For Flash grade wise, I think I did ok. I completed all my homework and projects on time. The only thing is that I wish I knew where I stood in grades throughout the quarter in Flash. I think the fact that my teacher is also a student makes things hard too. He conducted a great class no doubt, but I could see that classes he was taking was wearing him down quick. So, I'm not too bummed about him not updating the grades. He runs a pretty relaxed standard for the most part, so i'm not worried I guess.

There was only 3 projects for the quarter. The first one was to build a banner ad (non-animated) within a set guideline as well as start to finish in class (2.5 hours-ish). We had 3 options to do the ad on, Seattle aquarium, NW trek, and Woodland park zoo. I chose NW trek for my project, and it was horrible I though. No real design to it, just some stick figure-ish drawings and slapped it together.

Second project was to build on the project and animate it. Now my original project sucked and now I had to animate it. I did what I could with it and it still sucked but it fulfilled the requirements. I know for a fact that these 2 project are getting scrapped.

Last project, this one still had 3 options, a holiday animated card, animation to a song, or animation to poem. Initially I was going toward a christmas animated card but things changed a few days after deciding on what to do for the project.

During my Illustrator class we had a project on packaging, I had already started to go with an action figure vinyl toy that is customizable. It was modeled after Kid Robot's "Munny" dolls. I took the idea and turned it in to a ninja character and designed a box for it. While working on this project my classmate Nic saw what I was doing and needed a subject to package. I happened to have a few more templates of different characters and I gave him one of them. Nic was also in my flash class and needed a final project idea and said "I should use this for my flash project! We should do a battle scene." This was a great idea, we bounced idea off each other and the "Ninja VS Assassin" series was born. LOL!

I know it is not that good but it was fun and frustrating to build, but giving the presentation in class and getting a good crowd response was well worth it...

Web Design Comp 3

This past Wednesday was final presentations for my Web Design class. Here is my finished project, it uploaded in reverse order.

Borderlands

So last night I got the urge to do a little "glitching" on Borderlands the current game i've been playing. I found a You Tube video on how to do this and after a few tries I got it to work. Maxed out all the stats and now I lost all the checkpoints and progression that took A LONG time to get to. I'm so mad, but it was my own fault. So I have an awesome USELESS character. Gotta start all over.

Web Design Comp Round 1

Today for Web Design class we have to turn in our comps for a client web site that we designed. I got a pretty hard one and I hate it. I have no idea what this company is about. It starts out with a short back story, something about secret military or something like that. In fact...........
Company Name: Takagi Foundation (New York City Branch) Information: The Company was founded in 1971. The founders of the company wanted to prove to the people that there is a capitalist company who is more concerned for their employees and everyone else in the country. In 1995 the Foundation established a Defense Unit (a CIA security/military type group) whose sole purpose is to make sure the company and all the employees and their families are protected and well cared for. The company was close to losing face and the trust of the rest of the world when rivalry companies tried to smear the Founders hard work. This was how the Defense Unit was born. The U.S. Government is keeping a close eye on the Defense Unit and even has a few Pentagon officials working in the company to have the government be more comfortable and understand that the Foundation is not trying to over throw the government. The New York City branch focuses more on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and charity funds. The New York City branch is also the headquarter of the Foundation. Each branch of the Foundation has their own main focus/specialty.

What do you think? Makes no sense to me.


^^My awesome Honda "RAT" Spree!!! 30MPHs of fury~ Totally Random :)