Productive
I had quite a productive day today. I wanted to get my timetable queried as it looks like I'm doing about 20 hours a week and I'm only allowed to do 16. I also needed to hand in an application form for a grant to help with travel expenses and equipment. And I wanted to check what exactly I need to do in my sketchbook with regards to doing project work. I managed to get all of them sorted, making it a productive day, and that's just stuff outside of class!
Today we were working more on the film poster. Part of the brief includes looking at the work of graphic designers and illustrators so I was researching that. The film I've chosen is Control, a biopic about the life of Ian Curtis, singer of Joy Division. It's filmed entirely in black and white so I was trying to research people who worked primarily in monochrome. I couldn't think of anyone so I picked the teacher's brain and she passed me a book to look through. It was called Street Artists so I wasn't entirely sure it was relevant to what I wanted. Going through it, I came across a graffiti artist called Eelus and was rather taken with this piece. It reminded me of a screenshot from the film that I'd found, particularly with the pose; although when I checked the screenshot, it wasn't as similar as I thought. Still, it gave me an idea which was to put the angel wing on the main character's back. Nothing particularly exciting but it would give me something to do with Photoshop.
I've not used Photoshop before so that was going to be interesting. I was annoyed at first because I couldn't find the controls to do what I wanted and I could have done it pretty quickly with the GIMP. I couldn't find a 'paste as new layer' type of command at all or a freehand select one so I had to find a new way to do what I wanted. As a result the picture altered from what I'd originally had in mind. Once I started to get to grips with the software, I found that it didn't lessen my abilities too much so it didn't take me very long to do the picture at all. This is how it turned out.
I'm really quite pleased with it. It's a lot better than I thought it would be. The teacher had been working her way round the class checking that everyone was doing okay and she got to me just as I'd about finished the picture. I think she was quite impressed which made me feel even better about it. She'd told me earlier on that my sketching skills are good so that I have nothing to worry about in that respect. I was quite relieved to hear that because I was concerned that I wasn't up to scratch in that area compared to the rest of the class. Hopefully, that will bode well for the rest of the course!
Today we were working more on the film poster. Part of the brief includes looking at the work of graphic designers and illustrators so I was researching that. The film I've chosen is Control, a biopic about the life of Ian Curtis, singer of Joy Division. It's filmed entirely in black and white so I was trying to research people who worked primarily in monochrome. I couldn't think of anyone so I picked the teacher's brain and she passed me a book to look through. It was called Street Artists so I wasn't entirely sure it was relevant to what I wanted. Going through it, I came across a graffiti artist called Eelus and was rather taken with this piece. It reminded me of a screenshot from the film that I'd found, particularly with the pose; although when I checked the screenshot, it wasn't as similar as I thought. Still, it gave me an idea which was to put the angel wing on the main character's back. Nothing particularly exciting but it would give me something to do with Photoshop.
I've not used Photoshop before so that was going to be interesting. I was annoyed at first because I couldn't find the controls to do what I wanted and I could have done it pretty quickly with the GIMP. I couldn't find a 'paste as new layer' type of command at all or a freehand select one so I had to find a new way to do what I wanted. As a result the picture altered from what I'd originally had in mind. Once I started to get to grips with the software, I found that it didn't lessen my abilities too much so it didn't take me very long to do the picture at all. This is how it turned out.
I'm really quite pleased with it. It's a lot better than I thought it would be. The teacher had been working her way round the class checking that everyone was doing okay and she got to me just as I'd about finished the picture. I think she was quite impressed which made me feel even better about it. She'd told me earlier on that my sketching skills are good so that I have nothing to worry about in that respect. I was quite relieved to hear that because I was concerned that I wasn't up to scratch in that area compared to the rest of the class. Hopefully, that will bode well for the rest of the course!