Shihan Liu

1. Collaborative Menu Design Students collaboratively create a menu book, where each student selects a dish they love and designs a menu page using their own visual style. The format (size, layout grid) is fixed, but each student has full creative freedom in typography, color, and composition. At the end, all pages are compiled into a single printed menu. 2. Hand-Drawn to Digital Logo Students begin by sketching a personal logo based on their name using traditional materials such as pens, markers, and paint. They explore form, identity, and style through hand drawing. Then, they translate their sketches into digital formats using tools like Illustrator. 3. Collective Sticker Poster Installation The teacher provides a large blank poster as a shared canvas. Each student designs a small, playful graphic or sticker digitally using Illustrator. After printing, all designs are assembled onto the poster, creating a collaborative visual composition.

This project is a T-shirt logo design titled Friday Night , inspired by the sense of calm and release I associate with the end of a week. For me, Friday Night represents a personal moment of pause. It can be a transition from intensity to ease, from structure to softness. Based on this idea, I aimed to translate this emotional state into a visual identity that feels relaxing, comfortable, and slightly dreamlike. In terms of visual language, I created this logo in Illustrator. I chose a soft and dreamlike color palette with blurred gradients to evoke a sense of calm and fluidity. The typography is built on a modern serif typeface, which I then modified to introduce subtle distortions and playful details, adding personality while maintaining elegance. Through this balance of structure and softness, the design reflects both the stability and freedom that define my interpretation of a “Friday Night.”

For this project, I revisited the previous video assignment where I created a cyberpunk-inspired short film using CapCut. In the original version, I focused heavily on editing techniques, experimenting with speed changes, and applying visual effects to enhance the rhythm of the video. Revisiting this work allowed me to focus on how to make a video work as an interesting storytelling. While technical skills are important, now I see that the cores of a succeed video are  its story, emotion, and intention. Moving forward, I want to shift my focus from using effects to building a clear story in my videos. Instead of using rhythm and transitions just to make the video look cool, I want to explore how timing, pacing, and sound can help express emotions and guide the story. I am especially interested in how rhythm can create tension and flow throughout the video. At the same time, I want to connect this idea to my real-world design experience. During my internships, I learned that definin...

Part 01: What I found interesting about this Scratch project is how simple coding blocks like loops, movement, and broadcast messages are combined to create an interactive game. It shows how Scratch’s visual programming system can turn basic logic into a playful and engaging user experience. https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/1286790763/ Part 02: I created a simple generative drawing using p5.js. The artwork begins with a single line starting from the center of the canvas and moving in a random direction. As the line grows, it continuously extends across the space. When it reaches the boundary of the square, it changes direction and continues to travel with a new random angle. Through this repeated process of movement and reflection, the line gradually fills the canvas with an organic network of paths. The final image emerges from a very simple rule-based system, demonstrating how generative art can produce complex and unpredictable visual patterns from minimal code.

Gasek mentioned that animation has always been rooted in experimentation and illusion. From early filmmakers like Georges Méliès to later developments in pixilation and mixed-media techniques, stop motion emerged from a desire to “fool the eye” and expand storytelling possibilities. To be more specific, stop motion is not limited to puppets; it can involve people, objects, clay, sand, or everyday materials. This expands animation beyond a technical skill into a creative mindset. The reading helped me see stop motion not just as a medium, it can help people to create fantastic artwork through the manipulation of time and change. Martinez and Stager discussed the importance of learning through making. Drawing on thinkers like Piaget and Dewey, they argue that knowledge is constructed through direct experience and active engagement rather than passive reception. Piaget’s idea that students must “rediscover” or reconstruct knowledge themselves reinforces the value of hands-on experimen...

In this stop motion project, I explored the color transformation through the mixing of clay. By combining two different colors one-time in varying proportions, I observed how new hues gradually emerged through contact, pressure, and repetition. Each frame captures a small step during this process, allowing the audience to catch each moment. Rather than blending the clay instantly, I intentionally controlled the variables, adjusting the ratio of colors and the way they folded into one another to highlight how transformation is rarely sudden. For this stop motion, I mixed yellow with green and green with blue separately. I created the animation using the Stop Motion app, setting the frame rate to seven frames per second and keeping the final duration to around thirty seconds. The slightly slower frame rate enhances the tactile quality of the clay, making the transformation feel deliberate and material-driven. For the final work, I add a background track with rhythmic beats that align wi...