I've yet to decide whether the mesh tool is the greatest or most horrifying tool we've played with yet. It was fun to mess around with, but it seems like everytime i try to fix something, something else f's up. Which is why I didn't do eyes. I also started on a hand doing the thumbs up sign, but I couldn't even begin to figure out how to get all the meshes in the right places since they went everywhere the second I added new ones.

The mouth got all f'd up, but after about the 3rd try getting it right I gave up and went with what I had.

All in all...most obnoxiously wonderful tool we've worked with so far. Even if mine came out looking more than a bit odd.

Wash playing with mesh tool...just decided to upload it since i haven't uploaded anything in a while.

Well...here's 3 of the posters...the fourth one won't upload correctly. Will have to put it up when I get home later.

Poster 4...basic

Well...this is the basic format of the final poster I'll be putting together or wed. I'm trying to make this one really drag your eye up and around the page. All of that is kind of secondary to the central message, however, which is gonna be some more text saying something along the lines of "yes we can buy our own dream home" with a subtext underneath the dream home part that says something like "regardless of our means to do so". Will have to add those later, because I'm out of time atm.

Then again...

Due to the lack of pretty pictures on this blog...i guess I'll go ahead and post the posters I have done so far...

The one on the left is the original while the one on the right is the teacher recommended reduction. I haven't had much time to work on this one as of yet, but I dropped one of my 5 classes (4 of which were studios) in order to free up more time. Should hopefully have a bit more time to work on these each time now.


The next one is based off of the old Uncle Sam posters, and is merely a reference to the fact that states will actually start receiving more benefits for the number of new welfarees who register. This means that it would actually start rewarding states for putting more people on welfare...


And the third one that I've managed to finish at this time is based off of another lovable figure, who is actually from around eastern TN...everyone's lovable friend, Smokey the Bear. For some reason while thinking about Uncle Sam I was immediately sidetracked into thinking about the bear. His motto was easily twisted to fit my scheme.


Will hopefully be able to touch up the first one as well as get started on a fourth one before class on monday. Will also work on my sentence structure someday.

Edit: .jpeg images work great on this site, wasn't able to load png's all that well for some reason.

Well..

So...i was sick a couple days last week and didn't make it to class. Thusly (not a word) I had to try to teach myself how to do the animations. I used a couple guides online, but somehow I can't help but feel that I'm doing something entirely wrong. Oh well...it came out to exactly 10 seconds...though I'm not sure if there was an easier way to get there. I'm just gonna have to ask about it when I get to class tomorrow.

So...i originally had this in an entirely different setting...but after photoshop crashed twice on me i decided to simplify the whole thing. On a good note, the crashes taught me that I need to save after every change.

Well..nevermind. For some reason blogger doesn't want to load it. I might have saved it wrong or something, will have to do that tomorrow in class as well : /.

Sick

Putting up the initial image used...hate to admit it but not done with my project for wed. Meant to get it done over the last couple days but due to adverse weather conditions I have been hit by a migraine. Hard to look at a comp screen and can't move too around too much atm. Will finish when I get better and won't be able to make it to class today. Will get someone in class to explain homework.

Image is sideways but can't bring myself to edit it atm. Will add artist info when I feel better...but gonna go puke now.

This post should probably have a title.

These are the brushes used in my junk picture for Wed. The top brush is the only one i decided to blur out a bit because I'm more than a bit certain that the images in the brush could be misconstrued as copyright infringement.

This post needs no title.

Firstly, to post what i did in class the other day since it wouldn't work on school comps.

The intranet hates me.

As stated above. The school intranet despises me for some odd reason and consistently likes to make fun of my mother in various fashions. Despite this, I will resolutely drive on by running away from the school intranet and using my home internet to do whatever it is that needs doing...do not worry, it shall be done. It...

I have a bad tendency to overuse elipses...

I also seem to have an issue with hitting enter right after typing the topic...

My first issue with photoshop CS4, once I finally got it d/l'd...was figuring out how to find it with the mac os (I've been a PC user since I was 8...[queue elipses]). That was solved within 20 minutes...but it was now getting late. I opened up photoshop, found a random (most likely copyrighted) image on google images and just threw it open and went to town with pathing and various other tools. Hitting this pic with a bunch of junk for no other reason than I felt I needed to.

Below is described my very short first solo adventure into photoshop:

I started with the eyes of the boxer pic, because eyes are in the end the place my eyes always tend to rest themselves. They were very intense eyes, so I got rid of them and replaced them with one of the two basic fill patterns...rainbows.

I then removed one of the large red gloves that make the boxer what he is. I wanted to replace it with Jack Skellington's head, but couldn't quite figure out how to do that before I began to realize that it was already getting late.

I then rushed through the smudging process, more of just playing with it a little on the right side of the face, but the results were very subtle and not much fun to play with so I moved on.

I brightened the left side of the face with the dodge tool, as well as removing a lot of shadow from the remaining glove and a bit of shadow from the right cheek. This tool is a little more exciting because it has a visually obvious result.

I then burned the dark areas to make them darker, but it was so dark already that I could hardly notice the difference in those spots. The difference was much more pronounced in the medium tone spots I decided to burn.

And, because there was a glaring white quazi-semi circle at the bottom right of the screen. Because I hadn't used it yet and had little idea what it did, i messed around with the gradient tool and discovered its effect of completely covering my picture in black and white. I immediately undid this and applied the same thing into where the glove used to be, and figured out that I could change the gradiant colors into a ridiculous looking red. So now we have a cartoon glove next to a realistic one.

At this point, I needed to go to sleep. I knew, however, that I had yet to post a blog yet and that I really needed to get on that. So here I am.

So, I ruined a perfectly nice image all in the name of furthering my own knowledge of Photoshop. On a good note, I finally figured out how to use the pen tool correctly. I had been struggling with that throughout the class the other day and felt extremely stupid when looking at the girl next to me breeze through everything.

My only hope is that tomorrow turns out to have icy roads so classes will be cancelled and I can actually play around with photoshop a bit more.

Playing around with Photoshop for the first time...

Well...

I really planned to play with photoshop more today, but I ended up spending all day trying to buy photoshop only to realize I will have to finish the purchase on thursday due to an issue with the educational discount.

Apparently, even though I am a full time student at MCA and have been so for over a semester...the site decided to send my verification of student(hood/cy) to Mississippi State University where I was a student for 2 years but am no longer...obviously...enrolled at. I now have to get ahold of proof that I am a full time student at MCA, and not really sure what constitutes proof, so should be interesting.

After that I was making the attempt to find a trial version of CS3 so I could at least mess around with it. This failed miserably, so I ended up just getting the trial of CS4, since that is what I was being forced to buy anyways, CS3 no longer being a retail product. Oh well...things just work out that way I guess.

To the next post!

First Post...ever really

I am not a blogging type of person. I don't pay enough attention to my everyday life...nor even to the process of how I do things to have anything worthwhile to talk about. For me, trying to analyze what I do takes away whatever fun i'm having with a situation and shoves it up the crack of the nearest meth addict. That was a very non clever attempt at a pun.

Due to some issues with the school computers I actually ended up starting around 7 blogs at the same time...so there's some growing room if I ever do decide to pursue throwing my ideas on the intraweb for any random...anonymous...person to see. Though for the most part I find that unlikely.

Since we are supposed to put down a couple digital imaging sites that we think we might use, and the quality of them doesn't matter...I have chosen to put down:

http://www.bluffton.edu/~sullivanm/
http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/index.cfm

which both seem to have a large selection of material. I figure I should be able to find just about anything I need between those two sites and just the basic Google Image section...which I love. However, were required to have 4 so...

http://photography-on-the.net/gallerydatabase/

I have no idea what this site is, but the pictures on the front page were slightly frightening.

And finally, my favorite online database of amateur art...

deviantart.com

I go to deviantart for two things...first I go to look at all the good art that makes me depressed and wish to get better. Then I look at a bunch of awful art so that I can feel better about myself. Hmm...apparently deviantart has a very bipolarizing effect on my emotions...

All of these should work as long as I don't plan on using them for commercial use, and since it will most likely be quite a while before I even make the attempt to sell art, I doubt that's overly likely.