Animation Mk II

As noted in a past post for a semesterly simultaneous class, I wanted to make a higher resolution compilation of my images. I started with importing slightly lower resolution versions of the pictures I took for the animation. What I didn't know was that the 'Animation' menu on Photoshop got removed a few years ago, and I can no longer alter the default duration of still images imported into the timeline. My solution was to compile clips of the animation one section at a time. This way, I am able to get more of the animation covered without going through 200+ pages all at once and resizing, cropping, and rotating each image, in addition to adjusting each clip's individual duration. This was a huge time saver, without sacrificing too much quality.

Taking a second look at it, I can see how the subject's right cheek is darker than the left, but the skin tone otherwise seems to be consistent across the rest of the face. Finding a face at the right angle is much harder than I imagined, even when your only search criteria is 'man face straight forward.' I only now realize how seldom I have run across a quality image of a person facing straight ahead (with their head visible). The most challenging part of the blending process was actually when I decided to use the Burn tool as I had in previous projects. Apparently, it can reduce transparency and also bleach, which is not what it had done in the past for me. When I switched around between the Eraser, Burn, and Rubber Stamp tools, I began causing problems for myself in the area of transparency; some of the top layer was semitransparent but read as 100% opaque, so my Rubber Stamp would often remove opacity on areas where I was trying to reduce transparency. I didn't quit until it fit.

MorphX

The final product was smaller than I had anticipated. What is most interesting to me about the picture I found on the Internet was that it not only had my hair color, but it was parted in the same spot, and the subject's head is tilted at the EXACT same angle as mine, AND our shirts match almost perfectly (clearly, they are different sizes)! If only our facial expressions matched. At least the lighting was also similar between the two images.

The trickiest part I found was the lighting. Because one side (the wrong side) was already shady, I found that flipping the figure horizontally almost completed the effect. The last trick was doing the same to the shadow layer.

I wanted to do something for everyone's favorite dragon, again. I figured that the polygon base of the game would ease the ability to pen the contours of the silhouettes. Although true, it was still difficult.

I wanted to keep the look started in each image. The most fantastic sights I know of are at Mount Rainier National Park and The Gates of Hell, Turkmenistan. Ice and fire, cold and desolate, dry and moist.

Some appeared to make impressive poster-like material, so I tried to induce that effect with different filters.

Other images were so picturesque, they only looked good through filters that simulated paintings.

A few had such layering in the image, it only seemed appropriate to soften the detail and toy with the contrast contrast.

There was a hidden rainbow in this image, and I brought it out. For the portrait, I chose a diffused glow, hiding the detail of my face while simultaneously preserving contours.

Gradient Mesh Peach

I loved the way this looked somewhat tropical with the combination of patterns, but simultaneously limited the color palette to 2 tones each for blue, yellow, and green alike, with a few hints of red.

I kept multiplying the layers of a spiral I had drawn, and I wanted it to stand out, so the complementary blue and orange mixture allowed the green- and yellow-tinted 'OP squiggle' to stand out and not blend in too much. I applied many gradients to both the fills and strokes of layers, trying to manage how many colors I used. When I was almost finished, I threw in another spiral with a lightning bolt design (here it appears as a black arrow with a beige outline) to fill the empty void behind the personal details.

 The ultraviolet 'OP squiggle' looked rather bland against a plain white background, so I threw in some curves with a brush stroke look and rearranged the order of layers until I had something that was both readable and artistically expressive without demanding too vast of a color palette.

 A.K.A. Hazel Prim, this is a girlier take on the design, incorporating my experimental alias as the cardholder. For this daredevil skier and ballerina, I wanted to create something that evoked both power and flourish. The font for the company name speaks strong but the style of opacity permits perk. Using Google™ Maps, I spent a short period of time locating a building under construction at an ideal place in Washington, the hometown of this thrill-seeking character. I thought the 'OP squiggle' should be more vibrant, so I looked for images that showed ultraviolet light, and what I figured out was that it is captured like neon or lightsabers (white beams with radiant magenta emanation). Illustrator® was not cooperating with the colors I was choosing, and I learned this was because the color settings were CMYK rather than RGB. When I fixed this, I applied the change to the other documents and restored some of their intended glory, but I couldn't help wondering how many colors I had lost that I had custom-picked. I didn't want the background to be ordinary, so I tweaked two of the corners and split it in two, picking a different but similar pattern for the other shape, and tweaking the pen curves of the shape to align with the french curves of the pattern. The most difficult part was making the company name and personal details stand out from the background, so I decreased the background's opacity and tightened the outer glows around each object, multi-layering the company name and nudging the patterns applied.

 This squiggle took the longest time of all the variants. I wish I could have shifted the background pattern, but I wasn't sure what that would do to my artboards, and I was running low on time. I thought that 'powerful pink' or 'powerful purple' would make a good color palette, ultimately resolving to pink and gold. When I tested black as my secondary color, it made me think of the fifties poodle dresses and hair salons and dance studios and the like, which does not represent the company I designed. I wanted to say powerful without perky, which is why I also put a sharp bend on the 'P' in the squiggle. This way, it has a right-side-up and an up-side-down, so one way of looking at the card is more pleasing than the other.

When the pattern of the background stood out too much and made the words harder to read, I decreased its opacity, as well as that of the 'OP squiggle.' This design included the widest variety in fonts (4 total). I kept two fonts from a previous design because I felt that since I had put so much care into aligning the role terms, it wouldn't hurt to place it twice. The email is a combination of the two things that describe the character of my pseudonym: for some reason, whenever I write the word 'idea,' I have a habit of capitalizing the 'i,' and I do this often because I have them often; a creator of ideas... an ide-ator? The website is not owned (yet) and it stands for the company name.