Assignment #8 - Propaganda Poster

The final project of the semester! It's hard to believe it's been so long already... our last assignment was to use Illustrator in order to create a Constructivist-inspired propaganda poster for a cause that we are passionate about. I've been looking forward to this assignment for a while, not just because it's an opportunity to advocate a cause we support, but because I was really intrigued by the unique style of Russian Constructivism, and seeing so many cool student examples was very exciting.

I had a few different proposals sketched out, including one based on the recent trend of arming teachers in schools, as well as one related to animal rights, but thankfully I was given the go-ahead on a poster centered around the threat of climate change. Climate change is a topic that I have a personal affinity for, as I live in Miami, so the aftermath of climate change is easily observed through extreme weather conditions and rising sea levels flooding our streets. My goal with this poster was to try and invoke a feeling of dread in viewers at what could happen if we don't take proactive measures. The desaturated, lifeless Earth, slowly being consumed by the blazing sun... in that respects, I think I achieved my goal.

However, the assignment's requirements weren't just to make something you liked; we also had a stylistic guidelines to follow. I invoked Constructivist posters of old with the use of radiating lines orbiting the sun, a color palette that made heavy use of red, black, and beige, and angled text in Russian-reminiscent fonts. I also made use of a texture image as an overlay to give the image a worn poster feel. I chose to leave the text unaffected by this texture so that the message stood out more, but some layering complications meant I wasn't able to have the text overlap exactly how I wanted it to with the borders of the image and the angled strokes. However, even in spite of that, I'm very proud of how this ended up.

Assignment #7 - Logos

The next assignment we had to complete using Adobe Illustrator was designing and creating a series of logos. Graphis design is not something that I've delved much into, but I had a lot of fun designing several ideas in my sketchbook for logos, and I'm just a bit disappointed that I had to drop some of them (not that I would've had the time to finish 5 of these... so I can't complain too much!) The three logos you see here include a ring shop, an aquatic emporium, and perhaps my favorite, a golf-themed sports bar.

Perhaps the biggest new tool I put to use with these logos was the Live Paint feature, which allows you to add color to areas in-between closed strokes. Each of the three logos made heavy use of it. Other cool tools I got to use this time that weren't as useful during the calligram assignment included the effect gallery and the different brush patterns. I also had to do a bit of outside research for certain parts of these logos, such as the grassy effect on the Green Tee logo or the lowered Line Paint opacity on the Pristine logo, but I think it helped to make the final products even better!

Assignment #6 - Calligram

Moving on to learning Adobe Illustrator, the assignment this time around was to create a calligram, also known as a picture comprised of words that relate to the picture. I had a few different ideas for how to start this, such as a tree or an umbrella, but ultimately I decided to go with this raven you see here. The words that decorate it are... well, they're not the most imaginative, I guess we can put it that way, but after finding out that the words had to be our own writing and I couldn't pick out lines from The Raven, I needed to come up with something fast. Besides, I think it's pretty cool seeing words like quill and plume actually shaped like that...

I used a lot of different warp techniques in order to achieve this look. Off the top of my head... most of the plumes were made by warping to a pre-drawn selection, the feathers on the top of the wings were made by adjusting meshes, the legs and talons were made with arced warp effects, and the quills were hand-morphed on the vector level using anchor points. I think it was pretty cool that I got to utilize most of the different methods of warping text in this one image. I had a lot of fun matching the gradient shading to the original picture too; I thought it worked fine without, but it adds an extra level of depth you wouldn't otherwise get. I'm liking Illustrator so far and am looking forward to working with it more on future assignments!

Assignment #5 - Rotoscope

...is it done? Is it actually done? Oh... oh my goodness, it's really finished!

After spending upwards of a month on this ambitious rotoscoping project, I don't have as much energy in me to write an impressively long blog post, so I'll keep this relatively brief; I would ultimately challenge the notion that this is my favorite project of the semester, but I would be lying if I said that the catharsis I experienced upon finishing was nothing short of divine. I attribute my frustrations with this project primarily due to the tedium of animating the rotoscope on two different passes, which has taken a severe toll on my shoulder and wrist. O course, this is also the project that introduces me to the wonderful drawing tablet that is so much easier to use than a trackpad and makes me want to draw more for fun...

On the positive side, however, I did enjoy the more traditional process of working up a background for the animation, and the video editing process in iMovie was gratifying if only because of how short it was. As for making music in GarageBand... well, I've said in class that I'm no musician, but I would be lying if I said I wasn't incredibly interested in learning how to compose more. While I did find GarageBand's loop system a bit limiting in terms of my scope and vision for the soundtrack, I am relatively proud of the track I was able to make given said constraints.

Considering that this used to be the final project but was moved up from its usual position, I'm hoping that the remaining projects will be a bit less intensive than this one, but perhaps none of them will be as satisfying to witness in completion than this one...?

Assignment #4 - I'm A Toy

Buckle up! This is gonna be a long post. I can feel it...

The final product.

 If one couldn't already tell by the title and top picture, the goal of this project was to use a number of Photoshop's tools in order to turn ourselves into toys (or robots, or cyborgs, but that's semantics at this point). The main guidelines were to make sure that our material was convincing enough and that we had a good environment to go along with; otherwise, this project provided a relative amount of freedom. As a proof of concept, we were each required to submit at least 3 different proposals for this project in the form of sketches, which I enjoyed, because sketching is totally my forte!

My three proposals were to fashion myself after a Nendoroid, a plush toy, or a bobblehead. The plush toy idea was dropped after the realization that making the texture look convincing would be far too time-consuming, and the bobblehead proposal was scrapped because both because I didn't think it would take much effort and because I wasn't actually able to guarantee that I could get someone to take part in my photo. That left the Nendoroid proposal... for those who don't know, Nendoroids are essentially deformed plastic figures with a bunch of swappable joints and faceplates. It was the perfect blend of challenge and familiarity for me.

This was my final sketch proposal! Isn't it cute?

Going into the project... I'm reminded of a quote in class, saying something along the lines of "your next project will be time-consuming, but this one will be difficult". It's a good quote, but at the time I didn't realize difficult ALSO meant time-consuming... I kept track for this project, and it took a total of around 15 hours to complete, not including the several hours I spent sketching proposals and trying to use the camera. (It always comes back to that camera, doesn't it...)

The first step was trying to change up the material from flesh and cloth to shiny smooth plastic, which was relatively painless but also extremely precise. The Smudge Tool was my best friend here, as it made smoothing out the skin a lot easier, but it was far from the only thing I used. It also took a bit of blurring and a lot of painting, especially to emphasize the highlights and shadows on certain areas.

Following that, a variety of edits were made to add extra detail, simplify facial features, and overall make myself look more like a typical Nendoroid. This included adding joints on the ankles, sleeves, and shorts of myself, painting over the hair to make it look more like a detachable wad of plastic instead of being fuzzy, and completely painting over the nose, mouth, and ears. Thankfully, despite what I initially thought, I was able to leave most of the body untouched proportion wise as it matched the Nendoroid I used as a base.

I can't tell if the regular head size makes it look more normal, or even creepier...

There was, however, one key exception to this. The last big step was to increase the size of the head drastically so it looked more in line with a Nendoroid figure, and this was tricky to figure out. I tried increasing the head size at the start of the project, but I wasn't happy with how painting over it afterwards looked, so I decided to wait it out until I was nearly done with the head to make any edits to that area.

I experimented a lot with ways to increase the head size while maintaining a decent quality, including shrinking the rest of the image instead to make the head look bigger. Ultimately, I used a technique learned in class to make a new layer out of everything visible, cropped out the head, and adjusted it accordingly. I also used the Liquify tool to adjust the eye size and make my head more circular instead of oval-shaped, and painted over many features to make it look better quality. After that, the only steps left were to add a shadow and grain filter to make my appearance in the photo more convincing!

My favorite part of this project was learning to use the Liquify tool, for completely serious and useful reasons.

Overall, even if it didn't come out exactly like how my sketch depicted, I'm still very happy with how this came out. The tools that I got to use in this project were some of my favorites so far, and even if I was admittedly pretty sour about my progress at the beginning, that attitude began to change as I got farther along. It did take up a lot of my time, though, and I'm looking forward to getting at least a few days of peace and quiet before starting my next project for this class... it's definitely going to be exciting!

Assignment #3 - Restoration

Another assignment has come and gone, which means it's time for another blog post! I always look forward to writing these, because I like to put my thoughts and feelings on projects into words that I can comprehend and look back on. I'm not entirely positive that running this blog is supposed to be the project I'm most invested into, though...

The finished restoration.

The goal for this project was restoring a worn-down photo and making it look brand new (well, as "brand new" as you can make an old, pixelated sepia-tone photo look). I didn't get to use a photo from my own family, primarily because I was surprised to learn that none of the several family members I asked had any old photos that I could use, so instead I went with one of the examples in the class folder... and, you know, I think I've honestly gotten attached to them. I have no idea who they're supposed to be, but editing them for so long has made me feel a sort of bizarre kinship towards this family. I'd like to think the second guy from the right would be cool to talk to.

The big tools for this project were the spot healing brush and the clone stamp tool. The spot healing brush was... alright? It's a genius tool in concept, but in practice it didn't help very much for the assignment. I mostly used the default "Content Aware" setting, as "Create Texture" was too harsh and "Proximity Match" was very hit-and-miss with where it drew color from. Even then, though, the spot healing brush smoothed out a lot of the grain and pixelation in the photo, which I ended up having to fix later. The Clone Stamp tool, on the other hand, was extremely useful, and I had a lot of fun pulling from different sources of the photo to recreate missing pieces of the photo. It's like the modern Frankenstein's monster... if, well, Frankenstein's monster looked more convincing and not like a freakish chimera of a man. I also got to use the Dodge and Burn tools a lot more compared to the Multiplicity assignment, and I think it really helped make the figures in the photo stand out more.

A comparison between the original, damaged photo and the final product. Big difference!

Overall, I'm pretty happy with the results of this restoration. It was a bit challenging figuring out the division between nailing for an accurate recreation and sacrificing limitations of the photo-creation process in order to create something that looks more modern, but I think I hit a happy medium between the two. Here's to hoping the next project will be just as entertaining!

Assignment #2 - Multiplicity

A word of advice for all teachers and professors... never denote which of the assignments you'll give is supposed to be the easiest one. It'll just make the students who struggle feel a whole lot worse about the future of the course.

That's a lot of Amys... Amies? I don't know what the proper plurality is supposed to be.

The task was simple enough: use quick mask and layer masking tools to create the illusion of having multiple of the same figure in one composition. That was simple enough; in fact, it was pretty easy working with the example photos in class, and I learned a lot about how to adjust the layer masks to make them fit in better (including a lesson on what the Dodge and Burn tools are supposed to be for! I've seen them for years on GIMP and had no clue what they did).

Unfortunately, when trying to perform the same task on my own set of photos, I quickly ran into issues due to one simple mistake: being put in charge of photography. I've know for years that I'm not very good at it, and that I have incredibly shaky hands, but I was expecting the use of a tripod to be enough of a failsafe to prevent that from seriously impeding my work. Unfortunately, it somehow wasn't, and I ended up having to do a LOT of editing to fit together various different perspectives of the area into one picture.

Ultimately, it led to a final product that I'm... not too particularly enthusiastic about, but should definitely be serviceable enough. It makes me wish that I got to finish my original photoshoot, as it had the least camera issues but only 10 photos to work with... and it also makes me hope that I won't have to use a camera again for the rest of the semester, as I can't say I'm thrilled at the prospect of struggling in more assignments because of it.

For fun, I ended up making a second multiplicity photo using my scrapped first set of pictures. Way easier to put together.