Book Assignment

Week 10: Someone Else

Maybe it's my current mental state, but I found this image to be incredibly funny as well as creative! An orange finds his naked mate in bed with another fruit, screams in fury, goes to friends for consoling, and then resorts to a lonely smoke and booze before bed (or at least that's what I get from it). I really love the lighting and placement of objects in this image--capturing emotion of FRUIT with simple little faces.

After all the blogging and image creation I've done for this class, I think I might start up my own blog of images plus commentary or even a web comic! I would really like to take an Illustrator class or some form of advanced Photoshop to accomplish this. Even if no one but my friends sees it, its been rather cathartic for me to just create, or even sit back and laugh at the humor of others creations. I don't think I could be an illustrator for a career, but continuing this blog sure would be a good way to build a portfolio! =)

Week 10: Me

So being that it's finals week, I've been having a lot of discussions with friends via text about how stressed out we all are. I've been so stressed in fact, that I've had no inspiration for either my Week 10 post or the cover of the book I'm designing. One of my friends, who doesn't know me very well, was laughing when I said that today I looked and felt like a crazy psycho about to snap at any moment. He kept responding, "No.... hahahaha, you are too nice to be that crazy of a person!".

Oh REALLY?!

I stood up and took a picture of myself with my phone, wanting only the glare in my eyes to get the point across. The image above is the result of a couple shots I ended up taking, trying to REALLY capture the crazy I'm feeling. As luck would have it, my paper star-light hanging from my ceiling, ended up in the picture as well to really perfect this image. When my friend saw the picture I sent to him, he responded, "Holy f***......creeeeeepy.......and what the hell is above your head, psycho?!". If an image is supposed to convey emotion, then I think I've made my point! I like this image SO much, in fact, that I'm gonna use an altered version of it on the cover of my darkly funny book of quotes I'm making. Two birds, one stone! =)

Scratch Assignment

For my scratch assignment, I first created the "aurora" image immediately above. I was really happy with the way the Aurora Borealis turned out in this image by selecting an area with the Lasso tool, and then just applying a multicolored gradient over it. I had to play with the opacity and blur a lot to get it to look just right in the sky. I ended up adding a second "wave" of color, just to add to the effect of light in the sky. Total, with all the different components in this image, I ended up with close to thirty layers--many of which I ended up merging together so I could do the lighting/shadowing effects.

The snowman image was probably the most fun. I love the snow and after one of my recent posts which featured a snowman, I decided it would be fun to play with the lighting effects of snow. I did it much less blended than with the aurora, but that was for the intended cut-out paper type look it has. Originally, I just had a snowy landscape, the trees, and the snowman. After discovering that I have ZERO skill to make anything resembling a tree trunk, I decided to kinda cheat and use an additional mound of snow to kinda block the hideous tree trunks I had created. Hopefully it wasn't obvious I was taking the easy route by doing that. =)

GODZILLA!! Papercraft

When I had decided to go off-template for my papercraft assignment, I had no idea just how irritatingly complicated it would be. There were many things I had planned to add to my papercraft, but I settled on just an additional box for a snout, and a large rectangle for a tail. Many of my other attempts were complete failures, and I still have yet to actually print out and attempt this most recent one (although I WILL add a picture of the completed Godzilla by tomorrow, so stay TUNED!).

My biggest problem was trying to get the realizm that you are looking at Godzilla, rather than just a large lizard. But I suppose if I know what it's supposed to be, that's all that really matters. It's hard to make a cartoon-like Godzilla without it looking a little goofy (one of the reasons I gave him a toothy grin). However, I did get great enjoyment messing around with this flat color design, and I'm excited to see how it turns out......and yes, his head is going to be MASSIVE!

Week 8: Someone Else

This post contains an exceptionally tall image from one of my new favorite web comics VGCats (vgcats.com). I'm really new to comics, but there is a flow to most that can't be messed with, and although I could have photoshopped this into a square, I really like the flow it has as is. So just click to view!

Having never read many comic books as a kid, I'm finding more and more that webcomics are definitely up my alley. VGCats in particular tends to theme most of it's entries around video games and the industry producing them. The above image is actually one of the few that were done simply as a Christmas entry, but still in the usual darkly funny style. I have no experience using Adobe Illustrator, but I'm thinking it's what was probably used to create this. I can imagine the headache of doing this in Photoshop, but it is possible of course. The gradient mapping alone of the colors is very richly done, and would probably make my head explode if attempted. Someday I hope to have even greater skill for my own designs; people like me with stunted art skills need a lot of practice and digital help! =)

Week 8: My Work

This week we went out and chopped down our Christmas tree from the Reuben Tree Farm out past Glendale. It took at least an hour of searching around before we found the perfect tree. Now we always tend to get a large tree, usually about a seven footer, but this year we just couldn't find the perfect tree in that size range. The one we ended up settling on was actually closer to 11.5 feet tall; this was a problem since the ceiling is only about 8 feet off the ground. After much effort cutting it down, though a massively thick trunk, I was suprised to see an almost perfect star pattern created by the tree's rings.

I took a picture, with my handy phone, and it looked even more defined on my little screen. I immediately uploaded the picture onto my computer, but upon doing so, I could barely make out the star pattern that had captured my attention. Remembering one of our lessons in lab, I used Photoshop to create a new layer and used the Overlay blend mode. Instantly the star popped back out in the picture. I had to do a few adjustments to remove the strikingly PINK coloring it inherited, but otherwise it developed into an interesting image.

Late Week 7: My Own Work

Out of all my collages, I think this is the one I am most happy with! I was browsing around, and I somehow found the above quote from Dr Seuss. I'm not one for cheesy phrases, but this one really has a nice feel to it I think. It's the same sort of thing that Hitler would say, but given that Seuss was emphatically anti-nazi back in his day, I will stick to the more positive implications. The quote itself, I believe, represents Seuss' work; not just anyone can invent nonsensical words and have several best sellers!

The quote itself made me think a lot about my favorite childhood Seuss character the Lorax--the prophetic tree-hugging activist. It just seemed to fit as a central image for the quote. I found another image of a city, which I'm pretty sure was drawn by Seuss as well, but if not at least fits the spirit of his whimsical drawings. My happiest find for this collage was an actual Dr Seuss font that I downloaded and used within Photoshop--something I'd never attempted before. I included another clipped picture from the Seuss tribute postage stamp, took out a few characters, and it as well seemed to fit perfectly for my purposes. The characters surrounding him, if not all characters he's ever created, all seem to share the same trait of speaking their minds.

Late Week 7: Someone Else

As many close to me well know, I am quite the internet junkie. One of my favorite sites http://www.break.com has galleries posted all the time featuring images of all sorts (photographs/comics/imagery)--sometimes genuine, sometimes altered for a certain effect. The best part of these photographs is often the captions given to them.

This image in particular was captioned "Ahh...Old Time Misogyny" for quite obvious reasons once the background is brought into closer view. I honestly don't know that I would've noticed the implied gender roles of this board game's cover without it being drawn to my attention. Additionally, it's one of those images that makes me laugh so hard mainly because I can't believe it was PURPOSEFULLY DESIGNED this way! Was it really necessary to add in the mother and daughter washing dishes? Couldn't this image be just as complete without it? It's almost like the person really thought that women would love nothing more than to do housework and watch men have fun playing a game! I wouldn't even come CLOSE to saying that images surrounding my generation are devoid of bias, but it's very interesting to me how direct of a message this image sends out. I'm definitely keeping this image in reserve for the next time I hear something about "The Good Old Days"! =)

Late Week 6: My Work

For this week's post, I decided to have a bit of a challenge for myself. I was looking through tutorials about Photoshop, and I happened to stumble across a comment from someone mentioning how hard it is to change black clothing to appear as white clothing. I made it my mission to try this out!

For starters, I didn't have a very high resolution camera to take a picture of myself with, so the above image didn't give me a whole bunch to work with as far as clothing texture. I definitely was trying to retain as much of the proper shadowing as possible, but in the midst of levels, curves, color balance adjustments, dodge tool, burn tool, ect.......I ended up with what looked like glowing gray clothing. ADDITIONALLY, I was so focused and zoomed in on the clothing, that I didn't notice some accidental texture and color changes I had made to my skin. By then it was too late.

I probably should have scrapped this image while I had the chance, and started anew. However, after literally 3 hours of focus on altering just one image, I WAS NOT GOING TO BE A QUITTER! After I got the clothing to look reasonable, I switched gears to my face, applying filter after filter to different parts of my face; film grain helped me look like I had SOME facial texture, and a good scattering of other textures made it look slightly less like I was wearing lipstick.

Maybe this image is just a big fail, but in all I've seen people proudly present much worse on their blogs, facebook, and myspace pages. If anything, I've learned a lot lessons on controlling what I'm working on, so that if certain types of changes need to be made later it isn't impossible.

Late Week 6: Someone Else

Advertisements, to me, are societies way of dumbing us down and making us insecure. That said, it's a career I've often considered! People's ability to not question what they see just AMAZES me sometimes. Whether its the photo of a celebrity, altered to make them look 20 years older for the tabloids, or even the occasional ad that makes a model look so perfect even angels are getting eating disorders. That said, I think that taking control of what people percieve is a very powerful job. Creating images that make people LONG for your product is a money making and often dangerous business.

If I were in advertising, however, I would aim for the effect of the above image. It's so OUTRAGEOUSLY clever of a way to sell lotion! I have to wonder if the man on the bus really knew why someone was laughing and taking pictures of him.

Me, A Friend, and the Other

For the picture of myself, I actually spent a lot of time trying to figure out how I wanted the shot set up. I've never seen myself as photogenic, and I REALLY don't like the look of my goofy smile. At first I wanted to do something that represented me and my interests. I thought about doing something with me in front of my computer, or with my game systems. Everything turned out really posed, and I couldn't accept them.

Later one particular evening it happened to be raining really hard, and having just been through some very personal challenges, I was feeling very blue and lonely. I laid on my bed just thinking about my life really. Before I knew it I realized I had been sitting there for two hours just looking out at the rain, actually feeling very peaceful. My camera happened to be nearby, and without disturbing my expression or pose I snapped off a couple pictures. I really thought it might be took dark of a pic, and maybe it is. But to me it feels like a captured moment when my life kinda made sense for two hours.

My friend Chris is very similar to me in a lot of ways; many of our interests are similar, and we both HATE getting our picture taken. Hence, maybe it was just my perverse sense of humor that drove me to taking HIS picture amongst the lot of my friends. When I came to his house, we kept arguing back and forth about where the picture would be taken. I had ideas, but since he was begrudgingly letting me take the picture I couldn't push him out the door.

One of his favorite things he owns is his fish tank, and I can always count on him calling me and telling me all about whatever new additions he has made to it. Additionally, one of my favorite memories of our friendship is when he helped me set up my own tank, and we both sat in front of it for about an hour, in the dark, eating Taco Bell, and watching the brightly colored fish. To mimic that moment, as well as a way to get him to let me take his picture, I tried my best to capture a moment between him and his prized fish.

For starters, I am NOT a person who approaches strangers easily. This assignment burst my hermit bubble--very unhappily I might add. In order to find someone doing something interesting, I actually ended up walking through a couple of parks. I came across a couple who were playing in the leaves. The guys, oblivious to the strange looks he was getting from his girlfriend, was going CRAZY playing with leaves. I shyly introduced myself, and suprisingly they were very open to me picturing them. All my pictures of the girlfriend ended up looking very posed! If she wasn't sticking out her chest, she had a sort of crazy/fake grin on her face. The boyfriend, however, seemed to get a genuine enjoyment from those leaves. Although I never asked what, I really got the impression from this guy that the fall leaves were attached to some sort of happy memory. I chose this picture because in contrast to my own picture for this project, which I decided on days before, this guy seemed so full up life. Either that, or I missed some sort of drug deal moments prior.

Late Week 5: My Work

Ta-DAH!! My new blog header has been created! For the longest time I found the idea of blogging to be an irritating hobby honestly, but I'm starting to develop an appreciation. Now that I've learned more about Photoshop, as well as creating/editing webpages in HTML, I really find the idea of a blog kinda fun! I've started to notice the huge variety of blogs people have, and it's not just kittens and celebrity stalkers.

For this image I decided to go with both a technology/expression theme. The abbreviation DMF is made of three images. For the "D" I decided to use a computer screen, being the obvious mode of expression in digital media. I found a cool looking graffiti "M" picture, invoking the idea of art and photography as well as typeface. I wanted to do something original for "F", and I kept googling for something that represented a sort of silent expression of the letter. At first I was planning on just using an image of an "F" in sign language, but decided I'd make the reference a little more obvious by adding the letter into the image. All in all, I'm pretty happy with my new header; although, for the life of my I can't change the green background of my blog.....right now the overall presentation kinda screams "GREEEEEEEEN"! =)

Late Week 5: Someone Else

Our lecture on how some pictures are special because they were taken at just the right angle, or at just the right time, prompted me to post this image of an insanely creepy looking Easter Bunny. I'm sure that with the bunny's head tilted slightly upward, the costume doesn't look like a rabbit with evil intent. Or maybe the person who designed the head for this costume just really didn't take into consideration how creepy their creation truly is. In either case, I couldn't help laughing while looking at this image.

In my own experience taking pictures, it has often been the most unintentionally funny pictures that bring me the most laughs. Whether it's a person who was talking, and their mouths just happen to be at a weird angle when captured on film, or a blink that makes them look like they are stoned, it is often hard to pose a truly funny image. I imagine this is how the paparazzi get their AWFUL pictures of celebrities; if you keep following someone and continuously take pictures, you are sure to get an image that appears to have a meaning or theme that is way out of context.

Letter Forms in the Outside World

This image is a MAJOR stretch to find a letter, but I couldn't help myself. I stumbled across some petunias in a garden bed near my apartment, and with my eyes I see the blooms arranged in a sort of stretched out "X" shape (it helps if you cover the bloom at the very bottom left with your finger).

It's not perfect, but when I was looking at the maple leaves, I couldn't help but see a "W" in the shape of the leaves, the negative space above the leaves, and the main "veins" of the top three points in the leaf. I really wanted to find a "w" made completely of negative space between leaves, but there weren't any arranged just right. I also didn't want to cheat and prearrange the leaves myself, although it was tempting! =)

While out at Lithia Park I really wanted to capture a letter from the beautiful little pond inside of the Japanese Garden area. With the way the leaves are set, and the reflection on the water a little above, I found that there was a darker area of the water that formed sort of a "V". Although imperfect, I think this is definitely my favorite shot.

I know the rule was no trees, but technically this is just a berry! These bright pink, rubbery looking berries made a perfect "O". My initial intention was to get a "Q", but unfortunately the little extensions coming from the hole inside of the berries didn't quite show up right on some of the other images I took.

Before I left my apartment, to go out into the world looking for letters in the world, I couldn't help but see one staring right at me. An "H" made from my shelves would've been a little TOO easy, so instead I decided to see the "F" created by the wood.

Late Week 4: My Work

First off....IT'S NOT PORN! I was accused of being obscene when I first created this image, manipulated from another, in Photoshop for the purpose of using it as my MySpace background. For the life of me I can't find the original image, but initially this picture was of a guy--from behind--wearing briefs and angel wings for his Halloween costume. Somewhere along the line of me manipulating it, he ended up looking kinda nude.

It was actually a pretty easy image to make. I started with a filter that broke the image down to only three or four colors, and then applied a second filter--"Glowing Edges" I believe--which gave it a very unique look as well as blacked out the background. After reapplying the first filter, the image got it's current chunky lined form and only showed the basic outline of the body. Additionally, although the "curves" feature has never made much sense to me, I was able to change the contrast of light and dark quite nicely I think. I never would have been able to sketch something like this by myself, hence I'm very thankful for the resources of Photoshop CS4.

Late Week 4: Someone Else

I've been really bad about posting on this blog lately; unfortunately I got sick and all my classes suffered. I'm finally catching up on everything though, and here's my first installment. When I was laying in bed feeling like I could hurl at any second, a good friend of mine sent me the above picture. Still feeling the urge to puke, this image managed to put a smile on my face for the rest of the day!

My friend and I got into a long discussion over whether or not this is a genuine photo. We both seem to agree that the writing on the shirt is undoctored, however the face doesn't seem right. All of us have a picture somewhere in which our faces seem distorted, which makes me think this might have been this gentleman's actual expression. Our general consensus is that it looks like someone put a funnier face over the original man's face. Either way, I'm very grateful for the "pick-me-up".

LATE Week 3 Post: My Work

Continuing my work for my zombie themed website for my Web Programming class, I have added a page featuring my favorite zombie movies. The caption on top is from "Planet Terror" which is actually the first movie to truly test my gag reflex. Rose McGowan with a gun leg, however, gives you the delight of seeing zombies getting blown up in a creative fashion.

MY image on the bottom was intended to blend in with my color scheme of simple black and white with a hint of color. I wanted the images to almost look like smoke--very choppy, with only the important details showing. I have NOT perfected this image yet, but the progress is making me happy so far. Most interesting to me, at this point, is the several filters, layers, ect. that lead to the latter image. I honestly don't know if I could repeat it on another image. Since I have five more movie pages to complete, I'm going to have to figure something out!

LATE Week 3 Post: Someone Else

I actually discovered an image similar to this back when I was a Biology major a year back. One of the topics covered was diatoms, a class of microscopic organisms that were actually used often for aesthetically pleasing photography. With a variety of shapes and colors, the microorganisms are a perfect subject.

The above image is of Licmophora which looks like some sort of seaweed, but are actually invisible to the naked eye. Many examples of diatom art required painstaking arrangement of the subjects using VERY small tools. As the above image above shows, this process can yield very beautiful results.

Movie Poster #2

Continuing my graphic novel type design from the previous poster, I decided to play a little more with motion in this poster for "2012". Palin, after going all out, has lost the elections. Crazy as she is, her rage is unleased upon the unsuspecting people of the United States (minus Alaska). The poster is actually just a collage of 3 images: one atomic blast, one crater, and one image of a family skipping through a park. It was interesting to me that once their expressions were wiped off their faces, they fit perfectly as a family running for their lives.

The picture itself is really noisy, which I was kinda going for. I like dramatic simplicity better, but the contrast of the foreground and noisy background still appealed to me. I played a lot with outer glows on all of my layers to really make them pop. Especially in the case of the atomic blast, I think the glow really helped my contrast the title from the explosion behind it.

Movie Poster #1

In the spirit of Halloween and my zombie obsession, I did a movie poster featuring these subjects. I found a great filter in Photoshop called cutout which allowed me to give the cover a graphic novel look to it, which I personally really like. For the man in the foreground I actually used a picture of a guy holding a shot gun from a "Stargate: SG1" image, but the head on the body was not rendering well. From the previous lecture, I had found an image of one of the Lincoln assassination conspirators Lewis Powell. I was very struck by this black and white image, due to the intense emotion of the face. Even rendered in photoshop, the face still has an almost haunted look about it.

The zombies in the background are actually two layers of the same image. One is made smaller and also edited a little so it looks different enough. If you look closely at the picture, you can tell some of the zombies are actually repeats.

LATE Week 2 Post: The Zombie Button

For my HTML class, I was looking around online for a zombie hand to use in place of buttons on a zombie themed website I'm creating. I was having a lot of trouble finding just the right image, but decided instead that I might as well try to create one myself. The image above is a mixture of a picture of blood and a picture of my own hand. I sized the blood just right to fit the hand, then applied a few filters to give the texture a different look. For the coloring I actually played around a bit with gradient overlays, and eventually just set a low opacity over the majority of the hand to give it a dead look. I'm pretty happy with the results; instant zombie buttons!

Text Compilation #2: "Y" in Lithos Pro

For the compilation I just started with the first letter, and then blew it up on the screen. I decided the character had a tree-like quality--and so the project began! It was very interesting to make since I needed so many y's; just the branches alone consisted of around 12 layers in Photoshop. For the leaves, to avoid a layers and transform tool nightmare, I actually just made a brush out of the "y" and played with the settings. It was a fun experiment with Photoshop.

Text Compilation #1: "X" in Princetown LET

My first attempt at the text compilation, and I was actually really happy with it. The font Princetown LET is so blocky, and actually made the X's look like little puzzle pieces, which gave me the idea to weave the letters together. I also found all the arrows and shapes the interlaced text make with each other kinda interesting.

Second Collage

As someone who figured out their sexuality very early on, I have quite a few years of dealing with anti-gay hatred. I found this collage especially fun to do, although it disconcerns me a little how many MORE hits came up on "anti-gay" than with "pro gay" on a Google Image Search. Collage is the perfect medium for political sentiments!

On a technical note, the transform tool has definitely become my friend!

Week 2: Someone Else

Friends of mine are tired of hearing my love for my "Corportate Zombie" t-shirt, but I can't sing the praises of graphic artist NikHolmes ENOUGH for creating this image. I'm a bit of a zombie fanatic, and when I stumbled upon the shirt with this logo at threadless.com (a graphic design contest site) I almost died of joy!

My obsession with zombies stems from the fact that things that terrorize me often become my obsessions in life. It's basic psychology....I desensitize myself to my fears by exposing myself to the source. The newest "Dawn of the Dead" movie scared the pants off me, hence now I squeamishly play zombie games all the time now. Graphic t-shirts have become such an over used market these days, that it's hard to find shirts I want to buy.

This shirt, however, is about the cutest rendering of a zombie you will ever see in your life. Graphic design has become a large interest in my life, due to illustrations just like this little guy.

LATE Week 1 Post: My Own Work

This is actually an image I did some rendering on for my friend, Levi, a couple years back. He was wanting some unique images of himself to send off to a modeling agency. Levi knew that I had done some image editing for Fire Mountain Gems, so he sent me a couple images. I WISH I still had the original to this photo to show, but it basically just used to be a black and white snapshot of him on a blanket in a park. I took the park out of the image, and colorized the image, including a tattoo of flames that he has on his shoulder. The visual quality TO ME of this image is not so great, but Levi seemed to really like the surreal look the colorization gave his skin.

After doing this picture was when I really started realizing that there could be career opportunities playing with pictures--or at least at being good in doctoring them! I had an ancient version of Photoshop that I used to do this image, but I found that I could really enjoy myself using the program. It seemed like a good start towards a potential career.

LATE Week 1 Post: Someone Else

With the hustle and bustle of the first couple of weeks of classes, I totally forgot about doing my blog posts. I thought I'd like to start with someone else's work, I'm always much to critical of my own. One of my favorite sites is http://www.worth1000.com which is full of photoshop contests. The picture above is a submission for a contest titled Wrong Turn 2--putting animals in places they don't belong--by a user named Alan2640. When I look at this picture, and think of all that Photoshop can do, it reminds me of what made me want to major in Computer Science. Although a creation such as the gold fishes in the jello are simple, they are amazing. I look at other peoples work and am inspired, thinking, "I could do that", and then I go try and create something amazing myself. For a truely NON-artistically talented person as myself, digitial media has opened up a lot of doors.

First Collage

I had a lot of fun with this project. I had just seen something on the 2008 elections, so I figured it'd be fun to do a collage on just how major someone's "image" is to their success.