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.
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