Blog 5

SELF EVALUATION

This would have to be what I think is my biggest accomplishment.  This is the first of my series for my final project, and I feel as though I put a lot of work in to this piece and really focused on the deatails of it.  I really displayed my skill in Photoshop, and the picture really works well I think.  I also really like the meaning behind it which is no matter what type of person we are and what life we live there is a good chance that something in our lives connects us with someone we would never expect.  I think, therefore, I accomplished that in this piece.

This project was probably one of the most fun to do but it definitely was one of the more difficult ones.  I feel as though I always take the realistic route when doing projects, but when dealing with Photoshop it is sometimes hard for me to make images actually look realistic.  So, my main goal for this project, despite how much I did to it, make it look as realistic as possible by using an array of tools in Photoshop.  I believe it helped with my color choices and the layering of my individual images.  I think that is the one aspect of my skills that improved, and that skill was using Photoshop to make what I do look as realistic as possible.

With these two pieces I think I really have shown a difference in how I think about my work.  The bottom one with me and the question mark I really did not put much thought in to the meaning behind the picture.  I honestly do not even know why I put the question mark there, besides the simple fact that in the original picture I look confused. Now by no means do I look this confused everyday but it is what fit the picture.  For the first one, however, I thought about the meaning a lot and that meaning is no matter the lifestyle one lives, whether it involves money or eating out of trash cans, there are so many families out there that go through the same situations.  Just because your family has money does not mean the parents do not fight back and forth, which is what I am trying to portray in the piece.  I think I have grown so much in terms of the meaning behind my work.

Blog 4:

        

THE FINAL

          For our final project in this class I decided to change my big idea from power to binaries.  What I really wanted to focus on when doing this project is the type of people in the world and how opposite the lives of those people can be.  What I pictured for my final project is taking two pictures of myself with each binary represented in each picture and then bringing them together so that my face is split in half showing the binaries on either side.  Therefore, a few binaries I took into consideration were rich and poor, jock and nerd, young and old, and finally in-shape and out-of-shape.  But the two I picked in the end were rich and poor and jock and nerd.  I know these two sets of binaries are very opposite of each other and a lot can be done to show this.  First, for the rich and poor, I am going to really use photoshop to make the "rich" picture of me look very clean and perfect with no flaws, but the for the "poor" picture use the program to make myself look dirty and grungy.  Using the colors and retouching tools will really help me accomplish this, as well as, using some masks.  For the piece of work that represents the jock and nerd, I'l take the jock picture and make me look big and tough with a stadium in the background in addition to girls.  For the "nerd" picture I will look very scared and weak with many books and school supplies in the background.  Honestly, what I think these projects can be used for is advertisements in high schools.  These pictures demonstrate that everyone lives a different life, but this does not mean that they should be treated any different.  No matter what a person has experienced throughout their life, good or bad, they deserve just as much as the next person.
          The first inspiration I ran into was an artist by the name of Justin Maller.  I do not know if it is easy to understand the inspiration because his one piece of artwork looked as if it was a binary, and so that is where I got the original thought to use binaries as my big idea.  Another inspiration was just looking around on campus and seeing all of the different types of people.  As you look around it allows you too see being your own person is okay, which will help me with this project.  The final inspiration was materialistic  items in life.  I think people take for granted what they have because many people cannot have those items. The new photoshop technique that I am going to use to pull off everything I want to is masks, but specifically on the layers.  I think I have not used it enough since we learned about it, and I think it is time to challenge myself.

Final Inspiration.

Calvin Ho

http://psd.tutsplus.com/tutorials/tutorials-effects/100-artworks-from-the-top-digital-artists-in-asia/

These pieces of artwork are very appealing to me because of how unique they are.  You do not see these types of picture everyday.  What draw me in are the colors and the overall combination of colors and individual pictures.  The big idea that I believe is coming across in this work is identity.  You do not truly know who these people are.  They are different and they are their own person.  What I find inspiring is the technique used to bring the separate pictures together.  My question is where he got his inspiration.  Because of the fact that the big idea could possibly be identity I am very drawn in to this work and inspired.  I feel that I also want to use the big idea identity.  What I will take from these pieces is the colors chosen and how they all compliment each other and the chances he took in bringing so many small pictures together.  If I can get better at masks I believe I can really make my final project strong.

Justin Maller

http://psd.tutsplus.com/tutorials/tutorials-effects/100-artworks-from-the-top-digital-artists-in-asia/

 This artist has been able to really catch my eye just by the ideas he came up with in these pieces.  They are very modern which also pulls me in.  I believe they have a couple big ideas, and the first one I think is time which relates to the first picture because the tiger goes from the jungle to the building that looks as if it was built today.  So, it shows the progression of man over time.  The other one I am not quite sure on the big idea.  I think it could be identity or time because it looks like the same guys in both pictures so it is showing both sides of his personality, and time because of the progression from the back of the picture to the front.  What I find inspiring is the composition of the pictures and it really makes me wonder what they did to get their final products.  What I will take from these pictures for my final project is that I need to take chances and go outside of my comfort zone.  I think I would not normally do anything like this so it would be good to push myself in a different direction.  I could help myself with that by using tools I have never used before and experiment with them.

Quiz 4

For the two posters above, it is very obvious that they are aimed at two different audiences.  The first poster of 300 uses completely different color schemes.  In this poster it is much darker and the color deep red is used for the blood.  These colors pull in a audience of men.  What also pulls them in is the fact that it is just a man on the cover and he is screaming showing that he is above all other people.  For The Ugly Truth, it has its own unique characteristics to pull in its audience.  That audience is women and the fact that it has a man and woman on the front shows that it is not all about the man but that the woman is equal, if not better than him.  And using an all white backdrop allows the audience to focus on the actors, and women are more about the characters of the film than men are.  The 300 poster has so much more going on such as the other soldiers that get the target audience excited.  Therefore, what I did to the 300 poster was make it brighter so the focus is on the actors, and I also added a woman in the picture to show the gender equality.  I changed the font as well so it had a softer feel and more individuals would be attracted to it because woman do not always like the look of blood.  In the end I believe looking at the two original posters, I was able to make a final poster that could attract men and women.

Midterm Project.

Power of Nature

          After thinking for a while I decided on the big idea of power.  The theme I decided to work with was the power of nature.  A couple things have inspired me, one being a dream I had that involved a tsunami.  I thought it would be cool, then, to try and explore the power of nature artistically.  A picture I found when searching for an artist for our first blog project also inspired me.  The picture was inspired by hurricane Katrina.  I think these two experiences led me to this project.  When I started working I decided I wanted to take the route of a series.  Therefore I took a city and put it through two scenarios of weather.  I feel as though it would make a strong series to put this city through all types of weather and my two pieces of work are just the beginning of it.  The first picture I created involves a tornado and the power it can do as well as the power of water.  My second piece of artwork deals with the power of fire and how big they can get, and it demonstrates how hard it is for the fire department to handle.  I found all these pictures on Flickr.  In the end I think this Subject matter is very important because it is an issue being dealt with today because all around us we have natural disasters occurring so almost anyone can relate to this project.