ART SHOW ADD

For the art show add I decided to use the robot with the “A” on his chest because the other robot was holding the AUTOMATONS sign. This seemed like it would create a problem as it would eat up space. So, the first thing I did was place the “A robot” on the page after setting it up. Then I decided that the words art show should be the biggest words on the page. The idea being that if this add were running in a town paper where most people know of the local school logo then having the robot at a decent size would call attention to the add and associate it with the school. Pretty strait forward. I used the same font for everything at first just to decide what information I wanted in the add then changed the fonts and sizes. Then I put the black boxes behind the date / time and name of the school. This helped group them and break up the sea of text that seemed to be drowning the add. Finally, I deleted the thumb from the robot. I thought it looked like a print flaw. As well, I had to change the robot to a lighter grey because when it printed, it came out really dark. Here ends the story.

LOGOS REVISITED

These are my logos. I decided that the things I had done before were more banners like you would find at the top of a high school web page. So I needed to design a logo so I could use it in the art show add. I went with the Fake High School Automatons. I designed two robots using basic geometric shapes. The bodies and feet are made out of separate shapes that I “nudged” to create white lines in order to give dimension to them. It also creates a sort of awkward feel like retro graphics.

actual logo colors

Ambiguous High School

Fake High School was my first attempt at a school logo. I started this project by looking at various high school logos and came to the descision that a public high school logo should actually be poorly designed and have some element of campiness to it. My favorites were the angry cardinal and the Native American that looked like a burnout from the 70’s smoking a pipe. Both these designs were set on a background of primary color accompanied by a slogan like “the fighting cardinals!”.
Being that my knowledge of Illustrator is limited (as well as my time) I decided to make up my own school rather than remake a logo and do a worse job than the original. My favorite design is ambiguous high school. I basically looked for cheesy fonts to give the campy feeling I was looking for. Once I had the words done I found a gif of the two faces that make a vase and traced the one face with the paint brush. Then copied, pasted and reversed it. I used the rectangle tool to make the background and then sent it to the background (object>arrange>send to back). The I colored everything in and arranged the text a little more.

Big ol' blue button! That's right good buddy! This here Illustrator's gonna take some learnin'!

This is the updated version. I changed the head to a gray scale and then messed around with the contrast to try and get it to look more like the other images. I'm not sure I like it. I think it looks like those Andre the giant stickers. That irks me a bit.
I also changed the contrast on the baloon boy. That one I do like better.

Self Portrait

I decided to use a collage technique for my self-portrait for many reasons. One being I love collage work, when done right, so why not use it for my piece!
The basic idea is “I’m at home in my world” or “It’s my happening and it’s freakin’ me out!” (Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, 1970). So, my head is a hot air balloon floating over a peaceful nature scene. I do have a fascination with hot air balloons and always feel that I don’t have control over my thoughts, so I thought it was apt that I would have a pilot that would guide me across the land o’ thoughts. The images are simple representations of my thoughts. Some are at conflict with others, some relaxed and some in chaos. The black bird would represent my ever-present self-deception. I have a fascination with crows and their various mythologies. They are known for their deceptive nature, among many other things. I also have a fondness of conspiracy theories and subversive revolution. The ‘piece now’ banner in the sky was adapted from the weather underground organization, one of my favorite subversive groups.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weatherman_(organization)
The bird headed sword fighters are paying homage to Hieronymus Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights. The rest is just folly!
I mainly used photo shop to cut out the images from scans and paste them on the background. The background itself was from the web and started to pixelate when I blew it up to big. I changed the opacity ever so slightly and applied a gaussian blur. My head is actually 2 layers of the same image. The back layer is full color and the front layer is a grayscale with the opacity turned down to allow some color through. The boxers up front were cut off at the arm and hip. I placed them in the corner and then used the clone tool to recreate the one boxers arm and leg. Conquering layers was extremely important as I had over 40 at one point. I learned that if you select one layer and then select the “link”
In another you can merge the two using, layers>merge linked. This was extremely helpful especially with the balloon ropes. They were each a single layer until I merged the entire balloon image. The big tool for this project was opacity. It’s extremely helpful when trying to achieve a faded look in the distance (like the plane pulling the banner), or changing color without actually messing with the color, (such as my head). The giant lady reaching for the folks writhing on the ground is an overt use of opacity. I liked this project a lot. I finally feel secure with Photoshop. Scary because I’ve only scratched the surface of it’s capabilities.

This is Amy's face. I was a bad student and forgot to do my self portrait, Amy was kind enough to let me use hers. basically, we were experimenting with multiply and screen in photoshop. I was glad to be introduced to screen. It allows you to lighten areas, whereas multiply allows you to darken areas.

Panel three: The final photo offered challenges as far as what to do with it. I liked the pattern on the bedspread that surrounded her head, but the blanket behind her was a problem. First I cropped the photo down, again thinking of the diagonal rule. I selected the bottom portion of the bedspread up to where her ear is and played around with filters. I believe the path was; filters, artistic, smudge. That gave me the pattern you see on the bottom portion of the bedspread. I then used the clone stamp tool and experimented with short and long selection paths and brush sizes. I ended up using a size 15 brush and make multiple passes to make it very busy. Then of course…I applied the Gaussian blur…which I’m going to have to stop using so much. So that's it. The panic stricken dog goes pee and then feels relief.

Panel two: With this one I tried crop the photo to apply the diagonal rule. Especially because the dog was dead center of the original photo. Then I applied the clone stamp to get rid of the leash. I found if you did little bits at a time it left little or no trace of having applied an effect, though it’s hard to see because of the blur. Which brings us to the last step, again, the Gaussian blur.

Panel one: I started with a picture of the dog that I took standing up. I wanted to see if I took a picture of the door from the floor and then married them if it would have an interesting effect. I then cut out the picture of the dog (using the magnetic lasso) and pasted it into the picture of the door. I was able to be a little more precise by holding down the option or shift key which let you select or deselect without loosing a lot of what you’ve selected. That’s confusing but I don’t know how else to describe it. I then used the paint tool to touch up the dog’s eyes, which had reflections of the flash. Playing around with the liquefy filter I made the edges of the of the door frame wobbly trying to give it a more panicked feel. Finally, my old friend Gaussian blur on the backround.

photoshop doodle

This is a picture of my neighbor Amy. Basically I followed instructions on the assignment. We took a picture on a digital camera and opened it in photoshop. I used the magnetic lasso tool to select the background and then applied a gausian blur. I don't really know the difference between a gausian blur and a regular blur, but the gausian blur seemed to make more sense to me somehow. Or more to the point, achieve the effect i wanted. We were then instructed to use the tools in the toolbar and experiment. I originally gave Amy big eyebrows. She in turn turned me into a drag queen that had gotten beaten up. I used the dodge tool on her lips which seemed to smear the image as if you were running your fingers through paint. (I like that tool.) Then I used the smudge tool on her eyes which made her look like she had cataracts. Both those tools seem to have similar effects with slight differences. Photoshop is fun!

The hulpo is ready to fight!...and love.

quiz #1

woke up with a 74 level blood sugar. rainy. quiz number one today. zzzzzzzzzzzz, mom? i smell bread....where's that light coming from?

Hey, I just logged in and out and back in again...

My first blogging experience. Wow...I feel smart...