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I'm not gonna say that this single project has left me with equal proficiency in Flash as I have in Photoshop...That's it.No, but it was fun, I would be able to make a website again without Mrs. Banks' assistance, I think. My favorite part of creating the website was being able to alter the images when the mouse goes over them, and I really like the way the page turned out! I'm very sad that this marks the end of my Photoshop journey, This has been my favorite class at Garza, and my school days will be that much longer without it. There were so many exciting projects I was able to do in this class, some of my favorites were the Vector Art, Pop Art, and the Melting projects. I wasn't really a fan of the final "Butterfly in Paints" image, but other than that I'm immensely proud of what I accomplished here.I learned a lot in Digital Graphics, and I'm so glad that I got to learn it from Mrs. Banks because she's one of my favorite teachers. Ever.
For my FINAL Photoshop project, I made a show poster for The Diving Captain! It was a really fun project, and the band liked it so much that they printed it at Ginny's and actually used it--needless to say I'm proud! I found the pictures of a cowboy riding a bucking horse, a fire ant, and a rope, on Google. The skills that I used to create the poster included masking with the Pen tool and the Free form Pen tool, the Brush tool, the Magic Wand tool, the Text tool, and various Marquee tools. I also grouped layers into Smart Objects and desaturated layers, warped text, and used layer masks....That felt like name dropping...The Pen tool is old news for me, it was pretty easy to mask out the parts of the pictures thatI didn't want on the poster. The Magic Wand actually helped a lot in that part, masking out large portions of the picture. I hadn't really used the marquee tools before this project, and I used them to create a box around the text. The part that was the most fun was trying to outline the cowboy on the ant to make it look like a neon sign. I think it turned out quite well, actually! It was a little difficult to pick appropriate colors, and to make it look like actual neon, but I played around with hardness and brush sizes until I felt good about it. You can't see it as well from the picture on the web, but the color sort of fades out, making it look more like light.I hadn't used the text tool or warped any text before, but they weren't very difficult; it was very fun to play around with fonts, and I found the perfect one for the cowboy/western theme of the poster!The rope was honestly the most difficult, and annoying, part of the poster. It was really difficult to make it fit in with the rest of it, because it was a photo, it stands out a lot against the background and the painted picture. I used a layer mask on the rope, to try and blend it a little better, but it was unsuccessful. The rope is the only part I'm unhappy with in the final project, but it honestly doesn't look to bad...I am just picky :]All in all, though, I'm really proud of this project! I'm reeeeally sad to be leaving Digital Graphics class, though, and I'm sure I'll find ways to sneak over and do Photoshop whenever I can!!
I'm really glad that I chose Vector Art as my last Photoshop project, partly because it was really fun and challenging, but also because it took a lot of time and I got to spend more time in Digital Graphics class :]. I chose this project because it seemed really interesting, and vector art is a very good skill to know for a digital artist, which is definitely a career (or at least a hobby) that interests me. One thing I discovered during this project was the Free form Pen tool, which I found helpful for creating shapes quickly; however it was more of hindrance when I needed to change the shapes, because the anchor points it created moved the outline inversely, so I could never get quite the right shape. Another tool I used quite often, besides the pen tool, was the gradient tool. It was fun to play around with merging different layers and changing the transparencies to make the shapes look closer to the original picture, and I think I was successful! The part that was most challenging for me was the hair, because it has so many different tones and shapes in it, and the roots are darker and the ends lighter than most of the hair. It was difficult to make it look like one cohesive part of her body. I'm not sure if I'm completely satisfied with the end product of the hair, but I'm pretty sure it's the best that I could have made it. I'm really proud of how the head turned out, especially the eyes and the earring. I think that those turned out really well, I captured the different colors in the eyes perfectly, if I may say so m'self! And the earrings look very realistic, and really pretty. I'm very proud of this project, it's definitely the most pride I've felt for a Photoshop project out of all of them!
Firstly, the title of this post sounds like a boy band. Secondly, this picture looks way better onscreen than printed out, which I'm disappointed about, but just know that it actually looks pretty cool!
I wanted to try the Underwater Scene/Bubble tutorials because thus far, I had only been doing art-type Photoshop projects, and although those are the main reason I wanted to learn Photoshop, I felt I wasn't getting the full experience of the program. So I decided to try something different! I can't say it was the most fun, or difficult project I've done so far, but it was really useful. I'm so excited that I know how to make brush shapes, I feel so much more competent! I really could have used that skill in the paint bucket picture, and I will definitely be using it in the future. I also liked playing with filters and different things like that in this tutorial, and trying to make the rays look realistic. Attempting to create realistic depth in the picture was cool too, and the "Perception" transforming option was cool, (and a bit of a challenge). I also became even more familiar with the brushes palette, that's always a good thing! It was difficult to make the shark fit in with the background, I messed around with blending options for a while. I also really wanted to make it look like the shark was swimming toward you while you were looking at the picture. I think those two endeavors were pretty successful...much unlike the endeavor of trying to surround the shark with realistic-looking seaweed, but you win some you lose some I suppose. I'm very glad I did this tutorial, I underestimated these parts of Photoshop, and considered them useless, which I wont do anymore, because I know they can be very helpful!ps. Just in case you were wondering, the shark (which I thought was an eel at first), is called a Frilled Shark, this picture is of one in Japan. It's called a living fossil because this type of shark has been around for 95 million years and has barely changed in that time!! http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/01/photogalleries/frilled-shark/photo4.html
The "Stylized Character" tutorial was definitely a big hit with me, it was so fun! When I use markers to draw, I usually draw more abstract things, with a lot of intricate detailing, but nothing, usually, that looks realistic. But with this, it was like practice using markers (with much more freedom) on realistic drawings. It was very fun to play with the way different colors worked with one another, and it was really interesting to see the way that the purple and the magenta in the tutorial blended like I really was using markers. I liked the challenge of trying to use the white of the background for some highlights, instead of erasing or painting over with white, it was more difficult, but I think it made for more realistic highlights. In the tutorial, my least favorite part was painting the feathers, it really irked me when they didn't turn out as perfect curves; Photoshop paint may be more forgiving than markers, but I think theres a certain precision that cannot be obtained through the computer. I was very proud of my picture! It was much simpler than the tutorial picture, but that's not because I was lazy! It was supposed to be a stylized drawing, and my style just isn't that...ostentatious. I prefer to focus on colors that work well together, instead of embellishments. One thing that I would have liked to try, and maybe I'll try on my final or another project, is making a pattern with paint, instead of just using a solid color on the dress. Overall though, I'm extremely happy with this project, and I even practiced drawing stylized people like this with the new markers I got for my birthday!
(Not that I couldn't just tell you this in class...but the rubric for the blog in the class synopsis says I can say how the class is going etc.) :]I really like this class, and I really like Photoshop a lot! If I ever did anything with computers in my life, it would be like this, graphic design and things like that. So, I was wondering if it's still possible for me to change this class from Photoshop and Final Cut Pro to just Photoshop?...You can answer me in person if you want :]-Zeph
This tutorial's finished product features my boyfriend's band, The Diving Captain, having a super awesome music party inside a vintage diving helmet. And their party is simply so amazing, that the helmet is melting due to the increasing coolness inside of it!That's what it's supposed to look like, anyways. I really liked this project, it was fun and challenging. The most annoying part of it was that in order to make the drips, I had to make sure that I smudged the entire picture completely, because if I didn't, then the drips would leave these weird shadows of the pictures behind it. It was quite tedious. I really liked playing with making the drips look as realistic as possible, (which didn't exactly work out, but I figured that I had already spent 2 weeks on it, and no more could be spared!), and playing with the brushes palette more. The parts that were the most difficult to create realistically were the glare on the glass, and the engraving. For the glass, I used the Clone Stamp tool, which was interesting, though I'm still not quite sure how it works. And I figured out how to arc text! Which I feel means that, (though I still need and love your guidance, Mrs. Banks-V!), I'm becoming more familiar and savvy with Photoshop!All in all I'm proud of this work, even though it didn't turn out as perfect as I'd hoped. I'm glad I chose to make a poster/whatever for TDC because it made it more personal for me, though I was originally going to make a cathedral melting, which I'm interested to try someday!ps. the drip at the bottom is supposed to be going off the page!
