Translate

DIGITAL IMAGING FOR MULTIMEDIA AND WEB







The course required that I complete lessons within lessons while reading the course text in a short amount of time. Each assignment had me hungry to learn more and I had many "A Ha!" moments with some of the tools in this program. This allowed me to understand how some of the great graphic works I admired could have been achieved.
Here was my first manipulation in its completed form using just one addition of a new image.
 

 

I can not begin to tell you all that was done to the completed photo before I introduced the second image of the hand. This was the photo in its original form.















I continued to learn by creating magazine covers.
 
Now I could bore you with the details of how these images were manipulated and created but as I stated earlier in my blog. This is not a lesson in the how to but more of the experience and progression of what to expect in this degree program.

What you say?...please give a little details. Ok in my next assignment I will explain more.

In this assignment I found that Photoshop offers many methods for image adjustment and correction. Some methods are similar to what photographers would use on images that are meant for magazine/print or monitor viewing jobs. Up until now I relied on new adjustment layer option for my brightness /contrast image fixes. This lesson showed me other tools that are available to achieve even better adjustments such as the dodge, burn and sponge tools. Using these tools to lighten areas or change the tone in some was very useful. I feel the clone stamp tool will become my favorite with its ability to extend backgrounds.



I chose the spot healing brush tool to remove the graffiti on the rim with a size of 10%, 100% hardness and 25% spacing. I used the color replacement tool for the strap and chose a setting of R248, G182 and B4 for my orange foreground. Using the zoom setting to get up close I also kept my pixel spacing at 25% with a hardness of 40% while I slowly selected my areas. I also kept my sampling at Continuous, Find Edges for the limits and kept my tolerance at 32% since some of these settings gave me the dimensions I needed. I did find that even though I had made a copy, I was still hesitant in my changes and was unsure of my mouse movements. Sometimes I was too fast and at other times I seemed too slow in performing my painting actions. This reluctance to commit to my movements improved as I continue to make changes to the picture.
I will state that for my final assignment we were ask to sketch first an idea based on this criteria.

You have been assigned to do a freelance project for Eclipse Entertainment Company. Eclipse Entertainment markets a variety of toys, computer games, and movies. Their intentions are to design very silly caricatures using photos of everyday objects. These creatures are designed for promotional materials such as toys, games, and dolls. The CEO of the company would like you to choose a caricature from the list below, design the creature, and finally create a flyer for the caricature you have chosen to create.

 









My response was this:

The client Eclipse Entertainment Company has asked me to come up with some ideas on what their new silly caricature should look like if it was called “Garden Glitter Grace. So, I wanted to show them that they could have diversity in choices for a toy, game or doll. I studied the various different garden tools you might find in a gardener shed and asked myself if I could put a face on the tool how would I make it look female. I will incorporate various trees, leaves and flowers you would find in a garden, along with butterflies to enhance my idea. I will consider Gnomes and Garden pots as creatures into my presentation. These are what I sketched for my thumbnail ideas.


  • A Glitter covered Flower Pot with a shovel for a head with small tree limbs for hair that has flowers. I would give her glittery eye shadow and red rosy lips. In the pot removable watering can and seed packet full of glitter dust. The pot would have one arm as a tree limb and the other as a spading fork. Attached to her fork would be a garden lantern that lights up. And she would have tree limbs for legs that are bendable.  

  • A Flower Pot with a shovel head that has a ponytail to represent a female with large eyes that have glitter eye shadow. She would have arms and legs of tree limbs and flowers. You would find in her pot garden tools, flowers and glitter in a packet named seeds to remove and play with. Her legs and arms would be bendable. Her pot would have glitter on it and her hair would have a bow with glitter.

Overall I would create the silly caricature out of gardening tools, flowers or tree limbs including other things you would see in a garden to give them examples of Garden Glitter Grace.

 



 









I must admit at first this assignment was very frustrating as I had to constantly go back and review videos over and over on how to do some techniques. But as I did I got better and faster at my applications.

 

If you have Adobe Photoshop, then the rest of this post will make a world of sense and if you do not ignore the details and just skip to the finished presentation. I think you will find that from my original sketch to finish I stayed true to my ideas.
 

My approach was to incorporate sequin for her glitter with gardening tools and bring in some things you would see in a garden such as flowers or butterflies. I pulled my images from Getty and from key word web image searches. I add grass in the pot to my design. This was a new feature I found that was needed to help with the blending of the shovel neck with my chosen pot. I started by using my multiple selections tools such as the quick selection wand and alternated these tools on some forms with the polygonal Lasso tool to extract. I changed their locked backgrounds into new layers before I applied my tools.

I then arranged my window to a side by side and dragged the extracted image onto my canvas arranging it into place. Some forms required me to clean them up using the eraser tool after extraction. I resized my images to fit the scale of my model. I used the blending feature on the eyes, mouth and pot. I duplicated the eye, arms and leg images to create pairs. And I did the same with the sunflowers. I then applied the puppet warp feature to the branches on her legs and the sunflowers in her pot. I also used the warp on her face to extend the shovel more for a fuller face canvas to accommodate the lips and eyes. I isolated part of her pot and add new texture effects and color. Overall I rearranged some of my layers so that I could use bring forward or send backward options to help with the blending. I feel my most challenging application is using the blending options. I do not think she looks successfully blended. This I hope to work on more. And I have found that my chosen sketch requires many individual parts to create my model.
 

I reviewed the critiques of my peers and the professor which allowed me focus on the areas I wanted to repair or fix. I saw where I need to add more detailed refinement of edges to my left branch limb. At first I thought I could just use the Masking Edge feature to remove the visible white but it would appear I had added too many layers to the mask to remove what I wanted. So having learned how to make a selection into a mask layer I just removed that limb and applied again from an untouched master file. This reminded me of the lesson in saving my work in various formats; psd or jpeg. I used the clone stamp to fill in more eye shadow I had inadvertently cut out during my selection. With this recently acquired understanding of the tool, I proceeded to add more eye shadow around the eyes to blend them more and make them stand out.




I wanted to address a white spot that was on her face and first tried to use the spot healing to fix the blemish. But I was unable to fill in the area with the right shading or color. Having just learned the Content Aware fill I was able to easily fix the white blemish by her nose selecting the area with a lasso tool and then applying my black color. This gave me such a sense of understanding of the tool and accomplishment. Her legs appeared bare to me so I added broccoli and more vines to her legs using the selection to layer mask techniques with some shading effects. And as suggested by my instructor, I reworked the type treatment by using a different type style called AR Carter that already had its own glitter and applied the Fish eye warp and arch downward to the letters to get them to stand out. And I finally lowered the opacity of the background further down to 79% so Garden Glitter Grace would seem to leap off the canvas. Overall, I found this a very rewarding experience as I became comfortable with the features of Photoshop and had a better understanding of what some of the tools could do. While remembering my short cut key board options I was able to do the retouch on my caricature very quickly and still apply new ideas.


FINAL SUBMISSION
 

Artist Statement

The client Eclipse Entertainment Company from this course assigned me to do a freelance project to come up with some ideas on what their new silly caricature should look like from a chosen list of caricatures names. I choose “Garden Glitter Grace” to work with as my caricature subject because I found I could create diversity for their marketing team. Since, they oversee so many areas of toys, computer games or movies her various parts could be utilized in different way to help them show their new product. The caricature had to be able to cross all these markets with her design. I wanted them to see how she could be one cohesive toy doll that can come to life in a movie with a purpose for making gardening exciting with glitter. Then with this design in mind I thought the client would see how each garden tool could be a great computer game feature on their use. And most importantly, she could be independent on a shelf as a doll, with movable parts that could be sold as separate accessories. These ideas would expand their product line giving them multiple options from one conceptual idea.

I studied the various different garden tools you might find in a gardener shed and asked myself if I could put a face on the tool how would I make it look female and silly. It was important that I show my caricature as a female that loved glitter, but represented nature. So, I knew I wanted to give her a solid body that could be stuffed with tools by using a flower pot. And I could decorate her with subtle specs of glitter in her accessories. Also, introduce flowers, leaves, vegetables and butterflies that you would expect to be part of a garden to enhance my idea. My original design idea remained true to my proposal with the minor change of removing the glitter packet named seeds from my concept. I consider demographic age range and thought this might get messy or dangerous if eaten. But I kept all her other parts removable or bendable for play. Her pot was decorated with glitter and I added the tutu skirt in exchange for removing the glitter packet, but kept the bow in her hair. Also, I kept the large eyeswith glitter eyeshade and the Shovel head with the quirky lips to keep the silly concept. Having my peers and instructor critique my designs allowed me to focus on cleaner transition of limbs and improvements on name placement for better visibility. I blended the broccoli vegetables on her legs more to emphasize the garden as part of her. Their ideas only helped me to enhance her unique appearance and provide a better canvas for her to leap from into the client’s minds. I think I successfully accomplished my goal of presenting a unified, well rounded, diverse caricature that truly represents their chosen product name.

I hope that the audience takes away a level of education that is subtle in the incorporation of gardening tools and how they can be used. The message to a targeted audience experience would be how getting your vegetables from a garden can be fun work while still looking pretty. The challenge I faced in executing this project was more in learning all the available techniques I could use to achieve cohesive selections as a whole in my composition, while still showing each part as a possible separate product to be used. I had to consider my selections for removability and sturdy posing while giving enough enhancements that could be later animated for movies or game. I overcame my challenges by choosing parts that when manipulated by Photoshop could hold up in details with minor effects and scaling. I kept most selections in their chosen color scheme to maintain the integrity of the color palette I wanted to use.

This decision was important so that a viewer would be able to recognize each part and know instantly what it should or could do. My experience doing this project showed me that an artist has unique and helpful tools available in Photoshop to support a creative idea on canvas. When considering the finished outcome for Monitor or Print you do not have to sacrifice much of the design detail to be effective. I learned that using a program like Photoshop is forgiving of revisions in ideas with little to no loss in content or original work. I learned that you must consider the proposal in stages as you work to allow for changes in concept a client might have before you reach the finished product. A rough cut can easily be a tossed idea when it’s presented against an adapted background and you must allow your work to give you that flexibility. But the most important lesson I learned was to know your tool short cuts to manage your time well during a project to meet needed deadlines. A lost deadline is a lost opportunity to get the feedback on your concept right the first time with a stronger presentation at the end.

Thank You for this opportunity to share my conceptual idea proposal on "Garden Glitter Grace" may she help your promotion grow.



 
 
For this Class my instructor was Josh Kollin and he shared this photo with the class. I found that from his messages to me during class that he has fun in his work and loves what he does as a teacher.
(Oh! my teacher is on the right)






No comments:

Post a Comment

Your welcome to leave a comment.