Text Portrait - Photoshop Tutorial

Hey Guys!

Well, It's the middle of march break and I am completely bored! haha. It's basically one of those days where you end up spending all your time online because you don't have any plans for the day. Yup, its one of those days. Anyways, while I was sitting here bored, I realized that I am completely behind on my blog posts; oops :S.

So today, I have brought to you a tutorial I stumbled upon earlier this evening. This tutorial was written by Dave Cross in 2009 and I thought It was pretty interesting. Basically, he took a well contrasted picture and made it into a portrait made entirely of text through Photoshop CS4.



Cool right? I thought it was very interesting and being a Photoshop lover myself [haha], I decided that I wanted to make a portrait following this tutorial myself! So I took THIS picture of Hilary Duff which I found HERE and got going! Since this picture did not have the amount of contrast I required, I needed to use Photoshop to enhance the lights and darks of the portrait. Following the tutorial was not hard because the wording wasn't confusing and there were pictures to help explain the steps. In the end, this is how my portrait turned out!


I admit it's not as professional, but I thought It looked well done especially because I added some effects of my own. So personally, I liked how my portrait turned out in the end.

If you guys are interested in making your own portraits made entirely of text, please do visit THIS TUTORIAL and try it out. I would love to see the outcome! Good Luck!

Tangled Trailer Remix

Hello again!
I know I've been promising to put up my edited trailer for a while now so here you go!

For those of you who haven't read my past posts, for my first CyberArts tech. assignment we were required to take a movie/game trailer and change the mood of it by altering scenes, music and sound Fx! For my trailer, I chose to remix the trailer of a 2011 Disney feature called 'Tangled'.

Before I go on about my remixed trailer I would like to show you the original trailer. I actually used 3 different Tangled trailers for this assignment but I will show you one and give you the links for the two others. :)

The Original



You can see the other two trailers here and here. :)

Now here is my Remixed Trailer.



As you saw, the original movie trailer is a romantic comedy with adventure. It makes you feel happy and wants to make you laugh.

For my remixed trailer I decided to change it to make the viewer feel a range of emotions; happiness, suspense, drama and intensity. The original story was of a kingdom thief meeting an interesting and magical girl that had been 'grounded' in a tower [hidden] for about 18 years and how she is taking an adventure with him to find her freedom. My story however is about a kingdom thief who falls in love with a girl in a tower, they fall in love. But the girl betrays him and sends him to jail. Now, he is angry and hurt, he breaks out of jail and takes an adventure to find this girl and take revenge.

I had a lot of fun with this assignment. It was fun cutting and pasting scenes to create a whole new story. The hardest part of this assignment was finding the right music to fit the scenes; it was even harder for me because I had to choose three different songs with different moods. That, I found, was the most time consuming. Sound effects were pretty easy but transitioning them was tricky.

All in all, I like my end result. I really liked how my music really went with the scenes and movement as well as transition. If I had more time, I think I would have edited the voice overs a little more and made them sound better.

I hope you liked my edited trailer! :)

Viewfinder Art Assignment

Hey guys! How are you all doing?

So I am here today to talk about my first art assignment for year 3 CyberArts! :) For this assignment we were put into four groups. Each group had a big piece of paper and pastel. We were required to draw images on these pieces of paper based on a chosen quote; we rotated as we did this for a end result of four random large scale doodles/drawings. From these four sheets of drawings, we had to crop an image with good composition. After we chose a cropping with good composition we had to make a large scale pastel, large scale painting and small scale painting based on the cropping.

I unfortunately lost my original small cropping so I am not able to show it to you. :( But I think you'll be able to have an idea of what it looked like from the two pieces that I chose from this assignment. My cropping followed the Golden mean composition.

The first piece I chose was my large scale painting. This painting is one of my favourites because I loved the free-hand feel of painting it. I liked how it didn't require too much detail; I just needed to take a thick brush and go at it! When I started out I didn't pay much attention to brush strokes, but as I got to the last layers I thought it needed something more. So, for the green top layer I played around with brush strokes by dabbing thick paint in different directions to make it more interesting.

I came across some challenges as I was painting this piece. For one, I couldn't add a lot of blending because my original cropping was very solid in terms of colour; this made my painting look a little simple. Another challenge I faced was drawing the bright pink lines; I needed them to be perfectly straight but it was really hard because I had a very thick brush and so the lines became thicker than I had originally planned.

If I were to change something about this painting, I would change the shade of green I used for the bottom half of the painting. This is because It was a cool colour but it did not entirely match the tone of the green that was in my cropping.

The second piece I chose was my small scale painting. I really liked this piece because I had more control with my brush strokes. Since this was a smaller scale painting, I was able to add more detail in it that I wasn't able to in my pastel piece or my large scale painting.

Unlike my large scale painting, I added some interesting textures and colours to my smaller painting. For one, almost all of my brush strokes (except the straight pink lines) were in all different directions. To make the painting more interesting, I dry brushed over the purple and green parts with black paint; this added an interesting texture to the painting.

I didn't have many challenges with this painting specifically. This is because I had more control with my brush. The only part I had a bit of difficulty with was, again, the straight hot pink lines that I couldn't manage to make perfectly straight.

I hope you liked my pieces! I think my favourite would have to be the small scale painting!

Video on Trail

Hey guys!
Today I will be critiquing two music videos; a good one (in my opinion) and a bad one (in my opinion). I would love to know your thoughts about it afterwards!

The first video is chose to critique is Fireworks by Katy Perry.



This is an example of a good music video. The song was very inspiring and the video matched it perfectly. The song is all about inspiration, hope, belief and the need for change. I loved how the video showed a variety of different scenarios and different characters facing different situations that they needed to overcome. I felt that it was very effective because the song is about how you can make a change and the video showed these characters overcoming their situations by standing up.

I also liked the fact that the video wasn't distracting the viewer from the song itself. There weren't any unnecessary graphics or effects. The effects that were shown [the fireworks and sparks coming out from the individual's bodies] added the effect of power. It wasn't randomly there; it had a purpose. I really liked this music video.

The second music video that I will be critiquing is Your love is my drug by Ke$ha.

This would be an example of a bad music video. This video is completely random and unnecessary. For one thing, it does not make sense AT ALL. In the song, she sings about how "his [her boyfriend I'm guessing?] love is her drug." So it's basically like a love song; she talks about how her mother and friends don't approve of her love and she's confused because she can't get him out of her mind. The video however shows her in a desert, she's randomly dancing, crouching on the ground with a tiger mask on making weird poses and riding elephants. Then is shows her in a canoe, on the sand, as her boyfriend [?] pretends to paddle. Then to top it off, she is shown with a glow in the dark suit and paint on her body [face and all... still in a desert] trying to make [alluring?] poses. SPLAT, an unnecessary graphic animation. She then ends off the video with one sentence; "your love... your love... your love...your love is my drug. I like your beard." WHAT?

The music may be catchy but the music video is a horrible mess. It does not make any sense and is totally random. This video gets a huge thumbs down from me. What were they thinking?

I hope you liked my post. If you have any opinions about the videos I have chosen or my critiques please do leave a message. I would love to know what you think. Also, if you have any examples of good and bad music videos that you would like to share, do post them in the comments below. I'd like to see them! :)

Some Inspiration; an edited trailer

Hi Guys!

I was on YouTube the other day looking at random videos and I came across this fan made trailer for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows [Part1].

This video was made by Kirwani90. I thought the video was interesting because the trailer resembled the sound-editing assignment I had been working on in my CyberArts tech class; which I've mentioned previously in my last post :). I loved how the scenes were edited; some scenes were slowed, some color corrected others drained of colour. It found it interesting and the music used was very fitting. I liked how the editor took an original action, thrilling trailer and made it sad yet intense and dramatic.

I respect the work of this maker because I know how hard it is to edit scenes into the specific order you want it too; timing, transition and all. I also know how much time it takes to find the more fitting music to use and make sure it is perfectly timed and transitioned. So watching this trailer; I was amazed.

I enjoyed this fan made trailer A LOT and I hope you like it as well!




Also! I will be posting up my own edited trailer soon :)

How do you use Garageband?

Hey guys!

I am currently working on my first CyberArts year 3 tech assignment on sound editing. For this assignment we are required to use programs such as imovie and Garageband to edit and change the sound in a movie trailer of our choice.

Personally, I have worked with imovie before and know my way around the program; I do however have a problem with Garageband because I have not used it before. So, because of this I was recently browsing YouTube for tutorials on how to better understand Garageband and I came across this really helpful video.

This video, in my opinion, was very helpful because it showed the basic knowledge you need in order to work Garageband. This video was easy to understand; there wasn't anything too technical and it wasn't too long. Take a look!




Hope this video helped you! :)

If not, I have a tip for you; play around with the program. It may be simple but it works! I've noticed that if you learn by experience. So, just open up the program, fiddle around with the options and buttons and see what happens. This will help you get a feel of where everything is and what it does. Trust me, it works!

Oh! If you're wondering about this assignment of mine, I promise that I will explain it in much more detail soon and will post my final edit after I am done! :D

Bye!

About me!

Hi! How is everyone?

I'm back again for my 3rd year of CyberArts! Today, I'm going to tell you a bit about myself. I know I've already introduced myself before but I just wanted to refresh your minds. Who knows, maybe you'll learn something new about me that I haven't told you before. :)

Let's start from the beginning! I applied for CyberArts in my grade 8 year. I decided I wanted to join CyberArts because I really loved graphic design. A couple of years before, I had discovered some fan art of certain TV shows, movies and celebrities online; I thought It looked really cool. I started experimenting with programs like Adobe Photoshop and began to teach myself how to edit photos and blend images bit by bit. When I found out my high school was offering a program where I could enhance my graphic skills, I had just had to apply.

Two years have passed and this is my 3rd year here in this CyberArts program. I can honestly say that I have no regrets. Everything we do, whether it be in the visual art portion or the tech portion, we learn from it. CyberArts can be challenging at times but we have freedom to express ourselves. We have learned so much in these last two years and I am very excited for the coming year!

Now that you've learned about my CyberArts background, let me tell you a bit about my personal life. :)

My favourite school subjects are CyberArts, Biology, Physics and English. I like Biology and Physics because I understand them and they are interesting subjects. I enjoy English because I love to write and read. I go through tons of novels per month; I love fiction!

I love to dance! I am currently a part of a dance group called RAANG. We are a group of about 14 girls who perform indian (Bollywood and folk) dances for festivals, competitions and charity outside of school.

One thing that you probably have figure out from my previous blog posts is that I love Bollywood! If you ask me anything about Bollywood movies, musics or actors I will probably know it! :P

I also love sports; badminton, volleyball, soccer etc. I may not be the best but I like playing anyways; just for the fun of it. :P

Well, I hope you liked reading about me! I would love to learn about you too! :D