Love Yourself

For my sequential imagery project, I decided to use AIDS as my issue. I wanted to reinforce the idea of always practicing safe sex by using condoms to prevent AIDS. This is a very important issue as people become more relaxed about having multiple partners. My project focuses on the fact that one small choice can save your life.

For the first image, I chose a photo of a couple  in black and white and adjusted the contrast and brightness. My second image, I found a photo of a group of condoms, placed them over a white background and lowered the opacity to 80%. Then I added the image of the AIDS ribbon and applied a drop shadow under it. My last image, I found full color, but desaturated it to match the first photo, and also adjust the brightness and contrast. I changed the canvas size on all three to add the white border and placed them on the black background. I made the first and third images black and white while keeping the middle image color to reinforce the importance of the message. The text I chose "Love Yourself." is what I believe everybody has to do to ensure they always make the right decision to protect themselves and others. Please click on the image for a larger view. Thanks!

Digital Enhancements

 Before:

After:

For my digital enhancement assignment, I decided to play with the original design of my poster. I thought the chapter in the text about filters was interesting so I chose to add one to my design. The filter I chose is cutout because I like the cartoon effect that it gives. After experimenting quite a bit with finding the best way to apply the filter and the best filter settings for each layer, I made separate layers for space, Earth, the bugs, and the text and applied the filter to each layer separately. I also adjusted the brightness and contrast on the Earth and bug layers. For the text, I used the Century font. I think the changes I made to my poster smooth out the design.Please click on the posters for a larger view.

The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - recreation

 

I made a few changes to my bookcover since I had trouble with the legibility of the text. I really like the font and feel that it fits the story well, so I decided to keep it, but change the color to white with a black stroke to help it stand out against the background. Because I really wanted the forest to be the background and not the focus, I applied a black layer over the entire background with the opacity adjusted to 60% and the fill adjusted to 90% which also helped the text stand out. I kept the lion on top of that layer because that was my intended main subject. I also decided to redesign the binding by matching the layer style for the text to the cover, and adding the lion. Please click on the bookcover for a larger view. Thanks!

The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe

 

One of my favorite books growing up was The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis, so it was an easy choice for this project since I knew a lot about the story.  I decided the focus of my bookcover would be Aslan, the lion, since he was a major part of the story, and I also decided to use the forest setting with a blue tint to reinforce the feeling of the winter. I started with a photo of a forest, resized it, adjusted the brightness, contrast, hue, and saturation, and then added a cool photo filter. For the lion, I copied the lion head from another photo, desaturated it, added a blue tint, turned the opacity down to 75%, refined the edges with feather, and finished the edges by carefully using the eraser tool with several different settings of opacity. I finished my bookcover with a font I found online for the movie version of The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, Narnia BLL. For the font, I chose a dark orange color with a light peach stroke around the outside as a contrasting color to the blue scene.Please click on the bookcover for a larger view.

What's Bugging You?

My poster, "What's Bugging You?", is a representation of issues that effect every part of the world. I chose pollution, war, poverty, crime, and hunger as my main issues on the largest bugs, but added more bugs because there so many more issues infesting the world. I chose to use the same type of bug, the fly, to represent that infestation. I started with the background and added the photo of Earth. Since I knew what I wanted the poster to look like, I then chose my text which I feel works well with the bug theme. I discovered on my background that the pink star above the Earth was higher and partly covered by the text, so I moved it closer to the Earth. The process of adding the bugs to the Earth took some time, with a lot of resizing, and manipulation using the 3-D tool for just the right angle. I added a drop shadow to the bugs to further enhance the feeling that they are actually sitting on the Earth. I was careful to add the drop shadow last so the light source remained the same for all of them. The last effect I added was the glow around the text. I felt like it needed something, so I added a white drop shadow to the text which I think casts a cosmic glow. Please click on my poster to see it larger.

A Tribute to Magritte

 

My photomontage is a tribute to one of my favorite artists, Rene Magritte. Magritte was a Surrealist painter who was known for his use of green apples and men in bowler hats in his many artworks. His paintings often placed objects in odd places including the sky and clouds, and repeated objects over and over again. Every aspect of my photomontage is taken from Magritte’s paintings.

I started with the blue sky and clouds for my background, and adjusted the brightness/contrast. Then I placed the outline of the dove on top and masked it, so I could cover the outside of the dove with rain clouds. I used a green apple in three different sizes and variations of brightness/contrast, and saturation for the rain in several layers that were merged down. Finally, I chose the text from one of Magritte’s paintings of a pipe titled, “Ceci n’est pas une pipe.” translated as “This is not a pipe.” and changed it to “Ceci n’est pas une Magritte.” or “This is not a Magritte.”

Little Things

“A mighty flame followeth a tiny spark.” Dante Alighieri