Steven's Blog

Hello all, and welcome to my draft graphic design project. For this post I’ve decided to create a poster that illustrates the idea that cats seem to see themselves as a “top of the food chain” type of animal such as their relatives, the tigers. This relates to my topic of raising a kitten in that a new pet that acts or behaves like they are a wild tiger is a difficult (yet surprisingly common) obstacle to overcome.

My inspiration for this poster came from a social media post that I saw many years ago making a joke along the lines of “what I think I look like *while doing random action* vs. what I actually look like”. This came to mind immediately as my kitten is constantly behaving as if she is much larger than she is. For example, she likes to sleep at the head of my bed in the center, across multiple pillows, making it impossible to get into my bed without waking her.

To begin creating this project I found three images that I wanted to use, each selected with a plan of where they would go and what they would look like. After locating these images, I created individual layers for each of them, and began to position them roughly where they would be as a finished result. I then used the eyeball icon on the layers to take turns showing only one-to-two layers at a time, as to be able to fine-tune each layer accurately. Some of the elements used most frequently were the magnetic lasso tool, the elliptical marquee tool, and the free transform/transform, but there were many more used to be certain.

In creating this project, the elements of Photoshop learned from the tutorials were crucial to success, and I tried my best to use most of the elements taught. However, there were also things that were not covered in the tutorials that I wished to do. These tasks were very difficult at first, but a simple search on YouTube will go a long way for most short questions such as “how to ___ on Photoshop”. This is my advice to those encountering a similar problem, when your knowledge fails, and you’ve been on an endless series of trial and error, don’t be afraid to simply ask a question to either a teacher, or the internet.

Tiger photo

Image by Pexels from Pixabay

Pixabay License: Free for commercial use

https://pixabay.com/photos/animal-tiger-big-cat-safari-1868911/

Living Room photo

Image by leemelina08 from Pixabay

Pixabay License: Free for commercial use

https://pixabay.com/photos/home-luggage-sofa-casa-cor-1622401/

Hello all, today I am going to introduce my blog’s topic, which is raising a kitten. The reason that I have selected this topic for my blog is that I care a great deal about detail and accuracy. In searching for a topic for my blog, I came across a number of topics commonly chosen, and found that I could not strongly relate to any of them, which worried me that I would not be able to provide detailed and accurate information regarding those topics. This is not the case with kittens as it happens.

I have recently adopted a rescue kitten, from 6 weeks old to now (3 1/2 months old) she has matured an unbelievable amount! But she is still a kitten. She still needs help learning from time to time, whether it be new terrain where she needs help figuring out what to do, or perhaps curiosity leading her to misbehave, she is still a kitten-and this is what I hope to help document.

In order to follow this topic for the blog’s purposes, I plan to document myself over the remainder of the semester in training my kitten, including evidence that I find relevant to the topic such as attitudes, communication, and all-around behavior. In addition to this, I will also network with other cat owners within Pullman, and gather information regarding their experience whether it be in text, audio, or video. For the first project, I plan to create a poster illustrating the important stages of a cat’s life cycle as far as their brains and behavioral ideals are concerned. For the third project, I will record a podcast including fellow cat-owners attending Washington State University, and gather data as to their experiences in training their cats.

The following are links I found useful in researching my topic:

1. This article was useful to me in beginning stages of my resarch. This is where I went to learn all there is to know about cats that can fit on one page so to speak. This focused on everything from diet to behavior, without going too deep into any details.

2. This article was useful to me in finding a source for popular topics within kitten-training. It showed frequently asked questions and how to deal with them, as well as providing a brief insight to the cat’s psyche and reason for behaving the way that they do.

3. The reason that I found this article useful for inspiration is that it shows a number of ways that a pet owner can interact with their kitten in ways that keep them both entertained and exercising. This is important because it seems that there is a link between the amount of time a kitten is bored, and the amount of trouble that it gets into. The more time you can spend tiring your kitty out, the better it would seem.

Draft Graphic Design Project

Photoshop Tutorials

Raising a kitten, a blog