Self-portrait

I actually had a very hard time with this portrait. Editing the individual images themselves was pretty straightforward, but they kept locking themselves and becoming part of the background so I couldn't move them or edit them separately afterwards. Even though the composition may be a little cluttered towards the bottom, I'm relatively pleased with how it turned out.

I worked a lot with hue saturation and transparency with this composition. I wanted to create a dreamlike image, since this is kind of like me reminiscing about my wedding day. I didn't want stark colors, so I toned each image down and reduced the saturation. The background is a picture I took at a garden. I liked the composition and the unusual walkway next to the water. After reducing the saturation of colors, I pasted on an image of my husband putting a wedding band on my finger. Originally, my other hand was present in the image, but it looked funny just floating in midair, so I erased the other hand, which overlapped the wedding finger hand. I then used the stamp tool to fill out the part of my arm that had been overlapped by my other hand. Then I added a full-length wedding photo of my husband and I and made it a little more transparent and slightly blurry. I also had to change the angle of the image so that we'd both be standing on the walkway. Lastly, I wanted to have myself actually looking back on that scene so I took two pictures of myself and uploaded them. I reduced the saturation of these as well, because their stark colors clashed with the subdued background. I also wanted to create a softer tone, so I used the color balance tool to put more yellow into the two images of myself. I reduced the transparency of the eraser tool and slowly wore away bits of each image to try and make them seamlessly flow into each other. I finished off the composition by using the smart select tool to select all the major images and then inverted the selection. I applied a motion blur to the background to put more focus on the main images.

Tablet sketch

Not my best sketchwork, but here it is. Maybe I'll get a chance to work at it more in Photoshop.

Tablet sphere

Portrait

Originial photo for "Dorie 4."

Dorie 4

So obviously one of my steps here was to convert the image to black and white. I then used the contrast and brightness tool to create severe lights and darks in the image. I especially like how this turned out in my husband's face. I then cropped the image to create a stronger focus on the two faces in the composition.

The original image for "Dorie 3."

Dorie 3

This was the first image I played around with for this assignment. In the original photo for this image, she was actually quite indistinct amongst her surroundings since the photo encompassed such an expansive area. So naturally the first thing I did was to crop the photo down using the rule of thirds guide option to make a stronger composition centered on Dorie. I made the contrast a little bit stronger, but not by much. The same goes for the brightness of the image. The main thing I did besides cropping it a fair bit, was to adjust the color balance. I ended up with a red-ish tint to everything, but I kind of liked the effect so I left it.

The original photo for "Dorie 2."

Dorie 2

With this image, I again started off by increasing the brightness of the photo and the contrast. Then I used the color balance to give the colors in her coat a little more distinction. I thought about putting this image in black and white, but I liked the grayish quality to the colors in this image.

The original photo for "Dorie 1."

Dorie 1

For our photo assignment, I decided to do images of my dog, Dorie. In this photo, I first played around with the brightness and contrast of the image to make the lighting more dramatic. Then I altered the hue saturation to give the color more distinction. The overall image might be a little dark, but I didn't want it to look too washed out since there were already some nice shadows in the original image.

This photo originally showed Adele's entire upper body and was, of course, in black and white. I first transferred the photo from color to black and white. Then I made it much brighter and added some more contrast. I then decided to crop it to create a stronger composition.

Other image for cartoon strip

Sometimes, Shadow woman gets confused...

When we were given the assignment to create a comic strip centered on oursuper hero, my partner and I decided to make our silly. In our comic strip, Shadow Woman sees a little girl in her all-knowing orb and automatically assumes that she's in grave danger. However, when Shadow Woman arrives on the scene, she sees that it's in fact just a little girl trying to get her kitten out of a tree. We found this picture of a cat to be the last frame in the comic. It was originally much brighter, so we used the magnetic lasso tool to select the sections around the actual cat and put them in black and white, then we just changed the brightness and contrast levels of different parts of the cat to leave its head lit and its body in shadow. We didn't have time to do the middle frame, which was supposed to have the girl in it.

Shadow Woman

Shadow Woman is a very reserved and humble person. As a hero, she expects and seeks to attract no praise or recognition from others. She lurks in the shadows, seeking out those she can help. In her possession is a knowing sphere that aids her in finding those in need of saving. That, along with her ability to manipulate the shadows around her to either cloak her and others or even to become a solid structure with which to manipulate her surroundings enable her to attempt feats that would not be feasible with her physical body alone. She is not physically strong, but she has a strong sense of justice that fuels her need to help those around her.

My partner actually did the all of the photoshopping for this image, while I created the background story for our character. We both spent time finding images of dark alleys and women and came up with the background in the picture and an image of a young gymnast with a ball in her hand. My partner used the smudge tool for the majority of the effects, and created the shadowy "cloak" around our hero by taking colors from the background and transferring them.