Digital Imaging Final

Digital Imaging Final

Proposoal/ Abstract:

 For my final I would like to take pictures of myself in the certain states I can be in. With each picture, I will edit them with the paintbrush tool and special effects to emphasize each state that is a part of me.

Research:

                When I started this project, I knew I wanted to do something with photoshop. Throughout the course of Digital Imaging, I've been most attracted to photoshop and the cool effects/ techniques that could be used when altering a photo. I've always been comfortable painting and drawing in real life, so I figured combining the "fine arts" with photoshop would be a project that I truly would enjoy doing.
              For research, I came up with my idea myself, but added on different things to spruce up my original project by looking at other artists works online. My project consits of five self portrait photos, in which capture a mood that most commonly represent me. I am a very emotional person, but typically in a positive way. I had an idea in my head of what I wanted to create, but I did some research and found a few artists who completed projects in which are similar to mine.
             To begin, the first artist I chose to look at was Picasso. Famous for incredible paintings, Picasso had the "fine arts" view on his pieces, which is what attracted me to his works in the first place. I wanted to use paint on photoshop, so seeing his painted works actually helped me envision the style I wanted to illustrate my photos in. Another reason as to why I resaerched Picasso is for his self portraits. Though some of them seem very similar to eachother, they seem to capture an emotion in which made Picasso who he was. Without much expression, his earlier portraits like figure one, two and three captured his entirity, while his later portraits (figure four) focuses on emotions I feel he may have been in every now and then.

Figure One                   Figure Two                           

Figure Three                                               Figure Four

With so many self portraits, and each one with such a different take on how to approach each peice, I felt a connection between Picasso's work and my idea. I wanted to capture who I was with all of my digitally altered photos, but make each one different by adding a different mood or tone to each one. Though the emotional changes are not drastic in these four pieces, they are still apparent in a slight way, which helped me understand how to go about picking the different emotions in which represent me but still capture who I am through execution.

               Another artist I did a little research on was a man by the name of Jeffrey Isaac. Mainly a painter, Isaac captures surreal ideas, with demons flying about in his works around a realistic setting. An example of this would be a figure five, "Leviathon on the Line".
        These out of wordly works are not what captured my eye, as his self portrait collection did. Painting himself forty different times, Isaac managed to use his face to express forty different emotions. Not necessarily depicting the emotions he can have, Isaac still represents a pluthera of different moods. I was inspired by the several different faces he made in which made each piece completely different from all the others. No two emotions are the same, and no two faces were made the same way either. His choice of color also helped emphasize the emotions he wanted to capture, which is something I wanted to do inorder to help further develop my idea with my project.
The link below shows his forty different pieces in which complete his self portrait portfolio.
http://www.saatchionline.com/art-collection/Painting/40-emotional-self-portraits/97452/10308/view


Production Log:

             My idea for this project was to create five mini self portraits to represent who I am. Each photo captures an emotion I can be in, and each photo is edited a certain way to emphasize the emotion through color and alterations. I placed a number in the bottom right corner of each photo to represent what percentage of the time I can be that emotion. Acting as a metaphoric puzzle, all numbers add up to one hundred, representing the one hundred percent in which makes me who I am.
             Inorder to create this piece, I needed to use photoshop and the basic skills I learned during the semester. Mainly depending on the paintbrush and some special effects, I manipulated each self portrait to pertain to the emotion I wanted to represent. I am typically in a happy mood, so I placed a seventy in the bottom right corner to show I am happy seventy percent of the time. Relaxed was my next mood, as it is who I am twenty percent of the time. The other three emotions are a rare case, and I am  not typically in those moods. Though, it still does not take away from the fact that I can be sad, stressed and angry, so I still wanted to show them as a part of who I am. Being only three, two and five percent, these emotions make up the rest of the ten percent needed to complete me.
             Color was also a big factor in determining how my piece would come out as a whole. I wanted each self portrait to be different enough from one another, but still look as if they belonged as a whole. I believe the color pallet I chose for each photo worked well, especially for the top right peice I call "stressed". I chose green as the main color, mainly because it is the color cartoon characters turn when they are sick. When I get stressed, I essentially feel sick as well, so I felt as if green would be a commical approach to represent that state. I also colored my shirt purple, as it is contradictory to green and adds to my nauseating approach. Coloring strands of my hair white and darkening inbetween waves with blacks, I also wanted to demonstrate the "white hair effect" as when people are stressed, their hair starts to change.


Self Evalutation:

               Overall, I'd like to believe that my project was a success. I did not have to alternate any major part of my original plans, but I decided to add a few pieces along the way. The only thing I decided to change was distorting the size of each piece. The thought behind resizing my work was that idea of representing the percentage I am of each mood. Though, by doing this, I ended up loosing a lot of my detail put in some of my pieces as they were very small parts in which make me who I am. Instead of altering the size, I decided to put a number in the bottom right corner of each piece. The number is there to represent the percentage of the time in which I can be in that state. By doing this, I was able to show all my five pieces without loosing their detail, and experiment with different fonts for my percentages.
               The process in making the final was not much harder then the other projects we tackled in class. This final was unlimited in terms of the ideas we could execute or the tools we could use, so it was up to personal preference. I chose a medium I knew I would be comfortable, and enjoy myself with. The five pictures took a while to edit, and the posses and emotions were hard to choose to represent. I wanted to capture who I was, and I feel my pictures did my idea justice.
                If I were to expand on this project later on, I feel like I would add more emotions. I would have to change the numbers in the bottom corners, as my percentages would change, but it would be interesting to find different words in which express moods I can be in. I would love to experiment with more special effects, and test different color combinations in order to emphasize the emotion I want to express. Though, as of now, I am content with my final, and I am proud of what I was able to create.

Rotoscope project

The first video is of my friend in the hallway, moving in a swimming motion. The video beneath it is my rotoscoping version, as I traced each frame of her movement produced within ten seconds to make it look like an animation.

This is my drawing for Illustrator. Being similar to photo shop, I was comfortable drawing with the tools provided . My main tool to create this was the paint brush. I also played around with opacity, trying to create lights and darks on the surface of the balloons for dimension.

Report for final project idea

two sentence summary:

What I want to do for my final project is have a set of self portrait photographs, and to edit them on photo shop. This set of pictures will shot and edited in a way that will represent each mood or feeling I can typically posses, emphasizing on the idea of a self portrait.

Research for Final project:

                For my final project, I still need to figure out a few things. Research wise I do not think I need to look up much information. The tools I will use will be the ones our class has been using to produce our several projects. I would like to use the paint brush tool, and also the cropping tool frequently. I like to play around with color and adding little effects in which will enhance each photograph I have in a different way. I hope to use three pictures, pinpoint three emotions I typically have, and figure out what positions or facial gestures will represent them best.

What can I currently do, and what do I need to figure out:

                What I can currently do now is take a lot of self portraits with my camera. I really want to try and capture each emotion I choose to represent in a way where it does not look posed, but natural. Something else I must consider is what color scheme I should use, and which colors will emphasize what emotions. The final thing I need to do is deciding on how to present my final edited photographs.

Six pieces for my portfolio

For my portfolio, I chose the above pieces as my six works. The self portrait, gutter, and abstract piece were from my original first portfolio grouping, as I thought they were my best pieces. My newest three added works are the ones from our class assignment last week. 

The reason why I chose my abstract peice again is because I like how it has a feeling of design. I love doodling and drawing different shapes and patterns in my sketchpad, and I felt like I was able to do the same for that project but on photoshop. I had the freedom to depict whatever I wanted, so I decided to demonstrate a type of design when representing that projects criteria for the rule of thirds and external lines. 

The next piece I chose is a touch up photo from our most recent project. Originally looking faded and washed out, I wanted to take on the challenge of bringing colors back into this photograph. Taken from an I phone, it was not the best quality to begin with, but by playing with its saturation I feel I made an improvement on how it originally looked. I also then used the brush tool to emphasize on the original colors, and to add shadows to give the bodies more depth. 

My third piece is a self portrait. This piece is the most daring piece I think I decided to take on. I really wanted to get creative, and play with different aspects of photoshop I hadn't before. I had no set plan for how I wanted it to look, other then "different". I used around 10 layers or so, doing cut and pasting work with my face. I used the oil paint tool to a cropped pictures of branches to replace where my face is in my original picture. My hair also needed work, so I went in and smudged the edges, along with adding highlights to brighten the picture. The paint tool was a big help in this piece, as I also used it in the background, my scarf, jacket, face, and hair. 

My fourth piece is a picture of my friend and I. Originally there was red glare from the street and car lights, and also faded clothes, and a faded road. I chose this picture to touch up because I actually wanted to see if it was possible. I didn't know how successful I would be, but I ended up using the paint brush a lot in this piece, just like I did the last. The skin I feel is the part in which I believe was the most successful when touching up because to me it is what stands out the most.

 The fifth piece I chose for my portfolio is another touch up photograph that was taken of my two friends and I. Similar to the other two touch ups, the original photo was faded. I wanted to brighten the colors, so I enhanced the saturation and used the paint brush to add definition. My friend Brandon's face was extremely washed out, and his features were hard to distinguish. I used the black paint tool to draw those features back in, and make him more defined. He was the most difficult part to touch up on that project, along with the skin in all three cases.

The final piece I selected to be in my portfolio is of a gutter I took a picture of on the TCNJ campus. This piece was originally from the cropping project, where I needed to cut something out and paste it into one of my photos. This picture in its unaltered state had icicles hanging from the gutters lips, and I wanted to replicate the idea of having water still involved. I looked through other pictures I took and previous projects, and found a photo of rain on a window. I decided to use that photograph, manipulated it and smudge it around, which ended up being my cropped in picture to substitute the icicles. Ending up being brown and flat, I then went into the new make shift water and added a light inside the gutter to create shadow, then went in with my paintbrush to create highlights and shadows.

*Unfortunately three of my six pieces are no longer stored on memory other then the blog. My usb drive was erased when I tried working on my laptop in my room, and it cleared all the information that was there. The three are my self portrait, the drain gutter, and the abstract design piece.

proposal-abstract: 

This accumulation of works are from various projects I believe I personally did my best on. There is no theme involved with these six pieces as they are all from different homeworks, they are what I am most proud of. 

self evaluation:

The only time I have ever taken photoshop was in middle school. We did extrememley basic skills, and worked on the same projects for weeks. I feel like I learned what I did because I played around with photoshop during class, and experimented with what I was given. Though I only had that class for a semester, I had an idea of what the program was meant to do.

Now, in college, I am taking digital imaging. I picked up where I left off about six years ago, and started to play around again with homework assignments. Being a fine arts major, I love working with my hands, either when drawing, crafting, painting; anything. Coming into this class, I have befriended the paint tool very willingly, and it has been my favorite aspect of photoshop yet. Though I know my experience is slim to none, I am proud of the work I have been producing. A lot of my classmates are familiar with photoshop as a program, and I am left to try and produce work on their level. I'm trying to use different tools and effects, hoping to learn different techniques as I go. Each day I'd like to think I am getting better, and I feel it shows through my homework.

Picture Corrections

For this assignment, I understood the photo editing as enhancing a picture that needed some work. I went through some old photos, and for each picture I tried creating more color, less glare, and better quality. I did not use too many effects, just the paint brush to color over what I saw to be gray and dull. My original three pictures are on top, and their edited format follows beneath in the same order. For the first photo of the "star feet" I feel as if the shot was extremely washed out. I played around with its saturation, and tried to bring its original colors back to life. I did the same for the photo of the three people beneath it as well. The hardest correction to make of that photo was the boys face. For some reason he was also very washed out, so again I played with saturation, and drew on his face to enhance the darks and lights. The photo beneath it with the two girls posing looked faded out as well. I drew on both girls, the car closest to them in the background, and darkened the road with the paint brush. There was a red glare by the tree in the background by the white building, as well as near the branches on the top right corner. I tried my best to do what I could with each piece, and I feel I made each one look better.

Portfolio Peices

 I chose this piece because I feel it is one of my better projects that display a decent job of cutting and pasting. Originally this photo had icicles dripping from a drain, but i wanted to edit the icicles out and put something else seeping out. In the first project of taking pictures of a environment, self portrait, and idea/action, I chose my environment of rain on a window. Since the photo already had drips of water in the picture, I felt it would be beneficial and a good pick to use for my icicle substitute. I then added a light source in the drain to add shadows, manipulated the picture by playing with its colors and actual shape, and added highlights to show the sun shining on what now looks like mysterious goop.

 I chose this piece because I feel it has a clean, illustrative quality to it. This originally was my self portrait piece, and I liked this photo so much that I knew I wanted to play around with it sometime or another. I layered a past photo I took of a tree, manipulated it by using an oil paint option to look as if they were tiles. I then dragged and dropped it over my face, and traced where my eyes, nose and mouth would be from the original picture that was my first layer. I then smudged my hair so add to make it appear soft, and airy, with highlights I used with the paintbrush. My scarf has touches of pink from the paintbrush i also then incorporated into the sky, and I drew pencil marks to add a more gritty feel to play off of the branches from the tree in the background.

I chose this piece because I feel like it has a good balance between, color, movement and content. The original picture is the background photo, which is a stretched image of my bed spread with scarfs on top of the comforter. The three lines that are near the four corners of this piece are head bands that i used the oil paint tool on. I also colored in the headbands with pink because I felt it balanced out the bright pink of the scarfs, which i also drew on to enhance shadows and highlights. The main focus of the piece looks like a demented flower. The center is a bead from a necklace I took a picture of, and then shaded with the paint tool, and its pedals are butterfly magnets I took pictures of and later distorted to give them their curvy shape.

Internal Project

This piece represents the Internal Project we were assigned. The idea of having an internal piece meant that the lines would intersect eachother in different ways, as well as lead to different intersections. I took multiple pictures, manipulated each one, cut and pasted several pictures and colored on top of the overall piece.

External Project

I created this piece to represent the external aspect of design. Following the rule of thirds, I put the main focus of both flowers near the points where the rule of thirds lines intersect. I cut past photos to create the petals and center of both flowers, and then drew on top of them each to add color and an illustrative feel.

Second Project: three photoshop pictures

 

 For this piece I took out the space where my desk originally was, cropped it out, and put in a picture I took of a concert. I then manipulated the picture of the concert to make the colors more playful and active.

 For this piece I cropped out the water streaming from the gutter, and pasted in my original photo of my abstract environment. I then manipulated the window and added color to liquify the image to make it act as if it were water.

For this piece i cropped out my face, and used the tree backround from my original abstract self portrait photo. I pasted it, played around with the settings, and created multi colored splotches where my face should be. I also then sketched in the backround, added some white, and created a purple hint on my scarf.

Project One: Action

My first photo is an abstract action shot of a toilet flushing, and the one beneath it is a photo of a girl whipping her head downward. The image beneath the girl is a drawing of a horse running, first sketched out by hand then colored in with photo shop. My last photograph is an representational shot of ice melting on the lip of a gutter.

Project One: Environments

  

All of my photographs were taken in doors, the first and third being in the art building, which are both abstract. My second photograph was done in my dorm room, being the representational photo, and the fourth image being a sketch drawn and colored in with photo shop. 

Project One: Self Portrait

 

 My first photograph is an abstract shot of myself, while the image beneath it is a drawing done first in pencil then colored in on photo shop. My third photograph is another abstract shot, and my last is a representational picture.