Reflections on Poster Projects

    Alright, after an embarassing performance last week, I'm back. Sadly, due to trouble sleeping and a lack of discipline, I had to take it down to the wire again. But I'm MUCH happier with my work this week, and that's what really matters to me.
    I chose to do a movie poster and a propoganda poster. Why? Well, the first major idea I had basically just fit well into the whole "movie poster" idea, though technically, it's NOT for a movie, but a TV show. My reasons for choosing the propoganda poster amounted to my limited time. While I DID have an idea, the reason I ended up doing it is because I knew I could do it quickly with a limited palette. This has resulted in two posters that one could argue are polar opposites to each other, but DO cover the same general subject.
    Here we go:

    So here's my first poster. I specifically stole a bunch of photos and logos, roughly half from liberal sources and the other half from conservative sources. Then I took a picture of myself with my arms thrown up in a kind of "Who do I believe?" gesture. To make this poster work, I intentionally piled on a bunch of pictures to provide a sort of sensory overload that tends to catch MY attention. I presumed it would do the same for others. At the very least, the plethora of familiar faces on the poster should catch someone's eye. My reason for creating this poster is because in general, I've become quite frustrated with everything our media tells us that we're supposed to take without question. I'm even MORE aggravated by how anything that doesn't conveniently play into somebody's closed-minded view of the world can be dismissed with the possibly legitimate argument that it is the result of corrupt or biased sources. Even what's taught in our schools today is allegedly colored by a "liberalized" agenda. Some even call it brainwashing. Most of these people conveniently disregard the possibility that the same thing has happened to them, which is more than I can say for myself.

    Anyway, that's why I made this poster. I REALLY wish there WERE some sort of rational person who specifically went through the thousands of hours of stuff spewed by our media every year and separated the garbage from the facts. One could argue that that's precisely what many of those sources I list are doing, but in my opinion, virtually all of them has shown a significant political leaning, so I don't think they're reliable as unbiased sources.

    It might seem weird that I used colored text to convey the name of my show and the time it's on, but I had good reasons for it. The first is that a less colorful text would have been harder to read against the chaotic background I made. The second is that it conveyed something a little less serious, which goes well with my expression on here. The show itself is supposed to be one of seriousness mixed with comedic elements, which come from making fun of the things said by these various establishments.

   It may be a bit chaotic, but I think this poster works well.

   

    You see all those little specs surrounding the different pics in this poster? That's how down to the wire I was making this. I had to put it together in an hour. As a result of necessity, this turned into a fairly simple poster. Fortunately, that's precisely what propoganda posters are supposed to be. For me, the key to this entire thing, however, is the filter I put over it. It's called Chalk and Charcoal. Every one of these pics was colored before I filtered them with it. This ensured a limited palette. I put a gradient across the back to add to the effect, and the letters in the text each had an individual shade I chose to make sure they were readable.

    I was planning to put the blue and red colors of Obama's campaign posters across the back, but I didn't have the time to remove all the color from the pictures and make them transparent against the gradient. I had to settle for black and white. Truth be told, I actually think this worked in its favor. I had to use the magic wand tool a great deal more than my other projects. There was a ton of stuff surrounding the basic pictures of the subjects that I needed to remove. As you can see, I didn't get all of it.

    Sadly, there actually ARE people who compare Obama to Hitler. Even more aggravating: they have some legitimate points. If you search Google for propoganda, you will find many of his posters among the results. To suggest that Obama is a Hitler strikes me as extreme, but the open-minded person must always consider everything.

CLOSING COMMENTS:

    I'm satisfied--not thrilled--with what I put together here. To date, I still feel that my third project (Type) is my best. This isn't as good as I wanted it to be, but I think it's still good. I just hope this isn't our last weekly project, cause I don't feel I've completely redeemed my prior week's work. LOL :)

Reflections on Picture Project

    Okay, truth time. I stressed myself out way too much this week, putting things off unnecessarily and trying to cobble together some things for my other classes. So I don't have anything really good to show for this weeks project. Every one of these photos has not been touched up or manipulated in Photoshop. So these photos are pretty much my attempt to salvage as many of the points as I can, though I'm pretty certain I will not be able to salvage them all, and personally, given my lack of effor this week, I don't honestly WANT all the points. But enough about my week; let's talk about my photos.

ALPHABET SOUP

    So I was walking down the road looking for stuff to photograph. There were plenty of opportunities that I found, but this one just seemed to genuinely stand out. It's a very unusually shaped mailbox, and luckily for me, it's in the shape of a C. But I think the major reason this one stands out for me is because the C shape isn't so much present as it is implied. The mailbox is actually shaped as the "outside" of a C would look, not the way a C actually is. Yet looking at the picture, it's quite easy to see a...uh...C in it. So this one could potentially be my favorite.

   I walked outside and discovered that my leaves had fallen that way! No, really! Okay, okay. So I set them up this way. But so what? I think this photo works very well. The K is clearly contrasted against the grass due to the color of the leaves. It just looks good.

    Where do you go if you're looking for the letter H? I don't know, but I'm guessing a train track isn't the first choice people come up with. As with the K, this one had to be set up a little. While I was walking the tracks, I found a chunk of wood to lay across the center of two planks. I had to add a slight sliver on the left end to complete the middle of the letter, but it still looks very much like an H to me, and perhaps it's even a little creative.

   Okay, so maybe I cheated here, but if it weren't for the white line running parallel to the letter, I think you'd be forgiven for thinking that this was just something I found on the road to my house. If it's not obvious, it's an R. The white letter has worn down so much that it really does look like it's just part of the concrete.

   Finally, here's a Y. It's quite possibly the least creative place you can find one. But hey, in a crunch, it's a fine place to look for one.

PORTRAITURE

    And this is the last photo I'll be uploading. I simply didn't find the time to take the other two I was supposed to. I am, however, quite pleased with the way this one turned out, and I'll be using it on my YouTube channel when I have a chance to. It does a fairly good job of making me look fierce, which is what I was going for. And my shirt is supposed to be very significant as well. (My YouTube persona is a werewolf named Cachinscythe.) So I'm really happy with this one.

CONCLUDING COMMENTS:

    I did not have time to alter the lighting effects or color in Photoshop. Instead, I simply had to use the light provided by the environment I took the photos in. Fortunately, it provided me with the exact look I wanted each photo to have. I didn't get to crop any of my photos either, which disappoints me. There are aspects that I would have preferred to focus better. Overall, I learned more from the Alphabet Soup portion of my project, if for no other reason than that I did more of it.

    So that's all I've got. Barring some sort of catastrohpic event, I am going to ensure that this does not happen again. Because I am NOT happy with how much got done here or the lack of effort I displayed here.

Reflections on Type Projects

It's time for a new style of essay. Today, instead of doing separate posts for my projects and essay, I'm going to mix the two together. It's probably more efficient that way anyway.  In addition, because I feel like it, I'm going to take the time to explain the processes I went through for each individual image while doing my best to simultaneously answer the reflective essay questions. Enough exposition, let's get started!

This was my first attempt at rasterizing a type to create a picture. As you can see, the letter C was used. It's supposed to be a flower of some kind.  Each C represents a petal. You may notice that I didn't bother removing the stroke from any of the individual C's. I did that on purpose to make clear which letter I was using. While I think the general look of this pic is appealing, I don't really like it. In terms of overall work, this one just feels a little incomplete I guess. Granted, I don't know what I could do to make it better as the entirety of the pic is basically covered with something; I just feel like there's not enough detail. Still, I should probably give myself points for trying to be a little creative in the way I used the C's here.

Now THIS is where I started to get my groove. I began this one planning to use the letter Z. I tried several fonts on screen before I settled on this one. I didn't have any idea what I was going to do with it, but once I made my choice and played with it a little, I realized that it looked very much like a little running man. Having already made a mirror of the large letter, I ALSO realized that it was like two people rushing each other. Just like a sports game. And suddenly, I had an idea! I chose two contrasting colors for the two big Z's, put them against a green background, made 11 smaller Z's apiece for each side, and placed them in a football formation. I actually went online to see if I could find some specific formations to base their positioning on, but ultimately I just went with rough approximations. After I'd finished, I felt the picture was still a little empty, so I added a bunch of teammates to function as top and bottom "borders." In terms of creative use of a letter, I'd say this is probably my favorite pic of the ones I did, but as a picture, I still feel like there's some other little detail I should have added. Overall, I'm quite satisfied how this one turned out.

I conceived this one as I was finishing the last one. In considering what letters to use, I suddenly thought of using upside down V's for mountains and little teepee huts. I figured they'd be okay as clouds too. That was the plan when I sat down to start, but on a whim, I tried stretching out the first upside down V I created all the way across the screen, and not only did I like it, but it made me realize that I'd chosen the correct font as well. (There's something about the bottom of this V that just looks right as the peak of a mountain.) So I changed my plan from "mountains" to "mountain." After I had the mountain in there, I went to work on the clouds. They took the longest to put together because I wanted to make sure each was distinguished despite having to use the same letter on each of them. To do that, I spent a LOT of time recopying tiny upside down V's and placing them individually in each of the clouds. In retrospect, I might not have needed to do that, but I'm a stickler for detail. I just wish copying those V's over and over hadn't been so TEDIOUS! Well, after I finished with the clouds, I made some more miniature V's--this time upside down--to put on the mountainside. These aren't as small as the ones I put in the clouds. I have left it up to the imagination of the viewer whether they are tikis or trees. As a picture that genuinely pops off the page with color, I'd say this is my favorite picture. In terms of making creative use of the letter, I'd say this comes in second. However, as an idea for a picture goes, this almost rates on the same level as my "flower." Landscapes--especially of mountains--have been done to death in the art world, I'd imagine. Like I said, though, I DO think the color scheme here works really well and makes it better than it should be, and I REALLY like how the clouds turned out.

Now that I've got three pics in the bag, I'm running low on time, but I don't wanna drop my creativity completely off a cliff to compensate for that. (I've actually only got four hours left before the RCC lab closes when I begin work on this one. Knowing that I've got to get SOMETHING down, I quickly choose a letter that I think lends itself easily to a project like this one: I. It's straight and simple, easy to use for almost any idea you might conceive. Because I'm tired of doing longer shorter pics, I actively choose to make this new one taller and thinner. As I type the I in a font big enough to cover the entire space, I get an idea: marble pillars. I paint the letter gray as a starting point, then copy the thing, change the color of the copy to white, and use free transform to make it absurdly thin and stretch it out vertically to cover the whole "I." In the process, it becomes clear that I'm going to have to draw on some knowledge from my old Photoshop class. See, I want these  white I's to be on a layer above the large gray one, but I don't want them to cover all the space OUTSIDE of the big I. Therefore, when I finish positioning all my white I's, I choose the ones that aren't completely in the lines, got to the Layer pull down menu, and choose "Create Clipping Mask." BINGO! All the stretched out white is gone just like that, and I'm left with a good looking marble pillar. In the process, I discover that the base of these white I's is too tall, effectively making the bottom completely white, so I pick them all again, choose "Free Transform" from the Edit menu, and stretch them out some more. From there, it becomes a simple game of copying the original and downsizing it. Originally, I intended to make the additional pillars look like they were on the same level but farther away. I realized quickly that it wasn't going to be very easy to pull off that illusion. Instead, I just started stacking them on each other. Not very creative, but it ended up looking good. Unfortunately, this is where things started to get a little frustrating, cause more than any of the other pics I did, this one demanded very precise positioning down to the pixel, and this led me to having to do a lot of zooming in and out as well as selecting with the dotted box to delete little imperfections. Given my time crunch, it was the last thing I needed right then. Eventually I figured it all out, though, and after that I copied and downsized the pillars one more time to cover the remaining background space and then put in a dark gray background the same color as the pillars. In terms of overall completeness, effective use of a limited palette, and overall balance, this is my favorite picture. I don't feel like any space was wasted--unlike the previous three--and I'm glad I didn't have to add a third or fourth color to keep things from blending in too much. The level of technical creativity might not be as high for this one, but it's close enough to keep me from being bothered. Yes, I am VERY happy with this little picture of mine.

And now, at long last, we come to my final picture. Let me get this out of the way: I'm pissed off about it. No, not because I don't like it and not because I feel like it's unfinished. It's really the opposite. What happened was this: I had maybe 30 minutes left before the lab closed. I'd already made a decision about which letter I was going to use. With no time to put anything significant together, I grab the "Warp" option from "Transform" in the Edit menu and stretch out my letter, playing with it. I choose a couple colors that have received minimal representation in my prior pics and put one in the background and the other on the letter. Now, with even less time left, I decide that the only significant idea I haven't employed yet that is typical in pics of this sort is a shadow. Recalling what I've learned from my old PS class, I copy the letter, paint it black, and move it behind the yellow one. After that, I start playing with the various transform tools to see what I think would look good. Unable to make up my mind on which would be best, I finally just decide to use THREE of them by copying the black letter two more times. One of these I distort into a shadow on the ground, one I simply shift a little to give a slight 3D impression to the yellow S, and the third I twist with the perspective option creating something akin to a butterfly. And for crying out loud, I wind up with something that seems to work better than any of the other pics I've spent HOURS working on. It is NOT my favorite, but it somehow reaches an almost perfect balance without being too simple, and if the lab aide is to be believed it's the best of the bunch. The idea that my best picture is one I cobbled together in less than 30 minutes is one that infuriates me. What did I waste all those hours for if I could have made something better in a tenth of the time?! And as I said, it seems to be somehow perfectly balanced. All the space is covered, the colors work well, my choice of font gives the picture a lot of character (By the way, it's an S in an old english font of some kind.), and it even has a touch of the unusual in that strange distortion passing for a butterfly in front of it. This has turned otu to be a crowning jewel of sorts to my work, as much as it pains me to admit it.

CLOSING THOUGHTS AND ANSWERS TO THE QUESTIONS:
Every one of my letters in these assignments with very few exceptions got rasterized so I could give them strokes and play with the colors. This benefited my compositions a great deal in my opinion.  The letters themselves were mostly chosen for "functionality" purposes (C was an easy way to start, V was the only way I could make the landscape, and both S and I just seem well suited to doing something like this.). There was only one exception to that : Z. I chose it because my name and family are synonymous with that letter. The typefaces that I used were chosen before I began the compositions, but I did spend a fair bit of time trying out the different faces to make sure I'd chosen a good one before I began any of them. I did not keep track of which ones had serif and sans-serif font faces.

Reflections on Toy Project

I made a decision when I first began this project: I was going to make this as simple as possible for myself.  The reason is because I had homework to deal with in two other classes that was kind of pressing.  As such, when I sat down to work on this project on Tuesday, I quickly decided that I was going to do a papercraft rendition of Samus Aran from the Metroid series.  With the decision of what to do out of the way, I should have been able to do a good job without thinking too much about it.

Of course, my warped state of mind has once again led me to make it more than it should have been to begin with.  The result is in my prior blog, and it feels incomplete.  You might notice that there’s quite a bit of detail put into the left and right arms while the detail in the other parts is scant or minimal.  That’s because I tried to put too much into the project again, as I am apparently incapable of doing otherwise!  Still, regardless of what grade I receive, I feel a sort of joyful satisfaction at my accomplishment, and if I had time, I’d REALLY like to get back into the studio and work on this more.

The colors used here were all stolen directly from photos of Samus Aran. (If you are unfamiliar with the character, search Google for “Samus varia suit” or just use this link: http://www.google.com/images?um=1&hl=en&biw=1345&bih=530&tbs=isch%3A1&sa=1&q=Samus+varia+suit&aq=f&aqi=g1&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai= ) I took four photos of her suit—one from the side, one angled to the other side, one from the front, and one from the back—and posted them on the Photoshop project on a layer titled “reference.”  This time I was a little more careful to make the colors match up and contrast better, but I was more interested in simply getting the colors accurate.  The concepts of hue, saturation, and value did not come into play much, though I did keep my eye on the small color variations when I zoomed in. (If I recall, we were supposed to keep the colors flat.)

Right from the beginning, my vow to keep it simple fell flat, as I found myself delighted by the thought of including all sorts of details.  My approach meant that when I finished the project, I had a really good looking right arm and a fairly good looking left arm, but it also meant that I didn’t have half of the stuff colored and ready on a basic level by the time the RCC campus closed.  I was forced to slap some color onto the legs without any detail at all, and though I did manage to get the breastplate looking fairly good, it had to be cobbled together fairly quickly too.  My approach of “detail first” has left me with a project that is kind of incomplete, even if it fulfills its basic purposes.

I like what I pulled off here, but it's left me all too aware that I need to get some sort of schedule in place that's going to help me finish what I start.

Toy Project (Samus Aran)



In most cultures, this is known as "biting off more than you can chew"



Reflections on Scratch Projects

Sometimes I wish it was possible for me to do something without needing to put in effort that attempts to make it extraordinary, especially when it comes to things I’m not inherently good at to begin with, such as drawing.  But then, of course, I take a look at the results that my perfectionism has provided me with and I remember why it is that I haven’t tried to correct it.  It’s just a shame that sometimes my vision doesn’t coalesce with what the teachers ask for.  A distinct possibility here.

I was faced with a significant problem going into this first assignment, and that was the two year gap between the last time I used Photoshop, which was when I got a C in the class at RCC.  Actually, that was just the first problem.  The second was that I earned an A in Computer Illustration, meaning I was better at using Adobe Illustrator, and since the two applications use similar tools, I found myself trying to do things with Photoshop that I couldn’t.  All things considered, I went into this project thinking that I knew a fair bit about Photoshop, but I wasn’t expecting to feel completely comfortable with it.  Since I pretty much gave up following the aide’s instructions just a short ways into the lab, I’d say it’s safe to say I was either lost or overconfident or maybe a little of both.

Regardless, I managed to cobble together three images I’m quite happy with, even if they would have worked better in Illustrator.  When the lab began on Tuesday, I had no idea what I was going to do for my project.  Playing around with Photoshop got my wheels turning, though I ultimately had to scrap my initial image due to an instance of stupidity. (A NOTE TO THE COMPUTER ILLITERATE: If you want to be able to access your work at a later time, make sure it’s your account that you’re signed into, rather than just using whatever account is already functioning on the computer.) As I found when I did projects in Photoshop and Illustrator back at RCC, I went into each of my images with a basic idea for what I wanted to do but the details kind of fell into place as I worked on them.

Personally, I think the second image I did is my favorite.  It’s the words “scratch project” repeated over and over again in various fonts and colors.  However, I think it’s also the one that follows the guidelines least.  In the spirit of giving the thing more oomph, I probably used too many different colors and went against the “limited palette” rules as a result, including some small technical gaffs in how well certain colors mesh with the background.  When it comes to deciding whether things are finished, I think it’s really a matter of just how you feel about it.  When I felt like I’d thrown enough stuff into the drawing without making it too cluttered and mixing it up properly, I decided it was finished.  It was easier with the other two images, as I had a bit more of a structure in mind with them.

In the end, I made three images I'm quite satisfied with and I'm really looking forward to doing more things in this class. :)

My First Projects (Scratch)

My colorful initials

Some might refer to this as "Being a smartass"

I'm guessing that if you mixed a bullseye with a solar system orbit and an atom model, you'd get this.