Photoshop Session - 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 & 7

In our first term, we have produced seven pieces of work in each session of Visual Design with Steve Brown. I was planning on uploading my pieces weekly but I can see my progress a lot clearly in one post. I really enjoyed every task that was set us when creating a digital image, as this is something I have a particular interest in.

 

Above is the first piece we were asked to re-produce from just an image on paper that was handed out. I began by working on a dark background slowly building the layers and tones. Trying to find the identical colours of the old lady, was the toughest and most time consuming part. However, after four hours I was able to leave it where I was, and be happy with it.

In our second session we created a Caterpillar Insect from a specific technique in Photoshop following instructions. I found this task really useful for quickly creating a concept and building up the structure with shade. I placed the three stages of my progress above and think its quite a good practice to look back the stages of how you have worked.

For our third session we got to create three creature silhouettes after watching an amazing tutorial by artist Feng Zhu. We could then, using black and white balances, develop on our silhouettes and paint in the body's that we wished. This is really useful when generating a series of designs and building upon them; for say a company in the industry who liked one.

Part of our fourth session involved manipulating a texture body map for a girl (one was provided as a base) and also creating a zombie texture as well as it was close to Halloween. This was a great insight into how they create 'skins' for characters in games and is something we will be looking into more closely next term.

Above are the stages of development and the 'almost complete' speed painting underneath that we were assigned to make in our fifth session. I really found this tough knowing that there was a limit to how many hours I had to work on it but at the same time found the challenge really fun. Like in the first session, we were given an image on paper to copy over the piece.

In the sixth session we learnt several techniques and watched a tutorial on tones and values. The image above is a diagram of how to place the correct shades on a solid object using a scale of 10, all the way to complete black. This was helpful in the following weeks assignment where we created a tank concept with one point lighting and shadows on it.

In our final session with Steve Brown using Photoshop, we learnt about proportions and the correct way to scale a figure or character by using the head as a height stature. For example, we used a Dwarf and Elf for the comparison. The Dwarf at around four to six heads high and an Elf around nine to eleven heads tall.