More portraits and painting

I've been out of town without a full desktop so this blogging have images attached. I'm continuing my portraiture through a greater degree of editing than the previous set. mainly, I've been working on portrait painting as part of a tutorial on the topic. I haven't gone much further than the line art and some base colors so it'd be hard to comment on any elements and principals just yet. Additionally, I've composed a piece of a frightening face using a typical face, this being from yet another tutorial. I can hopefully have images up by Monday.

3 Portraits

In these portraits, we were to play with different perspectives and angles in order to get unique shots. In the first piece, I experimented with a bloom feature and different exposure adjustments to alter a seemingly bland photo into a more interesting one. A main topic I aimed to focus on with these portraits was color choice. I chose to bring out the blue in the sky of the first portrait and the blue of Ryan's shirt in the third. Additionally, I used selective motion blur filters on the second and third pieces to give a sense of action, even when the subject is stationary. Lastly, in terms of composition, I used a typical rule of thirds composition in the third portrait and placed the subject in the center for the first two.

Final Propoganda

Finally Winter break is here and the semester is over! As a real world issue I feel strongly about, I made a piece propagating the awareness of online privacy. I used neutral and cool tones tying in with a pinstripe background to convey an image of the "suits" in politics, accused of unwarranted spying on common people in the name of "prevention of terrorism". The main use of the blue is to pop against the darker background without being too fluorescent. Organizationally, the elements are arranged as a hierarchy with the capitol building on top, symbolizing the order of power created by this situation, with the user on the bottom.

USGS app progress

This week, I've been working on the design for the USGS CO2 Calc app. I would estimate I'm around 75% done with only the iPhone UI left to do. Since the app is mainly for oceanographers, a chose a color palette of various shades of teal and blue. To complement and balance the use of blue, I chose an orange boarder for the text fields and buttons. Everything then received a slight texture filter and highlighting/lowlighting filter to provide depth. The wave background is an abstraction of ocean waves and meant to make the background interesting without drawing away from the main content.

Propaganda 3

In all my blogs now Im attempting to explain at least 3 elements of my work through my blog. For this piece, I tried to use line to give a sense of depth of field through repetition of the planes. If I were to draw a set of lines, I could form a triangle with the noses and trails of the airplanes all culminating at the vanishing point near  the horizon. For colors, I wanted to give the impression of heat and intensity so my color palette contained fiery reds and deep grays. Lastly, I attempted to balance the piece using the plumes of fire to fill empty space and to develop the idea I wish to convey further.

Tutorial WIP

I decided to follow one of the advanced tutorials as a fun portfolio project. While this piece doesn't use any 3D, it's nice to have the connivence of working with one software back. The tutorial focuses on photo retouching to produce a stylized character. Hopefully Ricky will enjoy the final result.

http://psd.tutsplus.com/tutorials/photo-effects-tutorials/create-a-caricature-from-a-photo/

Hanging Garden WOP

This piece (well, piece in progress) was influenced by work which merged the natural world with a cold, industrial, and human one. The synthesis in the original was a hole in the wall merging the two worlds, however, I opted to take my own approach and have the natural world hang in a garden surrounded by the cold and darkness. I haven't completed it just yet; I still have to do the particle system for the leaves and also add the nature in post but I have the general modeling, texturing, and lighting done.