Photoshop Compositing: Funny Images

One of Freestyle Seniors first assignments of our Narrative unit was based on skills we had recently learned regarding Adobe Photoshop, and application allowing for advanced editing of photos. In Digital media class, I grew my previous knowledge of photoshop by developing my ability in a new area: Photoshop compositing. I learned how to use features like layer masks, black and white screen and multiply layers, and Photoshop’s AI cropping tool to blend images together seamlessly.

For the funny photos project, I got to use these newly acquired skills to have a little fun. For this assignment students were challenged to create 2 funny composited images using parts from different photos. For my project, I struggled a bit with brainstorming before my idea came to me. I wanted to make sayings! I looked up a list of common sayings on google, and then chose some that I thought would be funny when represented visually. I ended up with these 2 phrases:

1. “Penny for your thoughts?”
2. “A blessing in disguise”

You can click the images below to be view my final funny compositions.

By clicking the images below, you can view screenshots of my funny photos projects in Adobe Photoshop. Some of the layer masks and screen/multiply layers I mentioned earlier are visible in the layers panel.

Overall, I really enjoyed the funny photos project. It allowed me to finally learn the skill of photoshop compositing after almost a year and a half at Freestyle. This is a little funny to me because before I attended Freestyle, I thought that editing photos to be fake was the main use for Adobe Photoshop due to all the edited memes I consumed on the internet. Then I began learning to use Photoshop for numerous and infinitely more valuable things than making memes, and only now am I utilizing the application essentially for making memes (funny images) as my first impression of it suggested it was for.

Still, being able to composite a photo is a valuable skill to have, and I am gald I learned it. I can see the tools we used during this project being incredidbly helpful when doin other things, like editing photos or graphic designs, and even parts of my animation projects. I would say that this project gave me the most value by increasing my proficiency further with Photoshop tools I hadn’t really used before, and expanding my repertoire of tools in the process.

Motion Graphics

The motion graphics project was essentially a warm up project to using Adobe After Effects, to prepare us for using the application later on larger scale projects. Adobe After Effects is a powerful video editing software that can do a lot of cool stuff. For the motion graphic projects, we started small by learning how to animate text effects and lines, match visual effects to music, how to use keyframes to animate scaling or moving objects, and more. After several class periods learning these skills from Mr. Florendo using examples, we were set loose to create our own short After Effects video using our newfound knowledge.

During the time of this assignment, Arcane Season 2 was in the middle of releasing. It is one of my favorite TV shows of all time, and I couldn’t resist adding a bit of it into my motion graphics project. I decided that I wanted to create an animation of Jinx, an arcane main character, as the centerpiece of my video. I would then surround the animated loop with the line effects and small animations we had learned to create in class. Additionally, I chose some music and managed to sync one of my line elements to the music. Then, I exported my video from After Effects, which you can view below.

Below, you can see a screenshot of my project in Adobe After Effects. The layers in the timeline contains all the audio and visual media I used, as well as my animated line effects.

I really enjoyed the motion graphics project because it allowed me to experiment a bit and get excited about using Adobe After Effects. In hindsight, this project was really important because it allowed me to get used to using the After Effects interface before I was asked to do more complicated things with it later in my Multi-layer art project. I made something I was proud of, and feeling comfortable with After Effects actually encouraged me to create even more animations outside of class for fun.

Multi-Layer Art Project

For this assignment, Freestyle Seniors were tasked with creating intriguing multi-layered art pieces based off of a World-building project we had completed in our english class. During the project, students split into groups to create their own hypothetical worlds, characters, and stories, which were later presented as pitch ideas for different media. For example, my World-building group created an idea for an animated music video focusing on a dystopian science fiction world centered around futuristic technology like androids and AI.

Using my world-building project as inspiration, I decided to focus my Multi-layer art project on my favorite character in our world, an Artificial Intelligence named C26 residing in a weaponized android body. Throughout our story, this character struggles with cementing their humanity, moral values, and purpose in a world that wants to use them as a weapon. My goal with my Multi-layer art project was to represent this struggle as best I could using layers of laser-cut wood.
To show my idea visually, I decided to mix elements that symbolize technology, like gears and wires, with human organs to show the conflict between C26’s human feelings and Android hardware. Below, you can see my first sketch of what I wanted my project to look like.

Procreate plans

Then, I began planning out the layers of my project in procreate. I could have done this on paper or in Adobe Illustrator, where the final project would need to be made, but using procreate saved me a lot of time. I am very comfortable with the application, which means that I could get a lot done quite efficiently compared to if I had been working directly in Illustrator. Having more than 10 different layers to an art piece can be quite confusing if you’re not organized, and working in an application I was comfortable with allowed me to minimize distractions.

After finishing my layer plans in procreate, I traced each layer in Adobe Illustrator. To make the file readable to the laser cutter, I needed to designate what I wanted it to engrave on the wood vs. what I wanted it to cut through completely. To make something engrave, I filled it with black and removed the stroke. To cut, I added a black stroke of 1 point. Then, I arranged the pieces on large flat boards and sent them to Mr. Florendo to be laser cut.

You can view the Illustrator versions of my layers below. You may notice that they are colored in, not in the black fill or stroke format I described earlier. That’s because these versions of the layers were used for a different part of the Multi-layer project, a part involving animating these colored layers in a 3D space.

Multi-layer Project Assembly

Before working in After Effects though, I had to finish assembling the laser cut wood pieces I had gotten back from Mr. Florendo. I used a massive amount of wood glue to press the layers together, and clips to hold them there while they dried. It may be hard to tell in photos, but my final physically piece was over 20 inches tall. So although I did film the process of me assembling my piece, I was unable to get a great angle of the process. However, I was still able to use that footage to later create an assembly video. In it, a time-lapse of me assembling the layers shows how I created my final Multi-layer Wood Art: Paradox of Humanity, which can be seen below.

Below, you can click to view the time-lapse assembly video mentioned earlier.

3D Multilayer Video in After Effects

The final stage of the multi-layer project was to create a video of our layered pieces animating using a 3D space in Adobe After Effects. We learned to animate our layers as 3D objects moving in 3 dimensions instead of just their previous 2. Now, we had X, Y, and Z axes to use. After animating the layers themselves as 3D objects, we animated cameras to move around them. Finally, we learned how to add light sources to really make the animation eye-catching.

Overall, I think this part of the project was the part that challenged me the most because of the new technology I was required to learn. However, I know that knowing how to animate in After Effects in 3D is an incredibly valuable skill to have under my belt, especially as an aspiring animator. There are so many cool animated projects I could create using this idea of 2D objects in 3D space that After Effects makes possible, and I can’t wait to explore the possibilities.

Below, you can view a screenshot of my workspace in Adobe After Effects after completing my Multi-Layer Art video in 3D space. The camera and 3 dimensional space I used can be seen in the top right panel, as well as the X, Y and Z axes I moved my layers and camera along.

Artist Statement

Artist Statement: Senior Multi-Layered Project in DM: Narrative Wood Art
Title: Paradox of Humanity

For the Senior Multi-layer Art project, I decided to create a 3D wood-layer version of a character I created for my english collaborative world building project. This character is a humanoid robot with a powerful artificial intelligence governing it. She is known as C26, and during our world building story, struggles with finding her humanity and purpose within. During the majority of her existence, the android has served a corrupt police force, acting as an impartial weapon against innocents and criminals alike. Towards the end of the story, she grows her sense of empathy with humans, and forms a goal to improve life for both humans and androids by acting as a mediator between the two types of entities.

This project had many different parts, requiring students to learn new skills in Adobe Illustrator, After Effects, and gain an understanding of how to make a project in layers. From everything I learned during this project, I would say learning to animate things in a 3D space using After Effects is the skill I value the most. As an aspiring animator, I can see this being a really valuable ability in the future, both for personal projects and later in college. In addition, knowing how to format art pieces for a laser cutter in Illustrator opens up a multitude of possibilities for other projects to me. I already have ideas for things I could make and gift to my loved ones using that knowledge. Overall, I really enjoyed this project. I am proud of each aspect of my final product and of how much work I put into each aspect of it.