Classes 15 and 16 - The poster

So finally after much debate regarding my poster to do with "Is Junk Food Really Cheap in the Long Run", I struggled with an internal struggle of sorts. I came to the realization that I did not like any of my ideas, because they at worst were preachy and at best they were depressing or simply stating facts or trying to give people a different look at obesity which just did not sit well with me. The thing I HATE, yes HATE about social justice posters are these qualities I have just stated above. When I see posters or images like this, and trust me they come at me all day from everywhere, I realize how immune I am to them as they do not offer me a way to help the situation, but are either simply depressing in restating already well know facts or stats, or new ones, or they are preaching either overtly or smugly what or what not to do, or what or what is not good for you and why. Arrrrrrrrr.....

This is why I wanted to create a poster to do with change. So instead I stick with the topic of obesity and I add to it the element of change and choice. I still want to appeal to as many people as possible, and because I am interested in helping, I do not profess that a poster can solve the problem or even come close, but what it can do is plant a seed of change or choice - which I feel is rather more effective than simply depressing people and then turning them off, thus making the problem just seem daunting. Oh and on another not, the posters that do advocate change, want change NOW, not soon, not tomorrow, not next year, but NOW or YESTERDAY - these then well... they tend to go towards making people feel hopeless as it cannot all happen NOW! Change takes time, even if we may not have the time, change takes time. Lets get back to the basics people. Its called one step at a time, or one small change every week - way more effective than having to climb a full mountain in an hour.

Sorry for the rant, but really, we need to think about what we put out there in the world in how it is going to affect people. So anyhow my new poster design will aim as stated above not to tell people to change NOW, or DEMAND that they change OR ELSE, but it aims to give people a choice, an option, compassion, understanding that change does take time, and respect that it is their choice.

So below I have put the image of my final poster, it is not "pretty", or "fancy" or even "sensational". My poster is not meant to shock people, or sway their opinion. My poster is about respect, and choice, and truth, and time. It is a poster that I can put into the world that I can hope affects people in a positive light, and at least does not depress people, or make them feel worse about themselves, or hopeless, I want to give them hope that things are possible, and not a fantasical hope, but a realistic hope. This is a poster I am comfortable sending out into the world.

Class 014

In class on Tuesday this week, we basically alpha channeled a bottle of the internet, and then added some text and labeling to define the bottle. I chose a wine bottle and then added an Art Nouveau label on the front with text saying Flamenco. We learned how to warp text and also use more layer properties and things. We copied the label twice and after clipping both labels it into the bottle on top of one another, we turned the opacity on the lower label layer low, and on the top one we set the layer property to "overlay" and turned the opacity down just a bit. The resulting look is as though the label is on the bottle as doing this allows the qualities of light and shadow on the bottle to come through. This look is helped along by adding an outer glow to the bottle. I also found a cork online, to which I alpha channeled and added to the image. To get the look that the cork is in the bottle, I created a copy of the cork layer and clipped it into the bottle and then lowered its opacity. I also added a half layer of red, also clipped into the bottle, and lowered in opacity to give a look that the bottle is filled with wine.
On the background behind the bottle, we added a radial gradient using the gradient tool to achieve a dramatic effect.

Classes 12 and 13; The Postcards

So I decided to create a postcard for Vancouver Fashion Week and a postcard design for the Emily Carr University Degree Show / Exhibition

For the Emily Carr Postcard, I used in Photoshop:

• Text tool
• Eye Dropper Tool
• Shape Tool 
• Smudge Tool
• Clipping Mask 
• Rulers 
• Brushes 
• Drop Shadow 
• Layer filters 

Postcard for the Emily Carr University Grad Exhibition

 For the Vancouver Fashion Week Postcard I used in Illustrator: The pen tool
And in Photoshop I used:

• Text tool
• Clipping Mask
• Smudge Tool
• Brushes 
• Layer Filters
• Brushes 
• Gradient
• Lighting Filters
• Warp tool 
• Transform tool
• Rulers 
• Paint bucket 

Webpage

I have just put together my art website created with weebly (because yes its free!)

The address is 7ahira.weebly.com

Class 011 - Illustrator

Today in class we began to delve into the Adobe program known as Illustrator.

Using the pen tool in Illustrator is, at least I find, a more intuitive process than in Photoshop, that said, I still like Photoshop for brushes, and filters and cleaning up drawings and the rest.

We learned how to group things in Illustrator in groups that we could later go into and modify, and then learned how to place things made in Illustrator into Photoshop - using placement, and or dropping. Depending if you leave it, your placed object or illustration, as a vector or not within Photoshop, will change the quality of the image. Vectors having a much higher quality line.

I am feeling for sure a lot less intimidated now by Illustrator, and am excited to learn more.

The image below was of a frog, traced and colored in Illustrator and then placed in Photoshop with a background and text. A duplicate frog was created in photoshop, and played around with using brushes and filters, and this frog was clipped into the original frog from Illustrator

Class 010 - What is my poster about?

Ok so for my poster I have picked my topic to be Obesity, and I have picked my narrowed focus to be:
Is Junk food really cheaper in the long run?
Studies have shown and continue to be shown that junk food eaten frequently overtime leads to obesity, high cholesterol, heart issues, diabetes, and an over all diminished quality off life. Taking thus these factors into consideration over fast food places which tout cheap but affordable food, I ask is it really cheaper if you factor in future medical bills and a usually much poorer quality of life.

This is a major issue in the Western world today as 1 in 3 people are considered to be overweight and a whopping 15% considered to be obese. On top of this all of the issues related above, are all on the rise at a very high rate of rise. This is concerning to say the least.

My poster will aim to change the perception of what really is cheap, and is aimed at people who choose their foods and snacks, at university and high school students who buy their lunches, and at parents who usually pay for their children's food as well as their own.

This poster could really be placed everywhere from schools to grocery stores to anywhere in the city. It is relevant and necessary to change our perceptions.

Class 009 - Photo manipulation and retouching

Learned how to properly use curves, spot healing, and burn tools, and also the use of filters of Liquify, Unsharp, and High Pass.

In our image manipulation we first took an large image of a face without makeup from the web, and then duplicated the face to create a new layer off of which to work from which we called face.

On this new duplicated layer we first evened out the redness of the facial image by first manipulating the shadow and light of the image subtly using curves, then we played with color balance in shadows, highlights and mid-tones of the skin to even it out better. Our final area of manipulation to even out skin was to use hue and saturation to again subtly manipulate a little more the image.

Next we used an unsharp filter on the face from under filters, to sharpen the eyes. We then used the clone stamp (lower opacity is more subtle) to get rid of skin blemishes like scars, zits, bruises, warts, large pores, etc.

At this stage we created a duplicate layer of this layer, and called it skin. On this layer we used a quick mask to redden out the skin of the face and neck of the face image, and then clicked of the mask, were left with a marquee around the skin select inverse-ed the marquee, and then deleted it so on this layer we are only left with skin. We added a Gaussian blur to this layer at about a 4 and then put this layers opacity down to about 85.

We then created another duplicate layer of the "face" layer, not the skin layer, and placed it over top the skin layer only to clip it in. We called this new layer face 2. Under filter / other, we placed a high pass filter over top this layer, and set it again to about 4, and then under layer options we selected linear light. We then set the opacity of this layer to 40.

We selected now the layers called face, skin, and face 2, and under layer, we merged them into a single layer. We called this merged layer face.

We duplicated the new face layer and then on the duplicate layer we used quick mask to select the whites of the eyes to adjust them to better brightness, and then the lips to set them to a darker red tone. We then, under filter, pressed on Liquify and were taken into a window of manipulations including push and pull tools as well as pucker and bloat to enlarge the eyes and lips of the face, narrow the chin, ect.

I felt rather bad using that image of the woman, to post here the before and after photos. I just would not want to imagine her finding this blog and the image of her. That would be sad :( So then I used a crappy image of myself and celebrified it up using the methods described above.

Me - blemishes and all

So I evened out skin tone, got rid of blemishes, plumped the lips, rouged the lips, restructured the nose, etc, and this is why one should never look at magazines and feel bad :) It is all fake. 

I actually spoke to a guy who does the cover shots for some large magazine, and he told me that after hair, make up, styling, lighting, and photography, the images then get retouched using Photoshop for about 15- 30 hours. Sad but true. I only spent about an hour on this one, so you can just imagine what it would look like another 14 or 29 hours from now.