Drowsy Daze: a headful of hands

The idea here is to have hands going every which way, grasping a warped face, and even warping themselves to do so. I liked the patterns made by the cutouts, but I wish it came out less choppy. I didn't do much squeezing or stretching, only resizing, slicing and placing about.

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 Advent of the Eco-Friendly Vehicle and California's Automotive Industry

Which technologies from previous decades influenced its creation? How could it influence new technologies we have not heard of in the future?

The technologies leading up to the modern California-standard vehicle have primarily been experiments involving different kinds of batteries. These include Lithium Ion (year), Nickel Metal Hydride (year), and Lead Acid (year). In addition to these, alternative forms of energy have been developed, such as biodiesel (a replacement fuel for diesel vehicles utilizing vegetable oils or animal fats, chemically reacted with an alcohol), hydrogen, compressed natural gas (CNG, a compressed hydrocarbon mixture mainly consisting of methane), and more. Different vehicle designs since 2004 include various versions of the Battery Electric Vehicle ([B]EV), i.e. Neighborhood EV (NEV), City EV (CEV), Full Function EV (FFEV), Plug-in EV (PEV), Hybrid EV (HEV), and Plug-in Hybrid [Electric] Vehicle (PHEV), as well as many forms of the Low Emission Vehicle (LEV), i.e. Transitioning LEV (TLEV), Ultra LEV (ULEV), and Super ULEV (SULEV), which meet California's LEV1 and LEV2 standards.

Ethanol is an alcohol made primarily from corn and can be used in a Flex Fuel Vehicle (FFV), which is capable of operating on gasoline, E85 (85% ethanol, 15% gasoline), or a mixture of both. Previous decades used what is called an Internal Combustion Engine (ICE), which inspired the Hydrogen ICE Vehicle (an ICE that runs specifically on Hydrogen fuel) and Hydrogen Fuel Cell Vehicle (HFCV or FCEV– the most recent design for California's vehicles, incorporating automated driving features). Besides the Nissan Leaf, Tesla has specialized in the Zero Emission Vehicle (ZEV). These are not limited to cars, as zero emission motorcycles (ZEM) and zero emission buses (ZEB or ZBUS) can also be found in California. Other advances include the Partial ZEV (PZEV), Advanced Technology PZEV (AT PZEV), and Enhanced AT-PZEV, which meets AT-PZEV requirements and also makes use of an off-board ZEV fuel such as hydrogen or electricity. Probably the most understandable of the modern technologies is regenerative braking– "the partial recovery of the energy normally dissipated into friction breaking that is returned as electrical current to an energy storage device" (Regenerative Braking).

California's LEV 1 exhaust emission standards were defined in 1994, measuring for Ultra Low- and Low-Emission Vehicles, and apply to cars made between 1994 and 2003 (with some later exceptions). The LEV 2 exhaust emission standards were defined in 1998, measuring for the same vehicles, but apply to cars made between 2004 and 2010 (with some earlier exceptions). California requires that a Global Warming Score (GW) be displayed on every car made since January 1, 2009. GW is a decimal (range of 1-10) score that ranks a vehicle's CO₂-equivalent value; higher values are cleaner. This is not to be confused with Smog Score (SS), which ranks pollutant levels of Non-Methane Organic Gases and Nitrous Oxides, but measures with the same scale as GW. Since these technologies, a miles per gallon equivalent, "MPG(e)," has been applied to primarily electric vehicles. This measurement is based on Fuel Efficiency/Economy, which refers to the average distance traveled per unit of fuel consumed. California has also formed a measure to meet its own standards, called "California Miles Per Equivalent Gallon" (of fuel) or CMPEG.

These technologies can potentially lead to vehicles with automated driving features, self-sustained engines, and truly all unknown technology since the current majority fuels on Earth destroy the atmosphere and alter the environment, risking the end of most innovation. 

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 had often considered collecting a handful of shells that washed up on a beach and organizing them by shape color, and then putting them into a picture. Thankfully, I didn't even have to go to the beach since there were plenty of shells in a drawer under a glass-top table. I organized them by shape and color, then I deduced that there were primarily white shells, a black background, and a few red, orange, and brown shells. I had initially wanted to make the shape of a ghost (ghost out of shells), but I had to accommodate the red shells, so I chose to add a tongue. When I searched images ("ghost with tongue") for inspiration, I came across [King] Boo, the ghost from the Mario® games. I didn't want to do something so strictly geometry-based (circles, triangles, etc.), so I then sought images of a skull with a tongue. I came across an image of a person with makeup resembling that of Gene Simmons, and decided to make that the subject of the grid project. It was surprisingly hard to find a picture of Gene Simmons' face with makeup in closeup, but I found a painting of it. If I had a better angle and a more calm, gentle hand (it is, but not enough for this), I could have done better. I figured the smallest unit would be something like the smaller sand dollars, thus meeting the 30x30 rule. I used an app on my phone to view a comparison of the two, lining up the eyes and tongue.

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.