Final Project

Proposal
For my final project, I decided to work with Chris Smith. We decided that we wanted to do some kind of commercial and found inspiration through a Gatorade commercial that we found on YouTube. Although we greatly enjoyed the Gatorade commercial, we really wanted to make something completely different, and add some comedy to it. We decided to make a Mountain Dew commercial instead. We did this for a couple reasons; Mountain Dew is the "gamer's drink" and we really wanted to incorporate gaming into our film.

Storyboard


Production Log
We decided to film everything in my room in Norsworthy. All of the props necessary for the video were already located in my room. Filming was very easy and simple, since we already knew what we wanted to shoot. It took about an hour and a half to film all the required shots.
When it came down to editing, we made a rough cut of all the major shots, without lining them up to the beats of the song we picked. When we went back, we made sure that we had all of the beats matched up with a mark. I did this by tapping the "m" key to the beat of the song in Final Cut Pro. From there, we simply selected the order of the shots.
When it came to the end, we decided to Photoshop a couple of images to add the finishing touch to our video. I did so by Googling the Mountain Dew font, and creating my own layer style to match that on the logo.

Self-evaluation
We are extremely satisfied with he way the video turned out. We have received nothing but positive feedback. The only thing that I would like to change about the film, would be the lighting. Our video really has terrible lighting, but I guess that is expected. All we used for light was a small desk lamp which did a barely decent job. Other than that, I really liked the outcome of our final project.

Midterm

For this image, I decided to design a logo for app-making business that my friends and I started called, n3.I initially had about eight different designs, but I eventually grew on this one, and progressed from there. I started with the circular background, which I created with the ellipse tool, and added a grayish color overlay on top of that shape. I then rasterized the layer when I was happy with the overall color and shape.
After than, I used the custom shape tool, to draw a ying-yang on top of the layer. I removed the top portion of the custom shape, and filled in the hole on the bottom half, leaving a tear drop shape on the bottom half of the ellipse. I then used the text tool to write the "n3". I tried out many fonts until I got something that I liked. I duplicated that layer, added a black color overlay and then reduced the opacity. I moved this layer about 40 px left and 50 px down, to add the shadow effect that you can see on the ellipse.
I then added a colored pencil filter to the ellipse and the tear shaped layer (picked different shades of gray) and added a clear gel style to the "n3". And lastly I added a bevel, inner glow, and shadow to the base ellipse.


This image was a homework assignment from a few weeks ago, but with a few minor changes that are not very noticeable. The image of the hamster I got from hdwallpapers.net, and the image of everything else is from the movie poster of "Man on Wire".
Some changes since last time; I added more shading to the hamster on the wire, I added a gradient mask to the background of the image (to give the sky a better contrast against the text), and reduced the edges of the hamster to let it blend in more into the background.


The sources of this image include: National Geographic and South Coast Central UK.
In the original image, the dragonfly was perched on a piece of metal and had various colors. I selected the dragonfly out of the image using the magic wand tool, and pasted it onto the stone hedge image. I added a color overlay onto the dragonfly, and made it black with 80% opacity. I used the brush tool to darken key areas of the dragonfly and lightened others. For example, I lightened the wings of the dragonfly to give the slight appearance of sunlight shinning through them.
After I finished with the dragonfly, I modified the brightness and contrast of the stone hedge image.


This image was also a homework assignment from a few weeks ago. Credit for every image goes to National Geographic.
When I first saw this image, I saw multiple flat surfaces which made this really easy to work with. I used various images from a National Geographic catalog, and positioned them accordingly to each clay plateau. I used the free transform tool and changed the perspective of the image to tilt it appropriately on the surface. After I have done this, I used the selection tool to cut the exact shape of the clay "plateau". When I applied images to every area, I merged them and added a sepia tone style.

Self Evaluation:
What I really liked with my images, was the n3 logo and the dragonfly on stone hedge. I liked the colors and how the image blended with the foreground and the background. I liked the colored pencil filter that I used with the n3 logo, and the contrast against the clear gel style on the text. In the dragonfly picture, I liked the scale of the dragonfly compared to the stone hedge, and the little amount of visibility of detail on the dragonfly. This image was more difficult to imagine then to actually create, so in this aspect, I really liked the creativity of the idea.
What I did not like, was the visibility of the edges in the last image. I also did not like the lack of shading and texture of this image, and I wish I could have had a better alternative to this.

Assignment 4: Color Correction

Before / After

In this image, I started with the levels tools and changed the black level to lighten up the screen. I then added an auto color with an auto tone to add more color.

Assignment 3

For this image, I started with an image, and added many other images on top of the cracked planes of what appears to be a clay field. I used the free transform to skew the image into the proper perspective and then used the selection tool to crop it accordingly. I added a color mask and some shading to make it blend more into the picture.

Photographs

Assignment 2

For this assignment, we had to do a composite picture in Photoshop. I came up with idea because of the movie "Man on Wire" and replaced the man with a hamster as a parody. I started with the original movie poster, and use the clone stamp tool to erase the man from the wire. I then increased the darkness of the wire. I found an image of a hamster, and erased the background and shrunk the image to the appropriate size.

Assignment 1

This image took me the longest to make. It is based off of the logo of Google's Chrome browser. I started this image by using the ellipse tool to create the outside and the center, and then used a brush tool to color in the different parts. After that, I lightened the edges and darkened the sides. After all of it was completed, I converted it to a smart object and added a stroke filter to it.


This is was more experimental than artistic. I played around with some of the filter galleries mixed with certain brushes in the toolbar to create the patterns above. I started with a base pattern, and then split the image into 4 parts, and added different filters to each part.


This image was completely drawn from my imagination. I made circles with a brush tool, and then connected them with line tools, and then added different colors to them. I then added a neon glow for the blue effect.