My Advanced Studio

ExperienceBy: Cory Drexel

Before Photo Shop

What did I already know?: Before I took this class I didn’t even know what photo shop was, let alone how to use it.

What programs were you familiar with?: I didn’t know photo shop or any program like that. I didn’t even know how to scan photos onto the computer.

How comfortable were you using computers?: I found when it came to a computers basic functions I was fine but I never knew how much capability they really had.

Computer access: I have a computer at home and with the computers at school I have almost constant access.

Year Book ProjectTitle: Year book project page, 1st project.

Purpose: To create a profile page about ourselves that we would want to appear in the year book.

Thought process and creation: I was very unfamiliar with PS at the beginning of the year so at this point I was still just trying to get a feel for the program. All I did was crop a picture of myself, run it through a single filter, add some text and arrange the layers.

AdvertisementTitle: Advertisement Project, 2nd project.

Purpose: To create an ad for an already existent product or made up one that you believe would sell the item.

Thought process and Creation: I’m quite the Nintendo fan so I wanted to make an ad for the Wii. Although it may seem like I just cut, paste and repositioned a bunch of separate pictures (and I did) it took a lot of precise out lining and trimming. I also learned the importance of making use of space.

Self PortraitTitle: Self Portrait Project, 3rd Project

Purpose: To create a visual representation of ourselves using only pictures.

Thought process and Creation: At the point in time, its obvious I was pretty sad, just looking at it brings back unpleasant memories. But I think I did a good job showing that time in my life but it wasn’t good at showing who I am as a person. This project had very little use of anything other than cut and pasting.

Corporate Identity Package

Corporate Identity Package (cont.) Title: Corporate Identity Package with,

Envelope, Business card and Mail address and logo. 4th project.

Purpose: Create a fake company and make three separate components to advertise the company. Make sure the pieces are consistent, informative and usable.

Thought Process and Creation: This was a good idea I felt, having to make separate pieces containing the same company logo. I just wasn’t able to use my creativity in this project. It is simple but I’m not proud of it.

Surreal Triptych

Title: Surreal Triptych, 5th project. Purpose: Create a past, present and future picture of yourself. You must create the present with a landscape that you feel represents you. Thought Process and Creation: This is also a kind of sad piece but I realized that it holds a constant about me; that I have no constant. As a person I am to easily affected by people, events and feelings in my life therefore it is hard for me to stay the same for very long. As for the tools I used I got familiar with blending, fading, adding shadows and proper placement.

CD Redesign

Title: R.E.M. CD Redesign, 6th project Purpose: To take a CD cover that you feel could use improvement ad redesign it.Thought Process and Creation: Its not that I didn’t like the original cover I just liked R.E.M. at the time and wanted to make a cover for their album ‘Document’ which contains ‘It’s the end of the World as we know it’. I created the circle in the sky from scratch, had a ton a of fun trying to outline the buildings and got lazy with the asteroids. All in all I don’t like it.

Currency Project

Title: Straw Hats Currency, 7th project. Purpose: To create our own form of currency. Thought Process and Creation: We were supposed to make a currency using our self but then it would be the 4th project with my face on it. So I took my favorite straw hat pirate and made money out of him. It is just mostly cutting, pasting, flipping, rotating and careful attention to symmetry. Although it simple I like the way it turned out.

Cereal Box Project

Title: Old Fart Flakes cereal, 8th project

Purpose: To create our own cereal that we think would actually sell.

Thought Process and Creation: Although it looks good and probably gets a good laugh out of you it was nothing more than a precise arrangement of layers, font manipulation and my bizarre taste of humor. It actually looks pretty good but it is armature as fare as photo shop goes.

Grid projectTitle: Donut Grid, 9th project.

Purpose: Make a 4x4 grid containing a single type of object or theme.

Thought Process and Creation: There are at least four obvious layers in this project and I used fading and blending to include all of them. Outside of the basic grid idea I made the donuts start in the top right corner and get lighter in color as they swirled towards the center.

Artist BookTitle: Wind Waker Artist Book, 10th project.

Purpose: Make a story book on photoworks.com using pictures formatted on PS.

Thought Process and Creation: Though the artist book is just a compiling of photographs to make a story of sorts I did put all the photos in my book through photo shop first. I wanted the photos to seem progressive but also explanatory.

Digital Photos

Independent Project

Title: Metroid Prime Promotion Poster, 12th project.

Purpose: To create a project of our choice with our own criteria to show what we’ve learned in PS this year.

Thought Process and Creation: I was playing the ‘Metroid Prime’ games at the time and naturally I was obsessed with them. This project is a great representation of what I am capable of in photo shop, and that is basically cutting and pasting.

Lessons Learned The farthest my knowledge of photo

shop is cutting, pasting and perhaps a little touching up. I can’t create something from scratch or unify two completely different things. Its not the class. My lack of knowledge is to blame on my slow working habits and because I take so long to do projects I don’t have time to do tutorials which in turn makes my projects more amateur.

Future Use I definitely wouldn’t use photo

shop to create things form scratch but as a ‘paper’ artist I would consider using it to touch up my own drawings. But my lack of knowledge outside of cutting, pasting and resizing wouldn’t be much use.

Favorites All three lasso tools, move tool,

elliptical and rectangular marquee tool, magic wand, color sampler tool, eraser tool, paint bucket tool, zoom tool, blur tool, smudge tool, ect.