OUGD405 PHOTOSHOP WORKSHOP

Today I had my first Photoshop induction to help me with Studio Brief 1. We learnt how to use the eraser tool and the magic wand tool, also the lasso tool and the hue/saturation and levels adjustment options.

We had the task of taking 4 or 5 photos from one or several films and then putting elements of each photograph together to create kind of a film poster with a twist. We used all the skills we were taught in the workshop to produce this poster.

I chose the film Avatar, and only to include photographs from Avatar in my posters, as I thought it would be really easy to manipulate the photographs, and in the film itself there is some really powerful, bright imagery that is unlike any other film that's been produced.

These are the initial photographs I used to produce my poster with.

This photograph I used for the film title, instead of creating my own typeface for the poster.

This photo was used for the actors names in my poster.

 The rest of the photographs below were just used for the main image of the poster.

This my final film poster I produced towards the end of the workshop. I took aspects of all the different photographs shown above and put them together to create one image, blurring the edges to one image seamlessly blends into the next. I changed the hue and saturation of most of the photographs so that they all looked roughly about the same shade, however on some images this proved harder than others due to their starting colours. I am quite pleased with this outcome that was produced in very little time, however I wish I would of used less faces and more aspects of the film and the scenery, as the environment of the na'zi's is one of the most important elements of the film.

I then set about trying to create my own Na'vi for another film poster, and found a really good tutorial that I am going to use to create my own Na'vi. It has all the steps and all the photographs and files you need to produce your own Na'vi, and by reading it it looks really simple, however when I came to actually following the steps it is a lot more complex than I initially thought.

This is my initial photograph I took to manipulate into a Na'vi, which is the same photograph the tutorial used, as I thought it would be easier to follow if I used an image I knew was good quality and the steps matched exactly on the tutorial.

Initially I flattened the appearance of the woman's nose, as Na'vi noses are a lot wider and flatter than the human nose. To to this I used the Healing Brush Tool on Photoshop, and carefully flattened the nose keeping the colours similar and the texture continuous.

I then selected all of the skin areas using the lasso tool and then changed the hue and saturation to maximum, 180+ to create this blue tone that is the same as the Na'vi's.

I then selected part of each side of the nose using the lasso tool, and copied and pasted them onto two separate layers. I then changed these layers Blending options to Multiply, and then applied the Gaussian Blur filter at a radius of 2.9, to the selected parts of the nose to create this affect. I found this particularly hard to do as I couldn't find the multiply option for the layer for ages, as it didn't show where to find it in the tutorial.

I copied the woman image )not the nose shaping lines) onto a new layer and brought it to the top. I selected the nose and the mouth and changed the hue to 99+ to create a pink shade.

I then changed the opacity to make the pink look less bold, and to reveal the nose shape from the underneath layers. I had to change the saturation or the lips to darker as the initial colour of the lips was lighter than the nose, so when I changed the opacity you could hardly see the changes I had made. This proved to be quite tricky to get the colouring right.

Next, on the liquify option in Photoshop, I flattened the nose even more and made it broader. I also made the lips slightly thinner, and the eyes larger, as Na'vi eyes are a lot bigger and rounder than human eyes. This was probably one of my favourite parts so far of making this Na'vi.

I then copied the previous version and locked the bottom layer, then using the eraser tool I removed the eyes, as Na'vi eyes are a lot yellow and greener and the pupils are a lot larger than human eyes.

This is the photograph I used from the tutorial to replace my woman's eyes.

I then coped the above photograph onto a new layer below the woman and resized them so that they fit exactly into the spaces left for the eyes. I think they fit really well and am very chuffed as to how well they have turned out.

I then downloaded eyelash brushes from the tutorial and selected eyelash brushes I thought appropriate and that fitted from the selection and applied them to my woman's eyes. It was really tricky to find an eyelash brush which fitted the shape of the eye and which actually showed up well.

I saved this photograph from the tutorial to make the patterns across the Na'vi's body.

Using the Liquify tool I manipulated to to make it less even, then flipped the image horizontally to create a pattern that will span the width of my woman's face.

I then changed the opacity of the pattern to 10% and placed it over the woman's face in the position I want it to appear in.

I then removed all the pattern that wasn't on the skin using the eraser tool at 0% hardness.

I then added the pattern to all the other areas of skin such as on her chest and arms. I manipulated the pattern more so on her face, so that the lines curved into the shape of her face better, so it didn't look like line just plonked onto her face.

Using the paintbrush tool at 0% hardness I added dots to her face, using varying sized brushes to make it look more natural. I applied the sparkles on her cheekbones, chin, the corners of her eyes, the bridge of her nose and also her forehead as well.

I also added some sparkles along the inside of her arms and on her chest as well, to make it look more natural. I had to set the layer with the dots on to blending style Outer Glow, setting the layer to Pass Through to create a glowing effect.