Photoshop tutorials
collage work
Initial draft
Final draft
Unit 34 digital collage
proposal
Research
general collage
visual based
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type based
.jpg)
specific to collage
Visual based
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Type based
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Moodboards
Positive side:
Negative side:
Positive colour mood board:
Negative colour mood board:
Initial development sketches:
1.
2.
Development: collage 1
Final collage 1
Development: collage 2
Final collage 2
Self assessment form:
Unit 34 – Digital Imaging (ND
Interactive Media) – May 2014
Assignment self-assessment
form
Student Name: Luke Joshua
Irving Collage subject:
Charisma
What do you think about your design artwork?
What do you feel about it?
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I believe it came out well as an initial
draft and a good basis for development in terms of added visuals like eyes,
paint splatter and just general blending and lighting tweaks here and there.
I do however feel some visuals, the guitar
and city landscape especially to be too blurry or distorted due to the
underwater effect I tried to create with the liquify tool.
In its current state I am not completely
satisfied with it as an outcome but as I said before it’s a good basis for
improvement and has helped solidify a lot of my ideas for visuals layout and
proportion I had in my head prior to the development phase.
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What about other pieces of work you have
looked at? Tell about your research
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Going by my theme of my collage with the
clashing of personalities or rather a personality
(shy) being outshone by a more outgoing,
charismatic trait I looked into themes around contrast of images, images that
blurred together with a similar colour scheme yet had something going against
the code thereby standing out, leaving an impression to the viewer and to
give a message suited around that image.
For example one collage I looked into was
lined with blue pencils however one was raised above the others and stood out
in red, really drawing my/our eyes to that point and made me see the power
and impact of focal points and how I could go about implementing them into my
work.
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What art materials and art techniques have
you been using or plan to use? What did you think of them?
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Techniques I used during my initial draft for
my collage varied from digital processing, so stuff like blending filters,
lighting levels, effects filters and scanning and the whole digitizing
process to more physical based techniques such as drawing out shapes for
visuals and scanning resources gathered from the outside world e.g flowers.
With Photoshop I especially warmed too the
blending options with overlay, I found they really transformed an image and
to give it a splash of new colour yet still keeping original detail of
textures on the object itself. And for textures itself the overlay options I
had available really helped to give my backgrounds life and more stylised
(seeming more to a professional standard). And for the filter effects such
ash sharpen/smart sharpen I found really helped me out with my photos taken
for the quality of my shots were low in what I would like them to be out or
near so smart sharpen always helped define those textures for me in my images
making it substantially more pleasing to the eye.
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What do you want to do for your design
artwork? Which styles, work by others or colours inspire your design
development or initial ideas?
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Looking over my research of collages I found
most inspiration from the ones which had a theme around contrast of images in
terms of colour and actual visual shape and design for instance my tree
collage I found showing one half being green and “summery” and the other half
being blue and “wintery” yet both half’s blended together in the middle
making the transition seeming seamless.
Most of my inspiration from colour generally
leaned towards darker colours with shades being mainly situated around
purple, black, blue.
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Which
aspects of your design work do you think could be made better? How could you
do this?
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One issue I had with initial design outcome
was the orange blending colour overlay on top of the wooden wheel texture
(the sun rays) which I did rush in comparison to the time it took me working
on other aspects and it shows because you can see on the outer edge of the
wooden wheel texture the orange overlay spills off the edge and has created
“splodges” here and there around the object, although initially it made me
think it could be used as radiance from the sun rays having this outer glow
spill over however looking over it more I just found it to be messy in
comparison to my other visuals.
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What have you learned so far in this project?
Are you confortable-using Photoshop? Would you like any extra guidance on a
specific aspect?
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During this project I have learned various
digital processing techniques when working with Photoshop such as blending
overlays, lighting levels and filters to achieve higher quality in images.
And after or near the end of this project I personally feel comfortable or
happy knowing the interface an the basic enhancing tools with only some
skills on some advanced tools such as refine edge being still a little
unconfident in using in terms of skill.
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Catherine McIntyre critique
Name: Catherine McIntyre
What ideas, both through form and
content are they exploring?
Linking her
work to her past now it’s clear to see the first load of her work while working
within a city contained themes of isolation, threatened and being generally
cooped up however later after she had moved to the country her work began to
take a lighter tone reflecting her surroundings. Judging from a large majority
of her work she has paid a particular interest in nude imagery and portrays it
in very different circumstances that give off different themes and feelings
with each piece. That being said she seemed to always want to find a connection
of some kind between the nude and with nature itself, which you can see a lot
of her work shows a combination of, e.g. tree’s, horses.
What techniques were employed to
produce her selected work?
Catherine
stated herself that she does not use any revolutionary techniques when working
on her collages, just standard Photoshop practice. And that she mainly works or
plays around with layers, masks and blending modes to create her work and will
rarely, if at all use Photoshop filter effects. In fact Catherine works solely
with the textures she has taken photographs of when she has been out and about.
She will begin a new piece of work by compiling all of her collected resources
which come with variety, e.g. photographed textures/objects, scanned in objects
for more texture work and some use of oil paints and drawing which too are
scanned in. with all these resources gathered Catherine starts all her work
with a good background with a texture and from there will gradually bring in
the rest of the photos and work with her blending modes and masks. And she has
no set plan, she simply goes by what her mood is feeling as she works with the
images.
How does it define, critique or
embrace the future?
A lot of
people can see digital processing as the most soulless of art forms/techniques
out there due to its heavy computer involvement. However Catherine seems to
acknowledge this known fact and tries to create as “honest art” as she can so
that it is still clear that even though a computer has been involved the ideas
and themes behind are very real and human. For this fact also Catherine will
never use filters in her work, this eliminates more of the auto computerised
factor. For these reasons alone I believe she gives inspiration or possible
encouragement to express themselves via Photoshop or other digital processing
means due to its practicality and eventual ease of use. And even though her
work remains in digital production she leans to themes of old, withered wear
and tear objects for she feels they tell a deeper story and have a more
intricate past than what a newer more modern object would portray.
How do you respond to its content,
its construction, its aesthetics or storyline?
Looking over
a few selected works from Catherine (and a brief read up on her techniques) I
find her pieces to seems very real even though they are digitally processed and
blended together the textures and objects themselves seem untouched by any
computerised system e.g. filters in Photoshop, giving a very down to earth
image I find. Most of her work is contrasting in design to where it has been
produced (Photoshop) by contrasting I mean her objects and general textures,
colours seem very rustic and old which obviously conflicts with the new modern
day age of photo digital processing software and I simply found this to be
refreshing that it is still possible to achieve works of art that focus on our
roots/past and without being forced into the new. I think the reason I took to
her work so much was the fact of how it was constructed because reading up and
simply looking at her work it is a very similar process of how I produce my
work e.g. start with a background and improvise with tone, colours on the
images brought around that background and have it as the deciding factor for
themes I want to bring in.
Collage design report
Collage design report
Collage design report
Introduction
Subject:
For my task in this digital
processing unit, reading the brief I was to produce my very own collages that
must show a message or some kind of symbolic message simply using a range of
imagery I will have to collect myself, out and about. These collages must also be
of a personal interest to me, something that reflects my inner thoughts and
ideals. All this is a chance for me to prove my Photoshop skills I have
developed from completing the tutorials during the unit and to have them
tested.
Chosen message:
My chosen message for my two
collages are the themes surrounding the idea of contrasting personalities, in
this task I have chosen traits of charisma and vibrancy contrasting with
isolation, reserved and just general shyness. From my proposal I gave I described
the idea of using music as a main imagery point since its seen as an effective
use of expression.
Imagery/resource gathering
Going from my mood boards,
they really helped me to visualise possible imagery I could use and that
represent a particular personality the best or different ways it could be
expressed. They also served as a great source of inspiration concerning colour
scheme.
Equipment used:
I used an android tablet
camera to take pictures of real life objects and mainly had a Epson scanner to
digitize wildlife I had found for use with texture work.
Areas explored:
For my locations for resource
gathering I stuck mostly to my hometown (nailsea) it had nice textures I could
used including old oak trees, rustic brick work and was the source of my guitar
image. The other location I went to gather was an old country pub alongside a
river, which I used for my water textures.
Imagery needed:
I wanted my two collages to
be around a theme of music and nature so I wanted imagery, which clearly represented
these two themes so I photographed my acoustic guitar for my main focal point
and landscaper. I then had the idea of comparing vibrancy with nature for the
top half of the guitar (the positive side) so I got a close up image of a mossy
rock texture, sharpened it up and splashed colour over it, this was then cut
out onto the guitar so it fit the shape of it. Negative side water I took a
picture of a flowing river by this old country pub. City skyscraper image I
actually drew out beforehand and enhanced in Photoshop. Likewise with the
musical notes I also drew them out and smoothed the edges. For scanned sources
I only had the main flower in the middle (sunrise/moon) and worked with
vibrancy and levels tools in Photoshop.
Changes development
Research:
For my research I looked into
posters produced by other people which would help give me inspiration to see
how general collages are layed out and what styles they usually follow.
Secondly then looking into more collages that were instead specific to my idea
I had for my own collage. I looked into themes around contrasting imagery and
clashing personalities finding a very good range to give me a clue on how I was
going to layout my collage.
Sketches:
For my first idea I had the
guitar as the main focal point and drew it in as the main landscape holder,
then drawing in the sunrise and moon for the acoustic ring in the center to
help further draw in eyes.
Changes for first collage:
From feedback I received I
had the collage simplified in detail since it blurred any focal points away
from the “clutter” so I altered the colours making the sunrays contrast more
against the sky.
Then second I simply adjusted
levels and blending modes to help improve the details of textures coming
through.
Changes for second
collage:
Finding that the background
was too complex for my guitar and paint splatter I removed the two textures and
instead applied one overall lighter texture background highlighting the guitar
and splatter.
