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DMX 2011: a Look at
Careers in the Wide World of Graphics
By Bob Robinson
PIQUA - Edison Community College’s Digital Media X 2011 took about 80
high school students through the types of careers they can expect to
see in the worlds of graphics, digital media and Internet technologies.
A dozen Edison staff members and adjuncts, under the leadership of Brad
Reed, Assistant Professor for Internet Technologies and Interactive
Media, and Michael Fleishman, Associate Professor for Commercial Art,
gave students a look at a variety of options, including Trends in
Digital Media, Graphic Design Careers, Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator,
Publishing in Digital Media, Comic Life, Digital Creative Process, 3D
Programming and more.
Digital film-making…
During the opening session, Reed set up a live Skype interview with
award-winning documentary producers Bill and Turner Ross, who are
working on a film in a small town on the Texas-Mexican border.
During the interview, scenes from “45365,” a portrait of an American
city – Sidney, Ohio – and its people, were shown to the students.
Called “an achingly beautiful film” by Roger Ebert, “45365” won an
Independent Spirit and a Savannah Film Festival award in 2010.
IndieWire called “45465” a “supremely detailed look at daily routines
in small town America … sibling filmmakers Turner and Bill Ross
capture the minutiae of a self-contained world. In a feat of virtuoso
documentary editing, they offer not one slice of life but several:
“Here’s the stone-faced judge going through the motions of his
reelection campaign; there’s a jaded local cop frustrated over
multi-generational criminal habits; the high school football team frets
over upcoming competition while patrons at the local barber shop engage
in run-of-the-mill gossip.”
The Ross brothers are quoted in IFC Icons as saying they have had a “…
continual love affair with the people around us and the moment at hand.
We don’t want fleeting things to pass, so throughout our lives we’ve
endeavored to capture them. In our film work we focus on images and the
people in those images.”
Cartooning…
In one of several Breakout Sessions, Fleishman took 10 students through
the process of creating cartoons and cartoon characters.
“Have the person next to you draw a squiggle. Now create a cartoon
character from that squiggle.”
This produced an interesting array of cartoon figures that provided
insight to the perceptions of lines and images by the students.
As Fleishman went through the cartooning process he introduced concepts
such as layout and design of characters, then wrapped up the 45-minute
session by having each student draw a part of the human anatomy, and
pass the “sketch” sheet to the next student for another part.
Starting with the head and ears, each student drew a pair (or more or
less) of eyes, torso, arms, hands and so on. Again, the array of
characters created was as different as the perspectives of the students
doing the drawing.
Other Breakout Sessions…
Digital Publishing introduced students to Adobe InDesign, one of the
premier desktop publishing programs used in newspaper and commercial
printing. Students were shown how commercial printing differed from
Internet publishing, despite both being dependent on support software
like Adobe Photoshop.
Walking tour of the Edison campus. Students with Smartphones received a
tour of the Edison campus, scanning QR codes and Microsoft Tags to
learn about the digital media that is all around them on the campus.
Other sessions include a syncopation of the art and musical processes,
pictorial composition, highlights of career opportunities, jobs
outlook, preparing for success and more.
DMX, an annual event…
Digital Media is a career of the future. While many students took the
opportunity to simply have a good time off of their regular campuses
for the day, others were seriously looking at career opportunities that
moved them beyond the world of Social Media into the Wide World of
Digital Communication.
High school students from around the Miami Valley took part in the
opportunity.
For more information about this year’s DMX, click here.
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