Hybrid Animal

For our third to last project this year in Elements of Design we had to take parts from three animals and combine them into one new animal fusion. The new creature would have to look realistic, having well blended parts that fit and transition naturally, but could also combine animals that would immediately make a person question it due to odd part arrangements. For the project we were introduced to two new tools in photoshop, the stamp and healing brush tools. It was our objective to use these two tools to make the fusion look realistic. When it came to the stamp tool it was used often. In order for me to transplant the red panda head in the image onto the bird for example and do it accurately I would get the stamp from the panda image and on a new layer paint it on where it could blend realistically. I would go onto to do the same for some fur/feather blending and putting sloth claws where the bird feet were. For the healing brush tool it was useful in altering the original bird image, which served as the base for the whole work, to accommodate new animal parts. An example of this would be getting rid of the original bird feet by replacing it with painted on wood so the new claws would fit and doing touch ups on the fur.

The objective isn't the only part of the project. I had some strong aspects such as how well I used the healing brush. In getting rid of the wood the product looked realistic which was a good base for the new animal to sit on. A weaker aspect would probably be the job I did blending, in some areas it's easy enough to tell that parts are not of the same image such as the neck and lower claws. I should probably have focused more in those areas.  

Like every other project of the year some parts of the project were easier than others. The easiest part was definitely transplanting the head of the panda onto the bird, all it too was to properly size both images then carefully use the stamp too on the panda head and start painting in the same spot on the bird. The hardest part by contrast would have been using both the stamp and heal brush tools to get the sloth claws to connect to the bird body. To make it look good I had to play with the opacities of both and paint new bird parts over the claws to make it so they weren’t floating, painting over the claws easily and at some points made unnatural looking straight lines which were hard to iron out. Taking into account the harder and easier parts of the project I would probably not work with birds. Compared to other animals they have more fine details, such as their feather and thin feet, which requires someone to work more carefully with the two new tools.