The fourth project in our elements of design class was to use both photoshop and art of our own making to make a combination where a picture of us would be featured. Our personal picture would be displayed as a collage of polaroids that combined give more or less the full original image.

In this project I encountered a lot of difficulty and it, in the end, did not turn out as well as I hoped. The weakest aspect of the work if I had to name one was the basic composition, in initially making the polaroids too large I covered far too much of my supplementary drawing. This in turn also made the work look crowded and messy once I started bringing parts of the drawings forward. All this probably could have been avoided by using less or smaller polaroids. The strongest aspect of the work would probably have to be my original drawing… maybe. Before it became crowded with the polaroids it didn’t look too bad, but it also wasn't the best drawing i’ve ever done.

In working through the project I found some easier and harder parts. Personally the hardest part was getting the polaroids to appear on top of each other. It involved both selective and tedious use of the magic wand tool needing to select each layer before working and pixel perfect erasing after still needing to be careful of layers. The easiest part ironically came after and because of the difficulty in changing the polaroids. It was erasing parts of the picture of me where the polaroids did not fall that was easy, the polaroid frames let there be a lot of room for error and let me easily tell where I needed to erase.

The objective of the activity was to mix the two media sources that we had, the polaroid photos and our work of art. To do this I took parts of my drawing, which was in the background, and brought them forward with some of the polaroids. To do this I used the magic wand tool on parts of the drawing and copied what was selected. I took this new copied layer and dragged up in priority, they still covered the original parts but they also looked closer now. If I had to change anything about what I did with the project it would definitely start with the polaroid size and number. I would make them smaller and possibly less numerous so that the my drawing could be better seen and its aspects that were brought forward would make more sense. In conclusion I am not terribly happy with how this project turned out and I do think it is my weakest one of the year, but if I had to do it again I think it would turn out better.

Tattoo Illusion

The third project of our Design class was to create a tattoo and then using photoshop take the tattoo and impose it onto a picture of ourselves making it look realistic using multiple tools. We used tools such as burn to darken the tattoo to match the shadows of our bodies and dodge to lighten it on light parts. Blur is used to blur the tattoo to help it blend with the body since the picture of the tattoo is sharper than the larger body image. Multiply would get rid of any of the white from the tattoo image left over from the original image since it was from the start on a piece of white paper. Finally warp was one of the most important tools, it allowed us to bend the tattoo image to fit the shape and contours of the body as a real tattoo would act. The end product would be the two images appearing together as one and the picture of us looking like we had a tattoo. In my own tattoo I utilized these tools to help blend the tattoo achieving the project goal.  

Other than the use of new tools and incorporating non digital resources the project was similar enough to the others we have done. My work had some stronger aspects such as the original drawing that became the tattoo, it had a good flow that fit the area of my body I put it on (my side). One of the weakest parts of the work would definitely be how the original image was maybe too grainy which forced the tattoo to be blurred. It ultimately made the image look like a mediocre picture of a real tattoo which could be improved by a picture retake and a refitting of the tattoo.

The project had its own easier and harder parts like most others. I personally found the drawing of the original tattoo picture easy abet still tedious. To me drawing was never too hard yet at the same time I was never very skilled, the tediousness came in with text seen in the image, it involved stylized text that required a large time investment to get right. The harder part of the project was definitely playing with the image playing with multiply and the magic wand to get it to select the whites I wanted to delete. The paper I was using was off-white and it sometimes failed to select it while sometimes it selected blending on the handle for deletion. In the end some of the handle blending had to be deleted to get rid of all the white.

I liked the project well enough and hold regrets as well as content for its aspects. If I had to change anything it would be the original body image. At the time I was not in the clear of how it should have been taken for the best results and it ended up being grainy. The grainy image force the tattoo to be a little grainy and detracted from the whole work.         

The selfie Project

Our second project this year in Elements of Design was to create an image in photoshop using a mish-mash of other images we found on the internet that represents us. In creating the image we were tasked to use a couple new photoshop tools that helped us alter the images we found to fit our own uses and look good together, along with this we still had to follow some of the four design elements we used in the first project. The new tools were using filters on images to change their look, using the layer makes to change how they look on top of each other, and blend modes that makes the images used seem to be continuous. Other than this the basic art elements such as contrast or proper alignment, in my image proper alignment was achieved through avoiding the middle of the image and having focal points on its fringes which the film strip helped in. Contrast in the picture was seen in multiple areas such as the night sky verses the computer board on opposite ends of the picture or Hobbs being bright colors on the dark background of the night sky.

My project has its own ups and downs having areas I like and areas or aspects I dislike. The works strongest aspect I think is how it is split into two areas of ⅓ and ⅔ creating an appealing proper alignment. On the opposite end of the spectrum is how I think the figurines on the filmstrip itself turned out, they don’t look like like they belong on the background and don't blend very well. This may be fixed by moving them somewhere else, changing the film color, or maybe playing heavily with filters.

There were some hard parts of the project as well as some easy ones. The easiest part was definitely setting up the background that only took a couple swipes of the erase tool and simple filters after the images were selected. The images on top of the background such as getting the space man right took a lot of work and sweat. From cropping him off of a similar background that messed with the magic wand tool to getting the the filters to not destroy parts of the image which made me hand color some parts differently, in all that part was a pain but turned out well.

What I would change if I had to do this project again is how I used the blend and layer mask tool. I did not use them liberally enough which resulted in some unneeded rough edges that pulled the work down and also made the overall lighting weird. Otherwise I am happy with the result and would not change too much.

For our first art project this year in Graphic design we had to create an image partly using only one letter of the alphabet, for this I chose the letter C. Which should be expected for the first art project and for the first time using photoshop there were both times of difficulty negatively affecting aspects of the work and times where through inference or learning I was able to successfully use a tool that made certain parts of the piece look good. My strongest aspect of the work was probably in the blending of colors of the moon, stars, and sky. It more convincingly mimicked light effects than other parts of the picture, had better placing than the sea, and had much starker contrast with the background than anywhere else that culminated to a more attractive area. The weakest area of the work was probably the boat floating on the sea. It had poor contrast and overlap with the sea as well as not blending well, it just didn’t look too in place which could have been improved by putting a more precise touch on the above described aspects.

With all projects or works some things are easier done than others. The easiest part of this piece was definitely the placing of the Cs in the sky. In putting them against the background they did not require any shifts after the fact and the only difference between them is font size and location. The hardest part of the work was the placing Cs in the sea and how the shading around them worked. Each C required multiple movements and shifts while the blending between the sky and the sea was slow and tedious with the brush in order to get the varying blending effect. The sky ultimately took less than a class to complete versus multiple classes getting the sea right even though it took up less of the image.

The project was not purely independent but instead we had a set of objectives we had complete. We had to use proper alignment, contrast, proximity, and repetition. Proximity was nice and variable between different Cs in the photo and repetition was achieved through the many Cs being present. For alignment I was careful to avoid the center of the image putting key focus points on the bottom and sides and finally contrast was created between the dark of the sky with the blue of the sea and the light of the stars. Nothing in the picture I made was perfect and there are plenty of things I would do differently if I had to do it again. An example of this would be not exploring more into the various blending tools available to manipulate the background. I would use the 3D tools as well to make the image look less flat, especially the sea. I would also consider doing an entire different setting for the picture to see if that changes anything. The project as a whole was a good kickstart for the year to introduce us to Photoshop.