Camaro Book

Term Project Draft :(

Well, I unfortunately was unable to get to the computer lab at SOU in time to complete this assignment. For now, until I am able to make this up, I have an interesting, true little story to tell you. I am currently attending both SOU in Ashland, and RCC in Grants Pass (I live in Grants Pass). RCC has veteran's day off, and so I assumed that SOU would as well. Later, I found out that there was school on veteran's day ofcourse, and so I decided to make an attempt at completing my draft the next day, "Friday." I  have two cars, a 2006 mazda 3i and a 400hp, gas hog, 1987 IROC-Z Camaro. The reason im telling you this, is because I got locked out of my house that day, and only had the keys to the gas hog. So then I took the Camaro to SOU, and when I got there, I locked myself out of my car with the keys in the ignition. To make things worse, my cell phone died and I had to use some one else's phone to call triple A. By the time triple A got to my car, the computer lab had closed, so I had made an interesting trip to SOU that day to accomplish no school work. The next day, Saturday, I misread the computer lab schedule on the site and arrived at the wrong time at the lab and they were closed yet again. So, if you would kindly extend the due date I would appreciate it a lot. It also appears that Meesh Moore is having similar problems or something, because she has not posted her project either, But her idea for her book sounds intriguing.

Term Project proposal

  From my understanding of the project assignment, I will be creating an informational photo book about Chevy Camaros. I am uncertain as to whether or not this will be one of the selections from this week's reading. The dimensions of the pages in the book will be 8x11. The reason for choosing this project is because I have had a life long interest in these particular types of muscle cars, and have been studying their  design since they were created.

  The content of this project will reflect that of my knowledge of these cars as well as displaying pictures to illustrate my points in narrating this project. I will be creating original content through Adobe Photoshop, and the book will be mostly pictures with factual information. Of course, this is a non-fiction book, being that these cars are real, and drive around all over the place. I will be working on this book with one of my friends, and most likely my family. However, I do have a question as to whether or not I am able to use photos from Google Images or not?

Project 5

  I was inspired to create my first poster after the silent knight that I met out in town randomly. For the design, I decided to use irony from what the name of the movie suggestests. On my second poster, a friend helped me with the design and helped with ideas. Being that the month of November is coming up, I decided to use it as the name of the album of a make believe band. Inspiration for the make believe band name came from my friend helping me with this project, so I called it A Friend of A Friend.

  I used the Gradient tool for one of the first times in this class on this project, as well as the Eraser tool. These tools helped me gain the affect of shadowing that I wanted. In the poster of Silent Knight, I wanted to use the darkness with color to draw attention to the knight in the bottom right, as well as the movie info. When I was creating the band poster (CD cover), I was playing around with different types of gradients and eventually came to be satisfied with the ending result. In both posters I tried to use vibrant, bright, and dark colors to catch a person's attention. This was a fun project overall.

Project 4

  I certainly enjoyed taking all of these pictures, but I do prefer to keep myself behind the camera. Taking a picture of, "the Other" was certainly fun, but I feel that I learned more from taking pictures of the "Alphabet Soup." Looking at things from a different perspective and finding shapes and letters in nature was a new experience. Some of the shapes or letters were easier to find than others, but for some, I really had to look. Although I learned more from taking the, "Alphabet Soup" pictures, taking "the Other" picture was more fun. This project worked out well for me because I had the opportunity of meeting some very interesting characters, that I had met once before, (whom I don't know), the week previous. I most deffinately decided that these knights and assassin were going to be my strangers picture. I had seen them in Grants pass, down town, the Friday before this project. I had to take a picture of them, and asked their permission, they agreed and voila! I asked them to pose for the picture, but got the unexpected result of a blury assassin, behind the knights. For my "Friend" picture, I decided that it would be most appropriate to use my dog, Bismarck. It was difficult to get him to stay still long enough to get the picture.

  For the picture of myself, I played around with Hue and Saturation, aswell as contrast. In the picture of my dog, I couldn't think of much. So I decided to create a new layer and use the paint brush to create extra effects to show his other side. As far as, "the Other" picture, I decided to go with the blury assassin effect that was already there. I created new layers, used quick mask, then used the paint brush to highlight the assassin in the backround, giving him color, and used saturation/contrast to make the rest of the photo black and white. The only way I changed the final "Other" image was by adjusting the size. As for the pictures of the letters, I continued to play around with Hue/Saturation, Contrast, and newly discovered Vibrance.

Project 3

  

  At first, I had no idea what letters I was going to use to work with in my images. After some thinking, I decided to use the letters of my name and started to play with letters. I beleive that for the first couple of letters I stayed with the default typeface, but later on used different kinds of typefaces. A friend was with me at the time helping me choose colors and typefaces at the time. Most of my designs were random and off of the top of my head. 

  The letter A was difficult at first, but after I figured out how to use free transfrom better, it was simple. The instructional videos were very helpful, especially when it came to rasterizing my letters to cut them up.My first two letters were fairly easy because I mainly used free transform and made duplicate layers, fitting them together to make shapes. For the letters that I did rasterize, I had fun manipulating them by changing their size, shape or even drawing on them. The letter E has got to be my favorite because I thought that, with the kind of typeface I used, it looked like a ship. I fliped the E upside down with free transform and used it as a ship, fighting those nasty E waves. After making E clouds, I decided that my image was done because I didn't want it to be cluttered. Those are the images that I put most of my effort into, for the other letters I started to run out of ideas. In all of my images, I played around with the different kinds of layer formats, X being the most noticable. This was another fun project and I look forward to the next!

Toy

   My paper toy, that I have named super soldier, was inspired by Bungie's Halo game character Master Chief. I have no political statement for my toy, just having some fun creating a cool design. At first,I had not even started on my project, and I was nervous because the due date for this project was getting nearer. I watched anxiously as I saw other students completing their toys with intriguing designs, and then my mind started to drift off about Halo. So after thinking about Halo, it hit me that I should make a character that is futuristic and cool like Master Chief.

  In creating my toy's design, I played around with the colors and finally decided on blue. I am uncertain about if I used hue and saturation completely, but I did play around with the color box that shows up when you select a color. I began with designing the face-mask and had much difficulty in keeping it evenly matched on either side. To create most of the lines on the face of the toy, I used the paint brush, until I discovered the line tool. Other tools that I used include the fill tool (Shift+F5), and the Polygon Lasso tool. I decided to put a electrical socket on the back of the head because it seemed like a funny thing to do and would make my toy a little more unique. What I am most proud of is the body armor on the torso of my toy, which took a lot of time to do, especially upside down. Although difficult in some areas, and very time consuming, this project was fun overall.

Scratch Reflection

  For my first image, I was really trying hard to figure out what to do. I used the fill layer option, and filled the whole backround with blue. Then, after messing around with some things, I used the polygon lasso tool to create a star shape and filled it with yellow. After that I used the paint brush tool and used different sizes to create stars in the backround. Even though I have used Adobe Photoshop before in a class at RCC, I have become "rusty" and forgot a few things.

  In my second image, I was inspired by my craving for ice cream. Again I used the Polygon lasso tool to create cones, and used the regular lasso tool for the actual ice cream itself. After that I used the shift + F5 hotkey to fill in layers for the colors i wanted. Since I did not want to take the time to make a lot of ice cream for a pryamid, I started to search for a tool to make it easier for me. I found or rediscovered the duplicate layer tool, and away I went duplicating ice cream after ice cream. This would have to be my favorite image because I had so much fun creating it.

  Finally my last but not least, third image had to be one of the easiest. Most of the image was created by using the Polygon lasso tool to create that sharp edge. After creatingn all the shapes, I simply filled them in with color using shift + F5. Then I placed each layer according to what effect I wanted in the image, for instace: to have mountains behind the grass. I will definitely have to get better aquainted with the Mac and Adobe Photoshop 5. Overall I had fun creating these images and never really stuck to one idea I had, it was always changing.

Scratch

Limited Palette

Flat Color

who,what,where

My name is Alex Wells, and I have the Thursday lab with Arnie Abrams from 12-1:50pm......uh oh. I just realized I missed class while posting this! Noooooo! I thought class started at 1:50pm oh nooooooooooo!!!