Narrative Visual Perspective in Digital Media
funny images & surreal composition
The first projects we did this year had to do with combining multiple images in Photoshop. First we made two “funny” images, although I kind of just combined interesting images rather than funny ones.
The first one I made combined two photos! I used a picture of the moon I took a while ago and combined it with a spotted eagle ray because the spots on it have always reminded me of stars.
The second was a composition with three photos! I used this photo of my cat sitting on our windowsill, and added another small cat looking up at him. For the third photo, I found a paper crown online that was at the right angle, and put it on my cat’s head!
After these compositions, we did our surreal composition. The goal was to combine multiple photos to create a surreal image, with some sort of world building elements.
I created this image, inspired by my first composition above! Similar to eagle rays, whale sharks have spots and so I wanted to put them both in the night sky together, leaving a trail of stars behind. I used a basic brush to add little dots to be stars, and I also added more stylized stars with a star brush!
multi-layered art project
For this project I made a light box, which is essentially layers of paper, each with a different cutout shape, and lights behind that shine through all the layers.
The first step was to sketch what we wanted to make, and plan out all the individual layers. I decided to make my light box based on the final scene of the original Bee and PuppyCat, since the show means a lot to me and inspires a lot of the art I make!
The next step was to trace our sketches in Illustrator! We had to make each layer separately, ensuring that there were no floating pieces and everything was connected since it was going to be laser cut. This image to the left is all of the layers together, and below are layers 1, 2, 3, and 4 respectively.
Once we had our final design in Illustrator, we laser cut each layer and assembled the final product! I put all the layers together with foam strips in between, and on the back put two strips of LEDs set to a light greenish-blue. Here are some photos of the final product!
During the assembly of my final piece, I took photos of each step to turn into a stop-motion time lapse video! First you’ll see me gluing strips of foam board to the back of each layer of paper, then assembling the back of the box with the lights, and finally putting it all together!
Finally, we created a virtual 3D video of our project to showcase the different layers in After Effects!
To do this we first created colored versions of each layer of our art in Illustrator, and then imported those layers into After Effects. I learned to use the 3D space and animate cameras in order to produce this video!
Final Thoughts
This light box is based on the ending scene of the original Bee and PuppyCat, which beautifully portrays the character’s friendship and trust, and was a big inspiration for us in writing our characters for our world building project. The final piece is very simple but clean, and I’m really proud of the way the different layers fit together to create this scene!
This started out as just a sketch on paper, but through digitizing it in Illustrator, I learned how to separate that out into layers that could be easily laser cut. It was really interesting learning how to work in a 3D space in After Effects too, I feel much more capable of editing and animating my future productions in the ways I want to now.
I titled this piece “what’s your favorite color?”, which is one of the questions PuppyCat asks Bee in this final scene. The simplicity of it is so beautiful, it acknowledged that there was a lot they didn’t know about each other yet, but also that they weren’t in a rush. They wanted to know each other for themselves, and any secrets could be kept until they were ready to share them with each other.
I think that trust is so beautiful and important, and it’s a message I always want to carry with me.