There were two main assignments during this unit in Design. The first was to create a book jacket for our narrative, as if it were going to be published. The second was to make a surrealist image telling a story using only photography, HDR shooting techniques, and Photoshop.
Design elements in our book jacket had to be justifiably related to our narrative. I accomplished this by making the main focus an illustration of the two 'characters' of my narrative; the spaceships. (Which both took quite a while to draw.) For the background, I started in Photoshop with a fairly dark blue that I thought would work well as a space-themed background color. I used custom cloudy brushes I downloaded to paint up a nebula, just to add some sort of visual interest to the background. After choosing my fonts, the biggest challenge was figuring out how to implement title and author in a non-conventional way that would be eye catching if you glanced at the book while walking through a bookstore.
The main metamorphosis of this piece is two-fold; there's the being which I like to call the Cameraman at the very center, and his escape from the computer monitor. I consider this a metamorphosis because he's breaking free of the world of 'visuals' and exploring the world of all senses which are represented by the speakers and grass. The Cameraman's head is an HDR photo I took of one of Freestyle's cameras. Another technique that was used in making this piece was masking in Photoshop. The grass that lines the surface of the composition is from a photo I took lying down in front of the district office. To make it seem perfectly in place with the monitor, Cameraman, and speakers, I had to erase parts of the grass that I wanted everything else to be "on top" of. I also did this with the Cameraman. To give the illusion of depth, I erased his left leg so that it looks as if he's jumping out of the monitor into the world around him.
The color scheme I used doesn't have much bearing on the meaning of the piece, they just mesh well and are derivative of the objects I included. It's a triadic color scheme consisting of dark greyish blues, earthy greens, and light reddish-brown. To make this scheme fit with the pictures I use in the composition, I had to tweak the color balance on the speakers to make them a little more blue. I also made the person and camera black and white before applying the wood texture so that it would better preserve the wood's colors.
The story that's being told is of the Cameraman's entrance into the World of All Senses. His whole life, he's lived in the Visual World, and the only sense that he's ever been aware of is sight. One day, a magical monitor appears in front of him, and through it he experiences something entirely new: Sound. He starts hearing music through the monitor, and eager to learn more about this strange phenomenon, he steps through it into the World of All Senses. The source of this strange new "sound" was the speakers that line this new world. In this world, he is able to use every sense he never knew he had, and gains new perspectives on what it means to Be.
I really enjoyed the surrealist photo project, though I initially thought I wasn't going to. I've always been more comfortable drawing than taking photos, so this project forced me to try something I wasn't used to. Learning about HDR photography was fascinating, and I know it's something I'll definitely take advantage of in my future work. It was extremely satisfying taking multiple unrelated photos and piecing them together; creating a whole that far exceeds the sum of its parts.