// Assignment 9 // Pop Art #2 // Graphic Design

          My strongest technical aspect of this work was how it all came together by using more realistic colors. I realized that if I shut the view of the white layer and the background layer off, it would leave the original image still visible but with slightly muted colors left over so then I would use the eyedropper tool to pick up the actual colors and painted them in that way. I also used a very small sized pen tool so I could put in outlines of where the color should end and begin before adding in the color. I don't think that I could have improved on anything based on what I was trying to accomplish. I wanted colors to look natural and go along with the original photo.

          The easiest thing for me was deciding what photo I wanted to use and how I would make the colors appear. I wanted this one to seem more natural and real towards how the first version of the photo had looked. I knew I wanted to do a photo of them because all of their photos for their newest album's era has a prevalent use of the color red and I thought a slight pop of color would make this look really nice. I don't really think anything on this was that difficult because after doing the first one I realized how to se the tools really fast and I enjoyed doing that one so this wasn't all that difficult for me. At times it did take time to do certain parts because of the accurate lines I was trying to get on the hair, the lips, or even the beanie. 

          I demonstrated the objective of this project by using making copies of the original photo, deleting the background on one and adding in the black background, then I changed the image to greyscale and changed the threshold of the image so it looked as if it could be pop art. Then I created a duplicate of that layer and made it completely white so I could paint in all of the colors again. Then I painted in all of the colors so it would look the way it does now. If I had to do this project again I would most likely wind up having the image the way it is now because I had wanted this to look a certain way and I had accomplished that.  

          

// Assignment 8 // Pop Art #1 // Graphic Design

          

          My strongest technical aspect of this work was how I kept with the natural lines of the actual photo. I did that because not all of the natural end lines of the photo appeared in the edited version but I still wanted the colors to end where they actually would have on the actual photo. I did that by closing two of the layers over the background layer and making the paint tool very small so I could outline where each color would have naturally ended on that original photo. I don't really think I could have improved on anything, I think it turned out looking really nice. I think taking the extra time to really find the natural endings of each piece of the picture and I think that adds to the entire

photo.

          The easiest thing for me was deciding a color scheme for the photo. I wanted to stick with pastels because I thought it would all look as if it went best together. I made the lips a couple shades darker than how the shade I used for the skin. I then decided to leave both the eyes and the teeth white because I thought it would add to the look of the piece as a whole. For me the hardest part of this was using a picture that worked because the first photo I tried was to much of a profile view and the shirt the girl was wearing was a major contrast from the face and I either had the face fully disappear or the clothes would fully disappear. 

          I demonstrated the objective of this project by making separate copies of the original image and then deleting the background to one of those copies using the pen tool. Then I used solid fill layers on top of a white version of the original image and drew in where I wanted all of the colors to go. If I was to do this project again I would leave all of the colors the way they are because I think it goes well together. I would most likely add a darker shade of blue to the slight gaps within the black side of her hair.

// Assignment 7 // Animal Morph // Graphic Design

          My strongest technical aspect of this work was blending the way the fish looked with the way the chameleon looks. I like how I blended the scales from the chameleon onto the fins of the lion fish.  I think that I could have improved on how the background appears. I couldn't really find a background that didn't make the hybrid look kind of fake or weird because of the cut out sections within the tail fin of the fish. I do however like how the hybrid looks as if it is exiting the ocean to walk on dry land.
          The easiest thing for me was using the stamp tool because I knew exactly where I wanted the impressions of each animal to be. With having the use of the stamp tool I was able to make the fins look as if they are really a part of the chameleon. The hardest part for me was the background because I went through a lot of different ones and wasn't really satisfied with any of them. Eventually I found the background that is in the picture and I thought that it looked the best because a lot of backgrounds I had tried prior didn't go that well with the rough edges of some of the fins. I think the background would look better if the animal was actually real and not just something I had done in photoshop.
          I demonstrated the objective of this project by blending the two animals together using the stamp tool. The stamp tool allowed the animals to blend in a better way and share the same skin textures as one another. If I had to do this project again I would probably focus on the background some more and maybe edit it so it wouldn't appear as sharp. I'm not sure that editing the background would work in that aspect but I could try and mess around with it in that way as hopes it would look a bit more natural. I do believe though that my first attempt not working out was a good thing because this one looks a lot better than that one had.

// Assignment 6 // Radial Symmetry // Graphic Design

         My strongest technical aspect of my work was keeping a straight pattern. I like how the pattern turned out and I like how all of the colors seem to run together. I think the effects I added to the layers added an extra flare and made them look better than they had originally. I think that I could have improved on the sizing of some of the shapes, I like the sizes on the above version of my project but as I was going along I added a few very small sized shapes. As you can tell those didn't stick and I went with larger sized shapes, but not large enough to make the project to messy or wacky. 

          The easiest thing for me was picking the colors and making them look the way that I wanted them to look. I also thought finding sizes for the final shapes and making them appear radially symmetrical was easy, at least for me. The hardest part of this for me was fixing the outer parts because I wanted them to still blend well with the center point. The center is my favorite part of this piece and I wanted everything else to go well with it and fit that point. Eventually, I was able to make it look the way I had wanted it to. 

          I demonstrated the objective of this project by using a 10 x 10 image sand filling it with shapes using radial symmetry. I separated all of my shapes into the eleven groups and then changed the opacity of the groupings so it would appear in the best way possible. I added the groupings and changed the opacity as I went, but I added the effects to the layers as I went. If I was to do this project   again I would keep the colors the exact same because I like how they appear. I would probably make the white circles smaller or smaller and then add more.

Assignment 5 // Polaroids // Graphic Design

          My strongest technical aspect of this work was how he showed up within the polaroids. I like how I have his bass and and his arm playing it coming out of the polaroids, I also like how I had him seem to be walking out of them as well. I also think how I positioned the polaroid surrounding his face was really nice because it seems to fit around it perfectly. I think I could have improved on how the area around the bass was erased at the top. You can still kind of see the background around pieces of the bass because of how thin they are but I like how they kind of look purple.
          The easiest thing for me was setting up all of the polaroids. I thought the places to put the polaroids was kind of obvious, at least to me. I wanted this to look a certain way with all of the polaroids surrounding specific ices and I think I achieved that. The hardest part of this for me was making the background, originally I had some problems and the background would delete partially and everything would turn a bunch of rainbow colors and mess up the entire image, but then I shut the laptop off for the day and restarted that process the next class and everything was fine. I got the background to look the way I wanted it to by including the logo for the band he is a part of and music notes to represent what he does.
          I demonstrated the objective of this project by picking a picture that I could separate into different sections, and then surrounding those sections with polaroids. Then I erased parts of the polaroids to give the appearance that he was coming out of the shots. I then made a background to go along with the theme of the overall picture. If I was to do this project again I would maybe change up the background so it could appear a little different. Maybe I could put in music notes that seem to border around where he is.

Assignment 4 // Tattoos // Graphic Design

          My strongest technical aspect of this project was how I made the tattoos appear. I think the tattoo with the skull and snake especially looks the best. I believe that one looks as if it is a real tattoo, and if I saw it I wouldn't think it was photoshopped on. I also think the tattoo with the heart and flowers looks as if it is a real tattoo on someones skin. I think I could have improved on how the tattoo of the heart with flowers looks at one section because it has white in the tattoo but I don't know if it appears as if the white is just extra in the picture.
          I think the easiest thing for me was deciding what tattoos I wanted to edit on my arm. I really love the tattoo ideas I used and I even want one of those as a tattoo so thats why I used one of them as a tattoo. For me the hardest part was setting up the tattoos because I would have it in a position I liked but then continue to change it. I kept having to go back and undo my changes because I would move it thinking it may look better a different way but then I would realize how I originally had liked it was how it looked best. Overall, I think the tattoos look good the way I have them.
          I demonstrated the objective of this project by desaturating a picture of my own arm, and warping a picture of two tattoos onto my arm so they looked real. I edited the opacity of each picture so the tattoos would blend more in with my skin and look more realistic. After that I erased all the extra unnecessary parts around the tattoos so they would look better. If I was to do this project again I would probably leave it the same because I really like how it turned out. I really liked this project so I made two anyways, but I think they look realistic and nice so I enjoyed this project.

Assignment 3 // Landscape // Graphic Design

          My strongest technical aspect of my work is how the sky blends in with everything around it. I took a really long time trying my best to blend the sky with the trees and I think it worked out pretty well. You can't see all of the branches that well in the sky because of how thin they were and the contrast they have with the sky. I could have improved on how smoothly I worked the trees into the sky. However, I think the sky looks cool with the somewhat rough edged tree branches. 

          Coming up with my idea for this project was pretty simple because I wanted something realistic with something super unexpected within the reality. I thought the sudden change of everything looking so real and then having a lion sleeping on the street was pretty unexpected but still really neat. For me the blending of the tree to the sky was very time consuming and kind of difficult. Even though it was difficult I still enjoyed doing it and would have done it anyways. 

          I demonstrated the objective of this activity by blending a street scene, with a dark and stormy sky, with a lion on the street. I mixed a  foreground and background to create a fake reality. If I did this again I would have picked a sky that included a storm that was currently happening with lightning and such. I would also probably add a few more animals like a monkey or a zebra. I would also focus more on making the tree look rougher because I liked how it looked pretty edgy without being perfect. 

Assignment 2 // Personal Identity // Graphic Design

            My strongest technical aspect of this work was how the animated crowd/stage looks surrounding the picture of the band on the stage. I like how the drawn hands and crowd mixes in with the real crowd and the actual hands that are being raised towards the band. I also like how it isn't to crowded with added in layers because the way the picture appears with only the drum kit, guitar, and crowd/stage is complete. I could have improved on how I looked for images to add on top of what I already had. I kept adding things originally that I thought would look nice but it just made it look kind of odd but I eventually figured out how to make it look nice and work well. 

          I thought coming up with one solid idea to use was easy. Right after we got the assignment I knew I was going to focus on something that had to do with music because I love music. I didn't think any other concept for this would have really revealed anything about me because music is an important part of my life. I thought determining how many layers to use was difficult because I originally had about ten ideas at one time and they all showed up on the work and it looked really crowded and not well executed. After that I started hiding some of the layers and then removing them and things then clicked and I finished with this. 

          I demonstrated the objective in this art activity by using one picture that was real and had it built up with things that went along with it in the surrounding space. I realized that if this had too many layers it would look too loud and wouldn't really flow together but once you get past figuring that all out it works really well. If I did this again I wouldn't even have put words in it as I was making it because that took a lot of time and I wasn't happy with it (as you can tell because no words are involved). I would also have tried to find a guitar that matched the drum kit more with faded sections and undefined edges in every section. I feel like changing that guitar wouldn't be that instrumental to it because it doesn't look bad at the top. 

Assignment 1 // Letters // Graphic Design

          The strongest technical aspect of my work is how it actually looks like a pattern. Also the letters don't appear to be letters and you can't really tell which letter I used. I could improve on the way I made it because I didn't set it up to be radial symmetry. I could have placed everything so it appeared in a more radial way. I would have just made it so everything was the same on every single side.
          I thought creating this was pretty easy because I had a lot of ideas and they all just came together while I was making it. I sometimes had too many ideas in my head and it looked kind of crazy but I knew how to change it so it would work and look better. I thought the fact that I never knew when to stop adding letters was difficult because I kept adding things and I didn't know when to stop adding more letters in. Once  I became fully comfortable with how it looked I just stopped adding more layers. I felt like when it had enough layers I knew right away and just stopped working.
          I demonstrated the objective of this art activity by placing the layers symmetrically and creating a pattern that appeared nice visually. I tried to make the pattern not appear to be made with one specific letter and then I made the letters slightly transparent so you could see where the layers overlapped because I thought that looked neat. If I could do this art activity again I would use radial symmetry because I just went with how I thought it looked good and I forgot that it was supposed to be radial symmetry because I was into the design I had been working on. I didn't realize until after it being reviewed that I needed to do that but I think it looks great as it is. I just got fully involved with this design and just went for it.

Contact Sheet // Final

Final

          My work is revolved around concert photography and I used motion images because my photos are all action shots from the concert. I chose this theme because I always think photos from concerts look really cool. I also chose to do this because I thought the graphics at this concert were really epic and cool so I wanted to capture them. I thought the eye (which also had hands of a clock in it) was really different to anything else I had ever seen at a concert and I liked how in these pictures your eyes get drawn to the eye in the background rather than the band performing below abut when you look at the band I like how small they appear in comparison to the screen because the screen was an immense size.
          I was able to achieve my subject and theme by constantly taking pictures of this one part of the concert. These eyes only appeared during one of the songs during about half of it so I took a bunch of pictures of the eyes while they were on the stage and instead of waiting to take the pictures I constantly pressed the button to take the pictures. In photoshop I made the images larger to fit the height of 8 and width of 10 and lined them up so they would all appear to start and end at the same area. After doing that I used levels on every picture to make them appear nicer and then adjusted the contrast and brightness so they all would look a little less bright than they already were. I then adjusted the color balance because some pictures looked slightly more yellow in some areas.
          My strongest photo is my third photo. I think my third photo is my strongest photo because the composition is done well. I also feel like  that one stands out more in comparison to the rest of the pictures even though it is pretty similar to my fourth photo. My weakest photo is probably the second photo in the set. This picture is slightly blurry and you can tell the fire had fully covered the eye and was fading back in to the eye to restore the eye being just a plain eye but I still like it and I feel like the blurriness makes it look pretty cool.
          If I had to change anything about my work I probably wouldn't. I really like how all of these pictures came out and I like how I made the stage off center and had the gap of black next to where the screens ended. I like how the composition of the photos are set up and how each picture you can progressively see the flames getting bigger or closer to filling the entire eye. I think the fact that you have the first picture just being an eye and then the rest of the eyes having flames is neat. I like how each picture sen though some are similar you can still tell the set up and composition of the photo is just like the one before it.

Contact Sheet // Colorize

Colorize

          My strongest technical aspect of my work was how I got all the colors to appear in the graffiti. I am actually really proud of how cool the colors look and I really like how every color gives it the appearance as if the colors could really be the colors of the graffiti, even though they aren't the same colors. I could have improved on how the bottom of the picture appeared. Some of the edges on the bottom of the photo were kind of weird because of the contrast from the wall to the ground. It doesn't look bad but I probably could have made it look a little bit better.

          I thought that once the photo was black and white it was easy to pick out the parts of the photo you had wanted to be a different color. I also thought that selecting specific sections to paint over was easy but it could be difficult I got frustrated a few times but you just have to be patient and then you will get it done. I thought it was difficult to choose a picture to use because I first picked a picture and got half way through editing it and then hated it and I started over with a whole other picture. I thought the graffiti picture came out really well and that I would enjoy doing that one more so I transitioned to this one and I think it came out really well. I thought picking the photo was a struggle because I couldn't really find one that I could picture looking amazing because a lot of the pictures I had had lots of sections of just black, but then I remembered I had the picture I used and I liked how this one turned out. 

          I demonstrated the objective of this activity by making a black and white photo appear to be full of color. I edited the sections of graffiti that had once been filled with color and then changed the layout of them and I like how it turned out. I really like how the yellow looks and I feel like it stands out among the other colors. If I could do this art activity again I would have made sure I had more pictures with colors and distinct exes rather than photos with huge sections of black.  I would want my pictures to be more like the one above so I could have more of an idea of where to begin and what would look good once it is finished. 

Contact Sheet // Cloning

Cloning

          My strongest technical aspect of this work is how I lined up the photos. I thought lining up all of the photos was kind of simple and straight forward so I got the hang of that pretty fast. I could have worked on lighting better, my original photos had really bad lighting so I had to edit them a bout so they appeared brighter. I also would move so I could try and get my cat to move with the use of one of her cat toys and when I moved back to take more pictures I moved the tripod with my feet by accident. So if I could work on anything I would have better lighting and I wouldn't walk into the tripod.
          The easy part of this project for me was lining up the pictures as I had said earlier I thought that was easy to get the hang of. I also thought editing the picture to appear brighter was simple. This project took me a long time to do because I struggled with lots of stuff. I couldn't properly make the clones appear and would instead white out a section of a photo or simply fade it. I had a lot of problems with making the layers appear and work but once you get the hang of it it's very nice.
          I demonstrated the objective of this art project by lining up the photos in order to properly clone my cat onto the photo multiple times. By having my cat appear more than once in the shot I was demonstrating the whole concept of cloning. If I could do this project again I would change a few things. For one I would get more lights so my pictures weren't so dark. I would also try to get more shots of my cat that didn't involve the chair so I wouldn't have to have two chair clones along with the cat, I mean it doesn't look awful but because the chairs are kind of conjoined I would want to at least have a gap between each chair so they don't appear to be one misshapen chair.

             

Contact Sheet // Scale

Scale

       
          The strongest technical aspect of my work is the spacing between the people and the actual objects that are meant to look large. I seemed to be able to get the hang of spacing the objects and real people fairly quickly. I thought that part of the project was kind of easy and straight forward once you  figured out what you were really doing. The technical aspect I could have improved on more was keeping my fingers out of the pictures. A lot of my pictures you could see me holding the bear and trying to keep it stable. If I angled my camera better I most likely would have had better results.
          The easy thing about this project was coming up with ideas to do for pictures. I had the bear sitting on the school and even trying to push a pole down but that picture. I came up with ideas pretty quickly and just went with what I thought I should do. I think the difficult part about this project was finding proper angles for the shots that wouldn't give away my hands or the fact that everything was different sizes. I had a lot of shots where you could clearly see my hands or other giveaways and that made them look kind of weird.
          I demonstrated the objective in this art activity by having a bear and even a cup appear bigger than objects surrounding it. I put someone in a cup and actually made it look as if the person was sitting in the cup. I also had a bear look as if it was touching someone by how I angled my shot and how everything was positioned. If I had to redo this project I would use different objects and maybe more objects so my pictures vary more. If I brought in other objects I could have had some more unique and different shots than what I have.  

Contact Sheet // Motion

 Blur

                                                                         
                                                                       Stop

                                                                        Stop

                                                                         Blur

                                                                             Blur

               The strongest technical aspect of my work are how I seem to take pictures at a really good time. For example the pictures I take at concerts may have some form of blur or fuzziness but they still manage to look decent or even better than I thought they would. I also feel like I unitentionally line pictures up well and sometimes have things that immediately lead your eyes to the main focus of the picture. I could work more on focusing more before I take shots because I usually just take my pictures randomly and not plan them out. Maybe if I planned my pictures out more they would wind up looking better than they do.
               I thought this was pretty easy because I already take a lot of pictures so I kind of had more inspiration for this one. I go to concerts a lot so you can see stop motion pictures from when the musicians are on stage. I go to concerts quite often so I have a plethora of concert pictures to really look through and choose from. I didn't really find anything difficult in this project, I had a lot to look through and I planned out my blur motion pictures when I took them and just moved glow sticks around a lot. I turned a ball of glowsticks into a soccer ball and just kicked that around trying to get a good shot.
             I demonstrated the objective by capturing light in a blurred perspective and I caught people in the action of something. I moved glow sticks around in order to capture light with a blurred appearance. I also used pictures I took from concerts in order to capture pictures using stop motion. I followed the types of motion we were told to represent and enjoyed taking the pictures due to the situations and things I was doing at the time of the pictures being taken. If I could do this activity again I would get more things that glow in the dark so I could capture the light in a different form instead of only having the glowstick ball.