Induction

The Purpose of this induction brief is to, after two weeks, produce a self portrait on Photoshop.



11/09/17 (Images pending until I can sort out some issues)

First Task: Facial Proportions.
For this task, we were taught the proportions of the human face. That the eyes are roughly halfway down the face from the top of the head, the nose is positioned roughly halfway between the eyes and the bottom of the chin and the mouth is halfway between the nose and chin.

Second Task: Proportions applied to facial directions.
In this task, we had to apply the same facial proportions when the face is looking in different directions and angles. There was a technique I was taught to assist with this, which uses an oval, or ellipse, to mark out the side of the head and roughly how much is showing to map out where the eyes and other features should go. We were shown a series of pictures and had a very limited amount of time to draw them.

Third Task: Applying own designs with the proportions.
This task had us using the proportions we had just learned to create 10 character faces. One of these 10 faces was chosen by me to adapt into a video games character, which you will see later in the page.

Fourth Task: Adaptation into video games character.
The face that I chose for the previous task was adapted into a proper character design. I decided for a fairly neutral pose because I didn't want it to be excessively complicated.

Fifth Task: Portrait of classmate.
This task had me drawing a portrait of a classmate for 30 minutes. This was surprisingly difficult, on both ends of the task.

13/09/17

Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery trip.

On this day, we went to the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery for the fairly new exhibition called 'I Want, I Want', which explores art and technology. There were some exhibits there that I quite liked, that you will see below.

Portrait of C.I (third version)

I like this piece because of what it is and where it is. It isn't an everyday occurrence to see a 2 metre, plywood pineapple, especially in a formal location. This piece wouldn't seem to fit in well into many places, which is what I like about it.

Untitled 1998

This work was particularly interesting to me because of what it is made of and how they were used together. Large cardboard pieces make up the exterior, while bottle tops and buttons make numerous controls. I also like how two paint rollers without the fabric cylinder are used to make levers on the model. Part of a bleach or disinfectant bottle is also cleverly used to make the handheld phone receiver on the far left of the "control panel", while a golf ball has been placed to create the end of the microphone.

15/09/17

First Task: European Skin tones

In this task we had to demonstrate knowledge of painting European skin tones digitally. We had to use methods like blending and having knowledge of brushes to portray colour and areas of light and dark effectively. Some knowledge I was given was that yellow tones are at the top, green tones are on the top and the darker side, red tones are in the middle and blue tones are at the bottom.

Second Task: African Skin tones

This task was similar to the first task, but at the other end of the spectrum. I had to focus on darker tones and how light would interact with it. One of the notes I took was that for African tones, shadows would blend in more, while highlights would stand out a lot more. The tonal progression was very similar to the European tonal progression that had been used for the previous task. I feel this went better as I had retained knowledge of the previous task.

18/09/2017

Project: Self Portrait in Photoshop. (WIP)

This is my Photoshop self-portrait so far. As you can see, it isn't quite finished yet, things like the rest of the hoodie, the glasses and hair are yet to be added. I like the way the blending turned out though.

22/09/17

The finished portrait. This lesson, I created a self portrait in Adobe Photoshop. This software was suitable due to the large range of tools it has available, allowing almost infinite options of creating things. Design techniques such as blending, strong use of colour and, to a lesser degree, proportions were used. These affected the design to make it more realistic to the actual photograph used. I could have used these techniques more effectively if I had more experience with Photoshop and graphical design in general. This lessons work has improved from the last few lessons work in many ways, for example: the blending is better and more refined and colour overall is used more effectively.