Typography

                                   www.creativethriftshop.com/Exhibition/2006htm/PR_XMen198.htm

the 198 is a comic book miniseries based on the X-Men in which the remaining Mutants (people with superpowers) are forced by the government to enter a concentration camp-like environment. I chose this as my first example because both the text and the colour scheme are very evocative and mirrir the feel of the story. aditionally I like the barcode background for the title, It makes things seem very impersonal.

                                                 http://ifanboy.com/comics/generation-hope-12/
Generation hope is another X men comic book and an ongoing series. the cover art for this issue is actually an ongoing theme in the comic book industry in which the writing is that shade of white blue and the lead female character is panicking. this is due to an event that is taking place in the Marvel universe. the lighe blue colour and white background do increase the "insanity" feel of the image, but what I really like about the font is the angular look. Generation hope is supposed to be the next generation of X-Men. and the text's angular letters seem futuristic. also the "X" inside the "O" in "HOPE" is an iconic logo.

                       darklordbunnykins.wordpress.com/2010/02/22/beastly-books-horns-by-joe-hill/
the scratched wood look in this type looks cool for the horror/thriller book that this cover is actually for. I also like how the brightest text happens in the darkest part of the picture. also the difference in text sizes is interesting, the author's name is slightly bigger than the title giving it even more emphasis.

Week - I dont know I lost track...anyway this is aftereffects

So starting out with aftereffects I feel confident. I used to use flash player so I was familiar with the principles of the program. Learning how to use the interface was the only challenging thing. The tutorial was simple enough. we just added a moving text box to a pre-existing slide.

Since I finished that really quickly I decided to screw around with the aftereffects effects. First I played with hue. making the colours change over time resulting in a weird 60s 70s tie dye sort of thing. Then I decided to play with brightness creating a slow white out at the end leaving just the text of my production company behind (Rusty Cyborg productions). The last thing I decided to was fade out the text. By fooling around with the opaqueness settings. So I feel like I'm much more confident with this software then I did the previous software.

So in terms of ideas for this project I'm mainly thinking about two sort of ideas (knowing full well I probably wont get to use either). The first idea is a bathroom sign person growing horns and a pitchfork and a tail. This represents my favourite read of the summer, Horns. The second idea is a Coffee cup that slides into place and as it slides in it uncovers the word Baristas. this is based on an idea I have for a web show about a coffee place.

soooooo yeah. in summation. Aftereffects, not so hard thus far. I have two solid ideas, and I'm not worried...yet.

Artist statement

For My Photoshop assignment I had several Ideas but they were all too complicated untill I had the idea for a movie poster. The Poster would contain three people one in the foreground seen from behind holding a knife, the person in the middleground would be wearing a piece of vibrant clothing that I could accentuate, and the person in the back would be blurry and mysterious. The photo would be entirely in black and white except for the person in the midground who would be in full colour The poster would be for an action movie called Assassin. And I put a plot synopsis in my last blog.

When I took the photo I went up to a semi-busy street with my sister for the midground model. Setting up a tripod at a low height I first took several photos of her with her standing at different angles and in different spots and poses. Then I took a photo of myself in the background. Making sure that the spot I stood in would be unobstructed by my sister. Finally I took photos of myself (in different clothes) in the foreground. With my back to the camera.

In photoshop I used my sister`s photo as the background, Then I cut myself and my shadow from the photo of the far back person, and put it in a new layer on top of the the background layer in the same position that it was in the background photo. Finally using the same methods I cut the foreground picture out of its photo and put it into a new layer.

Then I selected my sister, inversed the selection to select everything but my sister and Black and whited the whole thing. Played with the brightness in the contrast until I was satisfied and repeated the Band W preocess with the same contrast and brightness settings on all the layers.

It was at this time I realised that the dimensions for the photo were wrong. When I resized the photo it looked slightly stretched. So I decided to make my photo into an album cover. Resizing it again.

For the fonts I wasnt satisfied with what I could find in default photoshop so I searched online to find two fonts. One for my band name and one for my album. I found an interesting, angular font for my band name, and I found a grungy damaged looking font that looked like it belonged on an old worn out warning sign.

I positioned the artist name at the bottom of the screen where things were mostly empty. To try and separate the words from the album art. I put the Album name inside of a black area created by the person in the foreground. I did this to connect the album name to the artwork.

In terms of touch ups and other tools I used; I blurred the edges of all three people to smooth them into the background, and blurred my sister`s face to make her more mysterious and make the album name make sense. Also in all the photos you could see some sort of shiny stain on the street left by juice or beer or something, so I used the clone stamp tool to get rid of the shiny stains.

My target market for this cover is 18-25 year old hipsters with an interest in indie grunge. I target that market with the darker tone of the photo (knife, black and white, night time in the photo).

What I like About this photoshop is that I was able to use it effectively for my first time, and I feel that I had a good concept. I think I pulled all three people into the photo effectively so that It looks like they were all in the photo at the same time.

Something I wish I`d done better is the colouring of my sister. When I tried to brighten the scarf and the her coloring, it looked wrong and fake. I also wish I`d gone with a different font for the album name because it looks somewhat confused.