Magical Landscape/Beast

For this assignment, we were to create some sort of magical landscape or beast that was inspired by the film, "Beasts of the Southern Wild." I chose to use one of my old drawings of an animal from a video game, and layered on top of it a random, swirling pattern of colors. I then found a picture of a child throwing his arms in the air, and did the same process but with brighter colors. The background is made from a collection of filters and rendered clouds. After seeing someone else's example that included a child, I decided to incorporate a kid riding the beast. Overall I'm happy with the result, even if some of the colors are not as bold as I wished they were, and some pixels look rather rough.

Paint Splatter

For this assignment, we were to follow a tutorial on NAPP that showed how to position a paint splatter digitally made image with a photo of a person, to create the effect of paint the two elements meshing realistically. I decided to go a slightly different route, by taking a picture of a bare tree, and using paint splatters to mimic leaves. I found three of these paint splatters online, and then warped and recolored them to be more appropriate for the tree. To have a few branches appear in front of the paint, I simply used a very small eraser along the branches, with the paint layer's opacity reduced. Overall, I'm happy with the result, though the light on some parts of the tree is somewhat of a nuisance.

Batesville Day

For this assignment, we were to create a t-shirt design for the local event, "Batesville Day." 

Two themes of this event that were presented were the 10K Race and Apple Butter. Originally, I wanted to have a jar of apple butter being poured out over the text of "Batesville Day,"

 but apple butter is not very fluid, so I took a different approach. I decided to create a track for the runners that appeared to be made out of apple butter. I made the runners and jar from tracing images with vectors. The whole image was made in Illustrator, and then turned black and white in Photoshop. Overall I'm happy with the result, though I wish the track could continue in some way instead of just end kind of abruptly.

NAPP Tutorial

For this assignment, we were to find a tutorial on the NAPP website, and follow through with it. I found an interesting one involving explosion particle effects and text. I used the title, "Project Shred" because that is the current title of a video game I am working on. The concept of the game is an extreme winter sports event, where two teams are allowed to do whatever it takes to win. So the title "Shred" refers to both a racer shredding snow, as well as shredding the competition. I followed the tutorial to get the first image, but put my own spin on it to make the second one. I chose those colors in the second one because those are one of the team's colors. The colors are also quite vibrant, and the splatter effect complements both of them. The particle effects from the explosion are also supposed to resemble flying snow. Overall I am pleased with the result, though there are a few parts in the text that seem a little pixelated.

Tutorial Link: http://members.photoshopuser.com/article/exploding-particles/

WAHS Agenda Cover

For this assignment, we were to create the cover for next year's agenda/planner cover. I decided to go with a simple design of the letter logo, instead of the warrior logo, because the latter was much more commonly used. I recreated the logo in Illustrator, and when changing the border settings, I found a kind of chalky textured one. So I saved that and edited every border in Photoshop to be more chalky. I made a smudged, rough background, and then made small paint/chalk effects to the logo. Overall, I'm happy with the result, even though I'm not sure about the text.

Business Card

     

For this assignment, we were to create some sort of card, be it greeting, business, holiday, etc. This assignment was influenced by the site, "Minted" (minted.com) where you can browse a wide variety of custom designed cards. I decided to go with a business card, and made up a clockwork repair and restoration business. I chose the name, "Sam Coster" after seeing that a man named "Samuel Coster" was a famous clockmaker. I used a series of gradients and shapes to achieve a grey and red styled backdrop. I also used a gear vector that I made a few years ago. The black shapes around "Coster's Clockwork" were made with a brush, and then duplicated to have a gradient fading effect. I positioned the text off-center, after seeing that the gear was also not quite specifically positioned. For the back of the card, I reversed the red and gear vectors, for consistency and style. I'm not sure if I should have placed things off-center though. Overall I'm pleased with it, though there are a few design choices I wasn't completely certain were correct, such as the font.

Animated Gif

For this assignment, we were to make an animated gif. I had never made a gif, but I was curious and interested in how to do so. I decided to make the title card of a previous personal project animated. PILE is a game that I hope to produce someday. It is a murder mystery, that mainly addresses Man Vs. Man and Man Vs. Nature themes. Each day, someone in the quiet Canadian town, Charlotteside, (name subject to change) is killed, and it is up to the player to discern who the killer, before they end up being the next victim. However, a terrible winter storm is brewing, and each day the snow comes down heavier and the wind blows harder. So unless the player is cunning and quick on their feet, the pile of snow and bodies will grow and blanket the town.
(If you look closely at the snow, you may see this represented)

I decided to animate the snow falling down over the title image. I followed the given tutorial, as well as another tutorial for how to create snow. Overall I'm happy with this, though I'd like it if the snow truly looked as if it was constantly falling. And the snow in the original image unfortunately doesn't move.

Animation Tutorial: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ot5GwpQPjF0
Snow Effect Tutorial: http://www.photoshopessentials.com/photo-effects/photoshop-snow/