15 Green Things: Dreaming of a Memory

For this assignment I was given a file of 15 images all in the same shade of green. The goal was to create an entirely new images using each of the original images. It was okay to use only portions of the original, and to change its color, size, and orientation. Basically, anything except adding something in that wasn't one of the original 15 images.  

The whole process involved a lot of copying, coloring and arranging. I took out the portions of the images that I wanted using the quick selection tool. I colored over the images using the color replacement tool (my new favorite toy!) so they were no longer green. I transformed the images mostly through scaling or flipping and played around with different arrangements of the images by moving the layers around and using the move tool. Occasionally, when I wanted to make the signs and graffiti appear faded I'd use a funky eraser tool to create the look of an old painted on sign. I also used the blur tool on certain images to give the tone that the images were a part of a surreal, hazy memory.

After playing around a little bit I noticed a lot of the images had things in common, like the car, a street signs, a parking meter, etc. All of these things belonged in a city. From there I noticed the two people and thought that they should go together as well.The purple grass reminded me of the neuron pathways in the human mind and from there I decided to make a story with this image.

What is that story? Well, there many different ways to read the picture and primarily I'd like whomever is viewing it to decide for themselves. However, this is what was running through my mind:

The girl in the center is the main character and the image is a peek at her memories and what's gong on inside her head. She is a former wildlife photographer from Colorado who moved to the city after she got married. She's the mother of the little boy standing next to her and the two have them have just been  walking down to the grocery store. She's feeling rather tired and preoccupied with her thoughts and she is amazed at her son's brightness and energy.

She is feeling rather homesick and is growing resentful and claustrophobic of the noise, the graffiti and street signs of the city, which all seem to be shouting at her at once. However as they pass through an archway on their way back to the car she remembers her first trip into the city and that it was here where she met her husband.

Crazy Combo: We're All Mad Here

For this project I used images of animals, specifically a grey wolf, a hare, a lion and a dragon to combine with photos I had taken in order to create chimeras. A chimera refers to any impossible animal that is a combination of other creatures parts, such as a manticore.

Firstly, I had to use the quick selection and lasso tools to select the parts of the animal and potions of the photo that I wanted to use. I sent these selections to a new layer via cut, and deleted the layers with the unneeded remainder of the photos. From there came the long, arduous task of going through and erasing along the edges to make the photos appear nice and clean. (This would have been a lot easier with a tablet, but since I only had a  computer mouse available it took me longer than I would have liked.) After the majority of the erasing was done I positioned the animal parts and photos so it would look like the ears, tails, and wings were actually a part of the photo. Then there was more erasing, and more erasing, and more erasing...

Finally, I had everything the way I wanted it and put in my background layer (a scene from Alice in Wonderland). I re-adjusted a few of the images so it looked like they were interacting the background more and to maintain a general sense of balance in the image.

The final touch was the "Were all mad here..." which was created using the text tool.

I'm really proud of this image, it took a lot of work and really turned out nicely. I love all the colors and how they work together. I also like that I took a more unique take on this assignment, that rather than just combining animals with other animals, I combined animals with people. In the end the separate images really worked together well and looked like they belonged together.

If I were to try this assignment again, I'd want to try it with a tablet to cut down on the time and difficulty with erasing.  
   

Bye, bye Photobomb!

Before...

(Found using google images)

and After...

This effect was created using the fill and patch tools on photoshop. These tools allow you to delete a portion of the selected image and fill it in by sampling the existing background. The text was simply added using the text tool.

These tools seem to work best with simple backgrounds like this. I might want to try it on a more complex background next time to see if I can still get good results.

Music Project

For this assignment I took an image and made several changes to it, such as copying the music notes, changing the objects color, size and orientation on the page. The layout is alright, but I wish it was more dynamic. The color choice I like a lot because they're bold and grab your attention right away.

For this image I followed the same process. I liked the layout for this image much better than the first because its interesting and asymmetrical but still maintains a sense of balance, but the colors were less striking. If I were to attempt this again I would try to create a layout similar to the second but with the bold colors of the first.