Exam Period

During this fifteen-hour long exam period, I will be constructing my final piece by combining images from several of the photo-shoots I have done throughout this 'Unit'. I will be trying to create the look of a strong man with fantastical and supernatural powers, and I will be combining video footage as well.

To begin making my final piece, I took to Photoshop and imported all of the selected images. First of all, I 'cut' my model from the white background using the 'quick select' tool, then I used the 'liquify' tool to increase the size of my model's body, then used a 'soft brush' tool (with the 'layer mode' set to 'soft light') to add shading and shadows where appropriate to create the effect of him having really large muscles. After this, I used a 'soft eraser' tool to remove the edges from the "light drawing" images, then re-scaled the ball of light, 'duplicated' it, then positioned one over both of my model's  hands. Likewise, I re-scaled the lines of light, and positioned them in a way that looks like they are being generated by him. I then increase the scale of the background image and positioned it so that the waterfall is to the left of the frame, and the man. Following this, I decreased the 'saturation' of my model, and altered the 'hue' slightly to make him have somewhat of a green tint; I then did this for the background. Finally, I coloured over his eyes with a 'hard brush' tool to make them look rolled back (this makes him seem more demonic), and used a green 'overlay layer' to create a glow for the light on the man.

Once in After Effects, I imported the footage of the fire and the smoke, then used the 'time stretch' tool to decrease their speeds to 250%, making them seem more like fluctuating energy. Then, I "colour corrected" the fire to give it a green tint, as opposed to an orange one, and then rendered the footage as a 'jpeg sequence'.

To create the 'gif'', I rendered the frames as 'jpeg' images, in After Effects, then imported them all as "layers" into a Photoshop document. From there, I changed the size of the image to 342x500 pixels so that it wouldn't be too big for the web. I then made all of the "layers" into frames in Photoshop's 'animation' window, then 'reversed' the frames to put them into the right order. As there were duplicate frames, I deleted them all to make the animation play more smoothly. I then simply clicked 'save for web and devices' and saved the document as a 'gif'.

Final Piece

This is my final piece. I do quite like it. It is my first time ever creating a 'gif', but I do still think there is much room for improvement.

I like combination of the fire and smoke as it almost creates a 3-D effect, as though the smoke is wrapped around the man. The 'colour correction' makes it all blend well together, and I like the balls of light used as energy balls. Also, the green flames link with the 'Fantasy' genre, as I have explained previously on this blog. The framing of the image puts the man's head in the middle of the upper-centre box of the rule of thirds grid, and his hands and energy balls are in the outer-middle boxes, and his body is going down the middle column of the grid. In terms of it's fantastical look, I think I succeeded in achieving that. However, I think that the image would look much better if the waterfall was moving, and if the energy balls were getting bigger and smaller.