12 Days of Photoshop: Final Project

Final Project: Graduating Art

               For our last project, we had to put together a simple picture of a famous art piece graduating. I chose the Scream for mine because it is probably the most expressive piece in recent history, the expression on the face perfect for such a momentous occasion. A cap, diploma, few tears and a smile later, and he's ready for college.

12 Days of Photoshop: Day 11

Day 11: Short Animation

                 This project was to take an image and create a short and simple animation. For this one, I chose to use the most recognizable piece of art in the world; the mona lisa. With only two frames, I moved her head and finger enough to look like she was bobbing to the beat. Pretty cool if I do say so myself.

12 Days of Photoshop: Day 10

Day 10: Scary Sign

                 Getting down to the last few days of the 12 days of Photoshop. It's been a lot of fun, and I've made a lot of cool pictures. I feel like my skills have really grown through this past semester, and I intend to continue learning outside of school. For today's project, we were challenged to create a street sign of some kind that warned of something scary ahead, and what's more scary than the king of darkness himself, the devil? In myths, it is said you can meet the devil at a crossroads by burying a box full of personal items and some of your blood in the center, and he will fulfil a wish in exchange for your soul. Apparently someone found that this crossroad was a good spot and decided to warn people that the devil lies ahead, and they should have their soul ready if they so choose, like it's a casual alert about an upcoming tole booth. This project was entertaining and easy, can't wait for the next one.

12 Days of Photoshop: Day 9

Day 9: Celebrity Statues

         Today's project was to combine a celebrity's face with a famous statue. The picture that I chose to make was rightfully ironic. I chose to make Simon Cowell into Buddah. It's pretty funny because, as we all know, that man is famous for not being calm in the slightest. The only issue I had with this picture was trying to make simon's face look like it was part of the stone. While it still isn't as flawless as I would like, it's the best I could do and I think it gets the point across.

12 Days of Photoshop: Day 8

Day 8: Poster Parody

             Today's project was altering a movie poster into something different. While thinking of popular movies, my brain drifted to one that many people have claimed as one of the best movies of all time; Grease. Personally, I don't care for the movie (the ending was particularly weak), but it's so popular, any pun with it would be recognizable. I shifted through different names I could use and landed on... Goose. I couldn't help it, I started laughing uncontrollably. Everything else fell into perfect place; the goose head poses, the squacing goose face to replace Olivia Newton John, and how perfectly silly their hair looks. The whole thing is a riot, and I am very happy with the results.

12 Days of Photoshop: Day 7

Day 7: 3D String Pictures

             Today's project was to create a picture that looked to be made out of string using photoshop masks. Using a black brush, you can erase the picture from the background, then use the white brush to reveal parts of it, making it look like string. Using drop shadows, multiple layers, and following contour lines, the image looks almost three dimensional. I decided to use a picture of the cheshire cat, using the string look in reference to his disappearing powers.

12 Days of Photoshop: Day 6

Day 6: Literal Metaphors

                Today's project was to chose a word from a list of compound words and create a literal illustration using photoshop. My pictures were "Crosswalk", "Moonlight", "Butterfly", "Fireworks", and "Sunflower". Moonlight is my favorite because the illusion looks so real and well blended that it could actually be a thing. For two others, I had to improvise and draw cartoon-ish legs and arms on them to get the point across; all of which I thought were funny.

12 Days of Photoshop: Day 5

Day 5: Bring a Photo to Life

             Today's project is to take a photo of some kind, and make the image appear as if it is coming to life. I went big scale with this one and chose to alter a wall mural, specifically, on with whales. I mixed real pictures of whales in poses similar to the ones on the wall, and with a little blending and drop shadows, they started coming off the walls! I also added a few more effects, like the spouting whale, and the water dripping off the side. The water is not the best because I could not find a good picture to use, and I have no idea how to make sloshing water look realistic.

12 Days of Photoshop: Day 4

Day 4: Normal Extremes

             Today's project was to take something normal and make it an extreme situation. For mine, I thought, what if the president got a dinosaur? He IS the president. Presidents deserve extreme pets.

12 Days of Photoshop: Day 3

Day 3: Candy Critter

            Today, we blended an animal and a candy together, making the animal look like it was candy. I made a sweet tarts lizard using the same techniques as when I made that Splat Cat.

12 Days of Photoshop: Day 2

Day 2: True Reflection

                  Today's project was to show the true nature of a picture through changing the shadow or reflection. Mine is symbolic of putting aside your childish nature in adulthood, and how depressing life can feel without it. Despite how the man walking down the street bows his head and walks past the balloon, the child inside years to reach out and grab it.

12 Days of Photoshop Day 1: Identity Change

Day 1: Identity Change

           From now until the end of the year, my class is beginning the dayly photoshop challenge. Today's challenge was to take a product's identity and changing it with another's, perhaps through an ironic pun. For my picture, I swapped part of the YouTube logo with the "2" in U2's logo. The final image looks very believable and is sure to get a few laughs.

Singing Animation

Singing Animation

            For the past two weeks, we have been working on our second animation project. We had to choose a song, recomended 30 sec, and animate the mouth of a picture or drawing to make it sing along to the song. I drew a basic wolf head to act as a base for the different mouth movements, and drew the mouths and eyes seperate so I could add them on later. After I had all the basic mouth positions, I imported all the images into flash, and set the frames up to match the words in the song. The result was a pretty believable animation. However, some of the images in the frames were off center, so the picture shudders, and I'm not sure how to fix it.

Art of Apex High Poster

Spaaaaaace!

Space Gradient

       In today's project, we used a combination of shapes, shadows and gradients to make a scene that looks like space. It was another easy picture that had a lot of variation and was enjoyable to accomplish.

Brush Pictures

Brush Pictures

               Today we went back to photoshop and learned how to make a picture a brush and download brushes as well as different effects available on the program. It was easy, fun, and enjoyable, and I can't wait to do the brush project tomorrow.

Spray Symbols

Spray Symbols

    Today, the tutorial included a few more steps. First, we needed a simple line drawing to import into illustrator. Then, we used a tool to trace it into a vector image and colored it in with the paint bucket. The next step was to make it a symbol, then when you use the spray can with the symbol selected, it sprays the image like a stamp. There were several other tools to change the size and color and experimenting was fun.

Icons

Icons

    Today, we did something similar to the 3D logos from yesterday. Using the shape and gradient tools, we made 2D icons. It was simple and fun to do, with plenty creative results.

Cinemagraphs

Cinemagraphs

        In this project, we made cinemagraphs. To do this, we took a series of pictures and put them together like a flip book, only we erased everything except the moving object so that only one thing in the picture moves. I asked my sister and her friends to help with this project, and though it took a while to figure everything out, the ending gif was nice.

3D Logos

3D Logos

    Today's tutorial was on using the shape and gradient tools to make 3D logos. It was simple to learn and fun to use, and I enjoyed matching shapes with each other to create cool logos.

Duck?: The Pen Tool

Duck?

     In this tutorial, we used the pen tool to outline a photo of a duck and color it to make it look like an actual duck. The pen tool is not a very fun tool to use. The anchor points move weird sometimes and did not function like they were supposed to. The duck came out with a bit of a shaky outline, but it looks good enough.

Adobe Illustrator Flowers

Adobe Illustrator Flowers

         Now we are moving into using Adobe Illustrator. For this exercise, we used shape and color tools to make flowers. It was a very easy process and had some beautiful results. I'll have to do this again on my own.

Typography

Typography

        For this multi-day project, we used our typing skills to create a picture from words. Doing this is simple. Take a picture you want to make and use the type tools to set type in the shape of the picture. You could change the colors to fit the picture if you wish, do it in black and white, or just make an outline. For mine, some of the colors where light, so I put it against a black background. And for effect, I gave it a white shadow.

Text 2

Text 2

      This was our second tutorial under text; downloading fonts and wrapping text around an image. Fonts are easy to download with the right folders and sites, and there are many fun types to choose from. Wrapping text is simple when you know how to properly use the right tools, such as the pen and text tools. The picture I have made is absolutely adorable! I look forward to the next tutorial.

Text

Text

     Today, we learned how to make and alter text in photoshop using the text tool. We had to arrange and adjust text similar to a sample sheet Mr. Sands had posted on blackboard. It was simple enough; the tool was easy to understand and fun to use. I look forward to the next text project.

Walk Cycle

Walk Cycle

            For this next project, we were shown how to make a walk cycle. You had to place a different image

 on each layer in a new position, and when you ran them together, the figure looks like it is walking. It was 

simple to follow as soon as I had an animal to work with. I decided to go for a four-legged walk cycle, 

which was simple if you followed the steps and drew each stage correctly. It looks a little rough, but I am 

pleased with how it turned out.

Barbie Project

Barbie Project

    This project was inspired by the statement that barbie's proportions were unrealistic, but the teachers though this would be the same with other imaginary figures as well. So we had to chose a celebrity to give cartoonish features to and post it here. My choice was Sylvester the cat mixed with Sylvester Stallone, the joke just writes itself. This was a very hard project, as I whenever I used the liquify tool, it warped the picture to the point of being terrible. Thank the photoshop makers for the undo button. This was the best I could manage without the liquify tool.

Retouching Day Two

Retouching Day Two

          Today we were given some extra tutorials and two pictures and told to make the figures in them more 

attractive. While using the tools I already had was easy, I had trouble using things like the liquefy menu to 

adjust things without making them look weird. I decided just to use the methods I already had to spruce up 

the images.

Photo Retouching

Photo Retouching

     We have now moved on to photo retouching, commonly used by magazine companies to make their

 models flawless. We took a picture of a girl who had a lot of freckles on her skin, edited those out, 

smoothed out the edges and added vibrancy to her eyes. It was simple enough once you became familiar 

with the tools and was as much fun as any other project we have done so far.

Paint Splat Project

Paint Splat Project

        This was a fun and creative project where we had to add paint splats to an image to create an effect like that the colors were bleeding off the object. I searched for an object with a lot of color and decided on a blue butterfly. While it was painstaking to cut out each paint splat, it was simple to blend it to the body, and with a blurred flower background, I obtained my desired effect.

Splat Cat

Splat Cat

      In today's tutorial, we were shown how to take a picture of paint splats, warp and adjust them until they 

blended with the animal so that they looked like someone had covered them in paint. It was a simple

 process that can be recreated easily and can create many different images. Online, I found a picture with a 

cross-eyed cat and thought it would be perfect to stick the paint splat right between his eyes. It ended with a

 rather comical effect that I am very proud of.

Newimals

Newimals

         In this project we took two different animals and had to combine them into a new one using all our 

Photoshop skills to make it believable. I chose to use a jaguar and a hyena for mine. Believably blending the 

body parts was hard, and I certainly feel like my abilities were tested by this project, and am still happy how 

it turned out.

X-ray Vision

X-ray Vision

       For today's project, we were told to take a picture of ourselves with a frame and turn the inside of the

frame into an x-ray. This was tons of fun and as it turns out very simple once you get the right pictures. The 

only thing that was difficult was trying to get the skull to look see through so that the viewer could get a good 

look at the books I placed in the skull. While I don't think it looks as good as I wanted, it was the best I 

could manage at the time.

Colorize

Colorize

       In this tutorial, we took a picture and learned how to add interesting colors to it. Colorizing has a

fun and entertaining look to it and is a surprisingly simple trick. It gives you pretty much free range

to pic the colors and gradient you want to use, and smoothing them down is a very easy way to make

it look professional.

Cartoon Portrait

          For this project, we were told to Photoshop a picture of ourselves doing something with a

cartoon character, so I chose a favorite from my childhood; Tigger. I thought to myself, "what does

Tigger do best?" Bouncing, of course! So I depicted myself joining Tigger in one of his romps. Using

the lasso and burn tools, I cropped pieces of myself and added shadows to make it somewhat

believable that I was getting a ride from Tigger. I also used the blur tool to simulate motion, like the

picture was taken as he was bouncing through the air.

Frog Tongue

            This was where things started getting complicated. The concept was to try and add a 

frog to a woman's tongue and blend it so it looked believable. Once again, the tutorial went 

slow enough so I didn't get lost, but I had to pause it a few times to adjust some things. The 

cloning tool is a very useful element that can make some visually interesting pictures. It also 

demonstrated how to use the shadow tool. Adjusting the angle, darkness, and size was very 

difficult in order to get it just right. It took some fine tuning, but the end result was very 

satisfactory.

Angry Pancakes

          The angry pancakes tutorial was a simple and easy to follow introduction to Photoshop. 

It  teaches the basics like how to insert pictures and get your image set up for adjustment, as 

well as a brief description of layers and the tools along the side. Warping the pancakes and 

inserting teeth acted as a good place to start. The liquefy tools, lasso tools, and magic wand 

were easy to comprehend, and yet can be used to do so many things in Photoshop. All around, 

it was a good place to start.