Refining another image.

To begin with, I took an image of me and added an outer glow onto it, to make it look better than the usual one.

Once I had done this, I took an image of the sun, and cut out only the glowing it he middle, I then enlarged this and used it as my background which I thought looked better than just a white background.

After doing this I thought that I should add another image of me from a later date and incorporate it into this image, once I took the picture and put it onto my image, it looked like this.

I thought this made my piece look better as it was adding more depth into my image, and that was the effect I wanted it to give, the only thing I didn't like about the image was that the second image of me looked quite dull compared to the other one, so I chose to change the opacity of the first image of me (The focal point of the image) and put a different style onto the second image of me.

This was the outcome of making those changes, and I thought that it looked better as the two images merged together, instead of there being a blunt change like there used to be before changing the style to Pin Light which added more light to the second image which I wanted as before it looked quite dull.

Back of CD

For the back of my CD case i knew i needed to put my tracklist onto it, so i put on my tracklist then thought of what i could do to fill the canvas to make it look better and not be as boring.

At this point my CD cover was very boring i thought with just a tracklist on there, so i got an image i had created during refinement and then out it onto he image tom see if it would make it look better.

After putting on the image behind the tracklist i thought that it made my back cover look a lot better and a lot less boring. I put the layer with the text at the front so that it wuld be clearer to see, i thought this was necessary as it was the back cover, and the text contained my tracklist, with songs from the year i was born in. However i didnt think my back cover looked like a usual cd case.

So i added a barcode which i thought made my back cover look more like a usual CD case as it looked more realistic, i like the back cover as i didnt put too many images onto it, because if i did it would proparly ruin it, as a back cover is usually just for a tracklist.

 

CD Cover

I decided I was happy with the image I had created of my own take on Neville Brody's image 'Bounce' so put it onto the template for the front of my CD cover.

Once I had done this, I noticed that on the image I created there was a black background which was what made the image on the right stand out and the text too. Once I had thought of the options I could do, either fill the whole CD cover black, or only the top half, I chose to only make the top half black so that the image on the right would stand out. I used the gradient tool so that along the top of the image it would fade into white, as it got further to the left.

However once I put the gradient on it didn't seem right with the text which overlapped both sides, so I used the paintbrush to colour in the halfway point of my image to make the text with two tones stand out more and look more effective. At this point I was happy with my image but I felt that the image behind the text on the right wasn't clear enough to see like the one on the left.

So I changed the style of the image to Linear Light which made the image stand out clearer and I felt added more depth into my image, I chose the linear light as it put more light onto the image and made it clearer to see. I needed to add something onto the bottom of my image because at the moment I thought it looked too plain, and a little boring, so I took this image and put it onto my CD cover and see if it would make it look better.

Unfortunately when I first put the image onto the cd cover it was only showing the text, except from the small part of colour at the top. I was stuck for abit but I realised that the small amount of colour was showing up because it had a background, so I got a version of the original image I was trying to put on and put it behind the modified image.

After doing this he image was clearly visible and looked better, but after looking at the cover a couple fo times I thought that it was too dominant on the cover and took most of the focus from the text 'Memories and Words' which I didnt want to happend because that was what the whole project is about. So I changed the opacity and he styles on the image and ended up with the cover looking like this.

I changed the opacity on all the layers to 50% which I thought made it look better as it wasnt taking focus off the images above, but it was still visible and giving the effect of depth into my cover. I kept the style the same as I thought it looked better now that I had changed the opacity. Despite me thinking it looked better, I still thought that the top of my 3rd image was covering over the image above a little too much so I used the rubber to hide the top of the image and stop it going over and masking the other images.

After doing this, I liked the cd cover and thought it looked better now I had erased the top of my image so that it didnt go into the other images and mask them.

Tracklist

I have chosen 10 songs for my tracklist, and they are-

Cher - Believe
Celine Dion - My Heart Will Go On
Run DMC vs Jason Nevins - Its like that
Boyzone - No Matter What
B*witched - C'est La Vie
LeAnn Rimes - How Do I Live
Spice Girls - Goodbye
Pras Michael - Ghetto Superstar (That Is What You Are)
Chef (Isaac Hayes) - Chocolate Salty Balls
Savage Garden - Truly Madly Deeply

The reason I chose these songs is because these were the top songs from 1998, the year I was born, by using these songs it links to the brief  'Memories and Words'.

Refining a Neville Brody image which I recreated

To begin with I found an image i liked by Neville Brody and thought of ways I could make it my own image and make it unique.

This was the image I chose as a basis to recreate my own image, I started by getting an image of my own face and putting it onto a page, then splitting the page in half, to make my image the way Brody had done. Once I had done this I typed the words 'Memories and Words' onto my image in the style of the Neville Brody. The style I used on the picture of me was Pin Light this is because I think it makes the image look as if the sun is reflecting off my the image, and in this case my face. I thought it was a good idea as my idea is to do with holidays, and it was as if I was on holiday with the sun reflecting off of my face. 

 

Once I had gotten to this stage I thought the side without an image looked to bland and boring so I collected an image of me from when I was younger and put it onto the blank side. I thought this made it look better as it filled the page, and made it look more interesting, I specifically chose a picture of me when I was younger as it links with the brief 'Memories and Words' because it is a memory of how I used to be when I was younger.

However once I put on the image I noticed that the image of me was going onto the other half and making the letters in the middle, which had two colours, look odd. I thought this was a problem and made my image look worse so I changed the opacity from 100% to 15%.

Once I had done this I immediately thought that it looked much better as the second image didn't merge onto the other half and didn't make the letters look odd. This also made the words on the half look clearer and easier to see. Once i had reached this point I thought that I didn't have enough writing on my image and as the brief was to do with typography i thought I should add some more. I also thought that it would be a better idea if I somehow merged the black writing into the white writing so it wasn't just a sudden change in colour.

I began to add more, but then realised if I added too many my image would look too crowded and might hide the images behind the text. To merge the two colours together i added a gradient which I thought made the interchange between the black writing and the white writing look much better. I began to think that the first image, on the left, was too over powering and was hiding the text and being too bright compared to the other half.

So I changed to opacity of the first image from 100% to 70% which I thought made the image look better as I didn't have an image too bright on my image.

Monday 29th April.

Today we have been given a range of images created by Neville Brody and David Carson, and we had to choose one and write down what effects and tools were used to create the image, one we had done that, we began to recreate the image. The image I chose was by Neville Brody, the image he created is called 'The Modern' and I like this image because i like the way that the text dosent quite fit onto the shape, and i think it stands out a lot as that is also one of the reasons I chose to recreate the image. This links to our brief as it is giving us ideas for what to put onto our CD cases.

Friday's Lesson

In Friday's lesson we were drawing our favourite CD net onto a piece of paper, i used an a2 sheet of paper so that i could fit the full size net onto the paper instead of using an a3 sheet and it being too small, we designed 2 or 3 nets and then chose our favourite then had the choice to draw it seperately on a larger scale. We did this so that we could look at the different possibilities of nets for our final design.

Resources I will need for my project.

For my final image, I will need pictures from my favorite holidays, and have pictures of me when i was younger, to go on each cover of the CD case, however the covers will all come together so that when the case is closed it will create a bigger image, so I will also need to choose what picture will be on the front of the CD case, which will link to the brief of "Memories and Words"

What I did yesterday...Nets.

Yesterday, we were creating nets out of paper, to help us decide what we want our cd case to be like. We were developing ideas by creating the cd nets out of paper and choosing our favourite one. This relates to our brief as it will help us choose the style of our cd case, or if we are going to stick to a traditional one. I think I am going to use the net which has the cd in the middle and 4 sides which come together to cover the actual CD.

Mini Project #1

We have been doing our mini projects in the past week and we were shown a tutorial on how to make an image look like an ink outline. We chose a fruit to begin with and then did a few more in the same style. We did this specific mini project to show us how artists use this effect in their images and maybe give us some ideas so that we could incorporate it into our final image. To make this image we used the photoshop tool "Find Edges" and the "Brightness and Contrast" tool, however I used the legacy tool to get a better looking effect. I created this image to see if i could in-corporate it into my final image to use the effect shown above and below.

 

I did another examply of this effect but on a different fruit.

 

What have we been doing?

Over the past few weeks, we have been looking at the artists Neville Brody and David Carson. We have looked at how they use typography in their work, and how they use different photoshop effects like layers and styles. We created an image by using layers and styles. The image i created is like the artists work because they use lots of layers and use opactiy to make them all blend together. I also used styles to add more colour to my image.
I created this image by using 4 pictures on seperate layers and then I added different styles to change the colors of the pictures, I then used opacity so that the layers at the back can be seen, I like using layers and opacity because it adds depth to the image and I think it is a nicer image. I created this image by testing out different lay overlays and tried out different styles, by doing this it gave me an insight into the artists work, and how they use different aspects of photoshop to make their images.

Neville Brody's Image

 

I like this image by Neville Brody because the styles he used make the image stand out, in this image I can see that Brody has used Layers to give the effect of depth in this image. He changed the colour of the writing when the colour of the image changed. I will try to recreate this by using my own images of peoples faces, and then change the words to a song, or a quote which means alot to me, or has some meaning behind it, so that it isn't just random words. I will start to collect images (of faces) so that i could begin to recreate this image and make my own version.

 

Typography

Typography is the use of words or text within a graphic image. The style of the text could indicate the theme of the graphic.

Brief 2

For this brief, we will be creating a CD case which is based on the theme 'Memories and Words'. In this, I will be including appropriate use of typography, appropriate photography and/or my own graphics and appropriate use of lighting and colour. The Artists we will be looking at are David Carson and Neville Brody, these are both typographers.