Midterm

I decided to construct something that has proven iconic in my life.

NAPP Projects

We were assigned to find two tutorials from the website or magazine NAPP.

These are abstract metal coils. I created two sets of lines and warped them to appear to have depth. I could not finish the tutorial, as it required some addons for Photoshop, but I completed almost all of the original idea.

Here, I followed a tutorial of a realistic water drop effect, and applied it to a previous image I created. Several layer styles were used, and I'm pleased with the outcome.

Advertisement

Here, we were assigned to create an advertisement, so I chose an iconic fictitious vehicle to display. I also used the font from the same movie that houses the car, "Back to the Future." I cut an oval out of the picture with the car, and faded the edges. After thinking of what to write on the ad, I painted blue smudges behind the text to help make it stand out more. I also added Doc Brown (character in the movie) promoting the car. For the background, I painted random light blue strokes to make it more interesting than a blank white page.

Perfect Kaleidoscope

For this assignment, we were to take select a part of an image in the shape of a triangle, and duplicate it several times to create a kaleidoscope effect. In my first one, I found a picture of a butterfly, and used part of its wing and some of the background. For the other, I took a picture of the sidewalk that ran alongside the brick wall and some grass. There was also a blue door.

Thoughts on some photo-editing sites

Photofunia

This site seems to be for inexperienced people who want to lay a few layers or filters on top of an existing picture. There isn't too much you can do with it. I took a portrait of a character, and used these filters to make it look like an old, framed portrait.

Picmonkey

This one also only let you mess with existing images. It seems to give more options towards editing faces, and is simple enough, so someone who just wants to see some cool effects or touch up on a picture might use this. I used an image of V and changed around the lighting and color, as well as adding a "V" on the left.

Pixlr

Pixlr is almost like a free version of photoshop that doesn't have quite as in-depth tools. The ability to freely create a new image or edit an old one was nice. I liked the sketch tool, and tinkered with that the most. Some of the other tools didn't seem to work very well though.

Befunky

As with the first two, you can only edit existing images. However, there are a quite a few different effects you can use on the pictures. It can take a little while to load sometimes though. It's probably intended for the inexperienced, but I found some cool things you could do. Here, I found a picture of one of my favorite trees, (Japanese Red Maple) and darkened the border, popped some of the colors, gave the picture a cartoony look, and made some other slight edits.

Inside/Outside

For this assignment, we were to split something in half, leave one half as it was, and use the other half to reveal what is underneath. I came up with the idea of someone that seemed normal on the outside, but was actually deteriorating underneath. I used a picture of cracked glass and placed the center crack that stretched out across the entire surface where her left eye would be. I also found a green grungy looking background, and recolored it to help the chilling mood.

Marla

After watching the movie, "My Kid Could Paint That" we were tasked with creating a piece of modern art that was similar to Marla's style. I used a black canvas to let the orange stand out a bit more, as well as give the blue a softer color to lie on.