Final Movie

Like in all the previous assignments I enjoyed working with adobe rather than quark. This could possibly be caused by learning photoshop first, so moving to inDesign was easier than quark. The hardest part of the card to achieve was the background color. The original has a neon glow to it, that was very hard to find in the color pallet. The next hardest part of the assignment was making he "wired" logo. I made the logo in adobe illustrator. I need to make the word have no background. It was harder to put the logo in the quark version, since it is not an adobe product, I could not simply copy and paste.

This has been the most challenging assignment for me so far. I felt there was more possibilities to do with the other projects. I wanted the brochure to be creative, but still be simple enough for viewers to follow/ read taking away the necessary information from it. My partner and I used Adobe InDesign CS4 to complete the brochure. Once I figured out how to use the crop boxes it made working with inDesign very easy. The other issue was the images I placed into inDesign appeared pixilated, I was able to correct this by changing the images preferences from fastest loading to best quality.

Skateboards have this rebellious feel to them and longboards comes with a feeling of speed and the outdoors. We tried to merge these feelings with the brochure. Since the name of the company is Original skateboards and our focus being on their longboards. We used a peaceful woods background and added a image of an open road. We then used rebellious type fonts. I found the road was a nice touch because it connected all the inside panels nicely. The back panels were meant to be simpler since they provided necessary contact information.

original skateboards brochure

design

When I was first told to make a mock up for my Empire of the Sun poster I had no clue at all what I wanted it to look like. The one thing I knew it had to be was somewhat crazy, since the Band Empire of the Sun is quite odd for lack of a better world. I decided to do some research by watching their music videos and looking at their album covers, for inspiration. What helped me the most was just sitting down and playing with Photoshop and eventually quark.

Every image I found I needed to crop in order to mesh them all together. I knew I needed a picture of the lead singer, so what that was the first image I added to the poster. The second was experimenting with background. Based off one of their album covers I realized that I wanted him to immerge out of clouds, so that’s what I looked for in my background.

The free transform tool was my best friend for the entire prodject, being able to customize everything the way I wanted it. The other tool I used was the eraser. Using the eraser I was able to make images appear on in front of others. To make it appear as if the tiger and the leader singer were in or behind the cloud.

I found that quark had much better selection of fonts. So that was the main reason I like to use it. However I felt it was easier to manipulate layers and images better in Photoshop. Combining both programs I felt was necessary in order to achieve the poster that I felt proud of.

Empire of the sun poster

Power Point Design Rationale

When working on my power point the first question I wanted to figure out, was what I wanted my background to for my slides. I did not want it to be distracting but at the same time I wanted it to be original. My answer came to me when I was playing with Adobe illustrator, I decided to digitally draw "Paramore". However once completed I needed to open up the photo in Photoshop to change the opacity, to be less distracting.

After the title slide my goal was to effectively keep the viewer's eyes on the correct information, using fade to gray technique. I wanted to animation to look nice but at the same time always serve the purpose of producing an effective PowerPoint.

My second slide introduced the most recent album of Paramore. The first and most important information was the album title so using animation I had that come in before anything else. After which I had the album cover slide across the screen. During the peer review stage it was decided that the album cover was odd looking with no transparency. This posed a problem because I wanted to the viewer to be able to fully see the album cover which was hard to do when transparent. Using animation I had a non transparent image float across the screen then, I had it fade ontop of a transparent photoshoped image. However I need the timing to be perfect, because I did not want the second image to appear before the other image faded. I decided to save time on this slide by having all the times of songs come in all at once.

The third slide I wanted to use images to convey fun facts. It just so happened that Paramore had done the soundtracks to two very recent movies, Twilight and Jennifer's Body. Online I found the movie posters, using animation I had them both appear simultaneously.

The fourth slide was my most difficult slide, since I did not want to use any of the pre-made tables. I decided that I wanted my table to be made as the information came on the screen, not all at once. So I decided I would use the line tool in the object palette. After each row was completed I had a line appear, using custom animation. I used adobe illustrator to make a design for the header, I used Paramore's colors orange, red, and black.

The fifth slide was the slide I was most proud of. Because of how I was able to combine photoshop and powerpoint's animation effectively. For every photo that I found of Paramore, I would open up in photoshop and add an effect to it. In powerpoint I wanted the pictures to fly in then once still, turn into the photoshoped version of that picture. This was a little tricky to acomplish, because I had to have the photoshop photo shop image appear right before the original dissolved away.

Animation

When making the collage, I wanted it to actually look like I was lying awake. I tried to achieve this by making myself look like i'm lying on and actual bed. I tried to explore with photoshop as much as I could to make my college really realistic. I found that using the magic wand tool allowed me to crop the image so it was just the body parts. Then using the free transform tool I was able to change the size and angle of the body parts to make them fit with all the rest.

Font Poem

I fear I can't take it tonight I lie awake feeling empty, I can. -Paramore

The font poem assignment although different from the contact sheet, still uses photoshop. However instead of working and adjusting images I practiced manipulating fonts. This assignment is almost overwhelming when you realize how many different ways you can customize words.

Before even using photoshop I had to chose a 10-15 word sentence about life, which took me way to long to find. What I decided to do was chose lyrics from the band Paramore. Paramore is an alternative rock band, so their lyrics have a lot of emotion. I chose these lyrics because I believe they represent how life can be an on going struggle to achieve one's goals. It begins by showing the stress and fear of failing, and it ends with confidence of future achievement.

I wanted the fonts I used to represent the words best they could. This was harder than I thought just because of all the options photoshop offers. Being indecisive does not help. Some words I wanted to appear as scary, for instance "fear". I found that Matura MT Std achieved this the best, I also added effects. I decided to make the word have a bubbly texture, which combined with red font made it appear like blood. I also used the Lasso Tool and paint bucket tool to make it appear as if blood was dripping off the word. I was most proud of this word out of the rest.

The next word I was very proud of was "Feeling". I chose the font Shuriken Boy Std, and added a pixel effect, that gives the word a pins and needles feel to it.

My main goal when arranging the words was to use all the area without over crowding the words. I also felt that it since my font poem discusses "lying awake" I thought the words could be arranged in a sort of messy confused layout, sort of how you feel when you can't fall asleep. If I had more time I would of liked to make the background like a starry night. I also thought it would of been cool to add sound to the animation, like the lyrics being sung by the actual artist.

Contact Sheet

When I first saw the contact sheet listed as an assignment, I thought it would be a completely different type of an assignment. For instance making a sheet with my contact information. I was glad to here that the assignment was not that but instead an assignment based on editing images with photoshop. I have never been able to use photoshop, and its always been something I have wanted to learn. Especially since both my parents know how to use it.

When starting this assignment I was introduced to the term DPI (Dots Per Inch). The more dots an image has the higher quality it is. We were instructed to find an image that was 1200 dpi, which apparently is a high quality image. Finding an image that was 1200 dpi was a bit difficult on flickr.com. So what I did was type "1200 dpi images" into google. In order to check to see if the image was 1200 dpi you have to open it up in photoshop. Once in photoshop you go to Image ---> Image Size. I did not realize how much better the 1200 dpi image was until I had to change the same image to a 72 dpi image.

The second row I found to be the most difficult, because in order to make the image duo tone I needed to change the file to a pdf file. To make this row easier for me to do, I always kept the original image saved with its original coloring. I would re open the image every time and start from scratch. The image is originally RGB since I found it on the web.

Row three was the only row that I had to use the crop tool not the for the purpose of zooming in on the image. I started by finding an image that was already a landscape image. I then opened up the image and changed the height to 1 inch. By changing the height the width changed automatically. All three images on this row have a height of 1 inch. However the widths are different. To get the image to be a perfect square I used the crop tool, and set if to 1 inch by 1 inch. I had the hardest time making the image a portrait. The image size window would not allow me to make the height bigger than the width. What I ended up doing was using the crop tool but not giving it any restrictions, so I could crop whatever size I wanted.

Just like in row three, it was easier to complete row 4 if I set the image to "fit to screen" mode. In row four I had to crop the image to zoom in on a certain part of the image. This was difficult because in order for the zoom feature to work, you could not crop from the edges and you had to press the check mark. Keeping the image from becoming blurry with each crop was a challenge. I eventually figured out that I needed to crop from the original image instead of previously cropped images that had less pixels.

Row five required more an artistic touch, where you used the tools learned from row four and applied them to make an abstract image. The problem I ran into was I did not zoom in enough to confuse the viewer. By confusion I don't mean having a blurry image, but instead a clear image that is zoomed so far in the viewer doesn't entirely know what they are looking at.

I had the most fun with the last row, using the different artistic tools that photo shop offers. Clicking filter > Artistic opens up a hoge menu of options to customize your photo, to make it appear as a painting or color pencil drawing. After you choose one of the options a window pops up where you can customize it further.