PORTFOLIO VOLUME 1
ABOUT ME Hi there! My name is Kimberly Micallef and this is my portfolio. I am Maltese, but I don’t look like one most of the time. I have been studying at MCAST Art & Design since 2011. I have accelerated in Interactive Media and have been happier studying here ever since. Here I have learnt how to record an audio clip, edit it and finally synchronize it with moving images, as well as how to communicate visually by drawing in 2D and 3D. I have also learnt about the persons behind animation such as Walt Disney and John Lasseter. Lately I had been given the opportunity to produce an animation from scratch of which I have won the first prize for the best animated cartoon by Kummisarju tat-Tfal and Transport Malta. I have also learnt to appreciate art by reading the thoughts of the painter in the way he expresses himself in his drawings. This school has taught me how to appreciate art and things in life that would have never crossed my mind before. Before Art & Design, I attended MCAST ICT and studied networking for 4 years in which I had worked with various operating systems, learnt about various types of software and mostly gained experience in web development. The latter has been particularly useful and helpful when I had to create web-based graphics. I have not yet produced much material so far, however more volumes will be coming up in the future in which I will have the opportunity to show-case more work. I enjoy working on graphic design, branding and editorial. Usually I go for a clean, simple and minimal style. Simple is better.
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BRANDING In a particular assignment carried out in a group of two, we had to choose a persona and build his character, habits, interests and other details that would help us create a brand. Based upon these characteristics, we had to create a Facebook page and post statuses regarding his thoughts and beliefs. For this character we had to come up with a food brand and then design its packaging. I took some photographs to portray this man that we were building the identity for. The occupation of our persona was a typical Maltese bus driver on which we wanted to base the brand upon. I came up with the idea of naming the brand ‘il-bukkun’ since it had to be based on food and especially focusing on snacks. Our target was to have people enjoy having a snack for lunch from ‘il-bukkun’. This would target all audiences especially bus drivers where they could be able to taste the genuine Maltese ingredients offered in the menu that which we emphasised about. More photos can be found in the CD.
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BRANDING
For this branding we produced the letterhead, envelope, compliments slip and gift card. We compiled the guidelines in a perfect bound book complete with a case made out of the same material used for the ‘il-bukkun’ carry bag. As you can see the mature adults printed on the cups represent old style and genuinity.
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BRANDING
Some of the photographs that I took at a local bakery to depict ‘il-bukkun’ working staff. I edited them to match the style of the brand.
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graphic design Here are some designs I have made myself using Adobe Illustrator. I prefer it to Adobe Photoshop because I know tools better and I like the clean vector output. I like to incorporate photography where I see the opportunity to make such use. Some examples are available on the attached CD. On the left side is work we had to make for a client, Dogs Trust Malta. Our main focus was to create artworks to promote micro chipping and neutering since many people were not aware of their benefits. I decided to come up with 3 artworks to promote micro chipping, neutering and adoption as well. The set continues in the next page. This was designed with Adobe Photoshop since this was one of my first works of my school year and therefore I was less familiar with Adobe Illustrator.
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graphic design
A website I designed for a school assignment. This basically had to showcase our work and it was in our own free will to design whatever we wanted. I included vintage bird cages in my design since I love vintage and the serenity birds especially swallows. I designed the website in Adobe Illustrator and later moved it to Adobe Photoshop to cut it into segments for website development. Html, CSS and JavaScript were the languages used for development.
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graphic design
This is a farewell card I designed for a friend. I drew a ladybird since she is a huge fan of them and drew a neat matching banner at the top. I compiled this myself and used foam tape to separate the ladybird and banner from the green and yellow polka dot background as you can see in the above image. I also designed a matching envelope reversing the colours on the card, green polka dots on a yellow background. This was printed on a satin paper which brought out the colour effects more nicely.
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graphic design
I enjoy editorial because building a magazine from scratch gives me a lot of satisfaction. So far I haven’t had the opportunity to produce many editorial content. However I have recently selected some good shots from a photo session I had organized and compiled it into a neat book as shown here. The rest are 2 informative magazines which were part of separate assignments. I went for minimal design in both magazines which are available for preview in the attached CD.
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CHRIS LEAVENS
Chris Leavens is an artist currently living in Los Angeles. He started his career by working in the film industry but later he decided to change his work to an illustrator, graphic designer and web designer.
Chris creates vector art focusing on educational illustrations for children. He likes to add the elements of absurdity, anthropomorphism and humour. He likes his art to be thought of hard to describe and unique.
He makes use of Adobe Illustrator CS4 including textural elements. He learned Illustrator on his own and learned to use different tools. Chris created art first and thinks about the technical stuff later. He uses complex custom brushes to create textures. He starts off his illustrations by drawing basic flat shapes and setting the basic colours he would use. When Chris finalizes his composition, he adds details such as faces, clothing and decorations. He then starts shading and finishes off with textures. He makes use mostly of clipping masks because it is easy to add elements and move them within a mask. He uses gradients and feathered objects nested within clipping masks for shading. He also uses the classic pen tool and organizes everything in a lot of layers. His workspace involves a Mac Pro, a big LCD and a Wacom Intuos4 tablet which he keeps near his keyboard since he uses it a lot while drawing. He says “whatever helps you create faster and better is the right way”.
“Whatever helps you create faster and better is the right
graphic design
These are a few scenes I selected from a comic we had to design for an assignment. This was for a client, Mater Dei Hospital, where I was assigned to come up with a character design for Dr. Funny and create a story to enlighten the mood of children in Wonderland. The main characters had to be designed in 3D whilst the backgrounds had to be designed in 2D. I used Maya software to create Dr. Funny and Adobe Illustrator to create the backgrounds. I decided to design the buildings a little crooked, to vary from the usual style. I enjoyed designing in this style which I will definitely adopt again.
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graphic design
Location: Kennedy Grove, Bugibba
photography I have always enjoyed snapping photographs from a young age. To me photography is a different opportunity every time to capture beauty at its best moments. Being so enthused into photography I decided to take my hobby further and buy an SLR. With Nikon being in the family since I was young, I bought a NIKON D5100. In the near future I would like to enhance my photographic skills to a higher level. I must say that not anyone can be a photographer, because only a few have a keen eye for detail. I love capturing photographs of nature landscapes. I like architectural photography especially where I see an opportunity of symmetry since I am a perfectionist. I also like to experiment with fashion photography and portraits. So far I have travelled to Scotland and Germany where I did my best to shoot as many types of scenery as possible. Here are a few photos I captured myself that I feel are some of the best I own.
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Location: Buskett
Location: Sliema
EDINBURGH
RIVER DANUBE
kimberly.micallef@gmail.com +356 79922662 www.be.net/kmicallef