InsideOutside

I really enjoyed this project. This is definitely not the first time I have transformed a friend of mine into a robot, but it certainly is among my best works. I used a picture of the Terminator for the upper torso/head, and a car engine for the abdomen. The Terminator fit perfectly under the model, and I used a layer mask to erase away his skin, revealing the mechanical aspects of the picture. I took a while with this one, but I'm very pleased with the results, despite how terrifying it is...

For some reason, I really enjoy this piece of artwork. The title of the work is H's Family, constructed by Beijing artist Liu Xiaodong. It's a painting of Muslim relatives gathered in their family cafe. In all likelihood, it is the style of the painting, mixed with the colorful composition that really stands out to me. It's not surreal, but it's definitely not hyper-realistic. I find that balance aesthetically pleasing, and would definitely recommend checking out his other paintings.

Although it took me a really long time to come up with the idea, I enjoyed this project a lot. Honestly, the hardest part was thinking of the idea. Besides that, the project was pretty easy/a lot of fun. I would definitely consider doing another project similar to this in my free time. There's not much more I can say about the comic... I downloaded the fonts from a tutorial I had browsed through about making comics in photoshop. I'm content with the final product.

Here's  that kaleidoscope project we did a while back. There's nothing really special about it. I used a picture of a sunset I had taken a while back, and I find the outcome pretty sweet. The tutorial was easy enough, and I'll probably end up using this again sometime.

Egg Chair

Nothing really to say about this project. I looked up a quick and nifty tutorial for creating the shadow (found here). I lacked inspiration for what to cover the chair with though, so I decided to look around the room for insight. I used the burn tool to darken/expand the shadow, and to make the bottom half of the chair appear darker as well. I used the dodge tool to add a little light to the opposite side, emphasizing the shadow. I had fun with this project, and really enjoyed cutting strips of something and forming them into a whole object.

Midterm

For my midterm, I came across a bit of a mental block as to what I could do with the topic. At first, I considered an elongated corridor as an art gallery with pictures of local restaurants along the walls, with UVA at the end of the hallway. But, after failing at that concept, I kept my art gallery idea and instead made the Rotunda and its columns branch out and hold onto local food chains. I would have rather followed through with my first idea, but I'm pleased with this one as well. The floral effects are merely to fill space, yet I am also pleased with how they turned out as well. All in all, I'm neutral about this project. I probably should have stayed with the grid assignment...

4 Square Project

Despite the amount of time I spend in Photoshop, I honestly rarely ever use filters. Yet, after this project, I realized how much fun they can be. As you can see, I took one image (originally half of a face), and flipped it to make it appear whole; unifying the composition both by look and color. The filters were a lot of fun, and I'll definitely be using them a lot more in the future for creative purposes. Although simple, I am pleased with the end result of the picture. The bottom half of the composition is definitely darker than the top half, and although that wasn't intended, I feel as if it fits well with the two separate "faces". Overall, I'm pleased with the final product.

Visual Pun #4: Running Water

For some reason, I really enjoy this picture. Although it's extremely simple, I just really enjoy the idea of an inanimate object with human limbs on it. This will probably influence projects in my near future... Anyway, I was trying to think of a final pun, and I figured something with running in it would be easy enough to do. Sure enough, running water was an easy project, yet I still enjoyed doing it. I used the turbulence tool + calligraphy brushes to add some speed to the text. Although I could have easily spent more time fine tuning it, I was ready to move on, thus leaving this as my final pun. (The water bottle was an experiment of overlay and linear doge).

Visual Pun #3: Serial Killer

Overall, I'd say that this was me least favorite pun. I had trouble finding a theme with the text, so I just figured a glossy red would suffice. The knife-through-the-box was harder than expected, although with a full assault from the burn tool and a variety of brushes I found online, I enhanced the overall feel of the picture. Like I said, not my favorite, and I was eager to move on to my last pun.

Visual Pun #2: Boxing Match

Classic boxing match. I tried to find a boxy-looking text to match the spirit of the picture, and I messed around with the burn tool to add shadows and whatnot. A simple project, yet time consuming with a lot of detailed editing (putting the boxes behind the ropes was quite annoying). An easy enough and fun project, I enjoyed doing it.

Visual Pun #1: Dragonfly

Visual Pun #1: Dragonfly. Although not the first I created, it was the first that I found while uploading. Overall, I'm pleased with the result. I used a slight posterization on the head of the fly to enhance the eyes. It had a lot of fun with this one, and I could have probably expanded it into a crazy combos if I had truly desired to do so.

Playing With Fire

Just an interesting project I became involved with after stumbling upon a tutorial. I was hoping it to be a secondary project, but it was a lot of fun and I became determined to finish it. Essentially, I took a picture of my girlfriend and turned her into what you see above. I would strongly recommend the tutorial (How to Create a Flaming Photo Manipulation). It was a lot of fun, and I'm pleased with the final product.

Green Things + Williams

This is my first Photoshop project that I have done in a very, very long time. It was a nice reintroduction to Photoshop, and a nice opportunity to mess around with some of the newer options of CS5. Overall, it wasn't my favorite project, due to the limited amount of objects I was able to work with and the restrictions placed on the images. Despite these limitations, I enjoyed figuring out how to incorporate all of the images together. All in all, it's not one of my best works, but I'm pleased with it. The parking meter was bothersome...