Tangled Up In Saul Bass

Base

To start making this poster I started off with a saturated yellow back ground and the title in Hitchcock font which I got from the internet. I then made the base of the sun with a polygon. To make the sun rays I used the pen tool.

Experimentation

Then I experimented a little bit with some gradients and I could not decide which one I wanted to do and I got a lot of feed back about it. After all that I realized that Saul Bass never used a gradient and I wanted in to be closer to his work so I got rid of all the gradients.












Sun Hair
After getting rid of the gradients I made the hair lines in the sun. I used the line tool to make them and did a bit of experimenting with where I put them and how many I put. But then I decided that having less lines and then I cleaned it up a bit.

More Sun

After deciding to not use a gradient I was got some advise from my neighbor and chose to go with different colored layers to represent sunshine. So to make the first layer I just copied the base of the sun and made it bigger. Then I chose a color and filled it with that color.

Even More Sun
After I made my first layer I made the other two by copying the layer I had previously made and making it bigger. Then I filled them with the same color but lighter.

Title When I made the title there was an arrow on the G so I customized it so it wouldn't.

Credits
To finish up my poster I added credits at the bottom in the same font as the title and same color as the background. The credit is the the directors of Tangled.

Postcards

I really enjoyed doing these and had a lot of fun creating my own postcards. Designing them as well as doing them to be what I think is best really helped me get in touch with my creative side. I really did that with my Christmas card because I didn't follow any tutorials and got a little inspiration from another postcard that I saw. I also think It is the best looking one. The other two postcards had a tutorial that I followed. For the fall one I used a tutorial to put the pictures in the letters using a clipping mask. For my personal postcard I used the knowledge from the fall card to make my name. However, the background was from a tutorial that I found online which used Gradients and Gradient Overlay. I also redid my logo because the one I had before looked awful and I didn't think it represented me.  As for my brand i'm really not sure what it is. But I think I need to learn a bit more about what a brand is before I know what mine is.

Snail Shadow

In this tutorial I learned how to make a realistic shadow. First I chose an image, in my case a snail, then I selected it by using the magnetic marquee tool. After that I put it in the background of my choice, wood chips, by dragging and dropping. In order to make the shadow I followed the tutorial and made a layer copy. Then I used the transform tool and stretched it to take the form of a shadow. I made it a black to white translucent gradient to make it look like a shadow but since that didn't correspond with the background so I used the eyedropper tool to replace the white with a tannish color. Since the shadow didn't quite mach up with my snail I used the puppet warp to get it connected to my snail. Finally I used the burn tool to blend the background and snail together while adding a shadow as well.

Annika's Sky Line

          In this image there is a floating mountain in the sky with a large planet in the background. There is also a few pegasi in the background. I also added a light blue title in the corner of it.
  

   I started by using the also tool to select the mountain in a different picture with the lasso tool. Then I clicked the refine edge button to well refine the edge and get a cleaner edge. After that I cut out the bottom part of the mountain and moved it down to make the mountain longer. Then I put it in the photo of the sky and to make it look like it was floating I did the same thing I did to get the mountain on its own layer to the cloud that was behind the mountain. I also added a shadow with the burn tool on the cloud. Then I added a few masks to make it all blend together. Finally I added the pegasi and planet to the background using the same techniques I used to make the rest of it, also the title in the corner.
   I learned how to use the lasso tool to select a cretin thing or part of a thing and put that on a new layer. I also learned that you can ask your neighbor for help. If I did this again I would redo the shadow for the mountain and the clouds around the planet. This is because It doesn't look very good and the clouds around the planet are only on the edge.

         I will use the skills I learned while making this floating mountain like the refine edge tool or  lasso tool and put that into future work that I do. And overall making this was pretty easy and fun to do. I feel that I learned something very useful and I will probably use it a lot to get clean extractions.



           

I learned how to make it look like the mountain was behind the cloud in front by selecting the cloud with the lasso tool and hitting the refine edge tool. I also used this on the cloud in the back to the left so it was in front of the planet.

Creative Spheres

http://designstacks.net/magic-and-special-light-effects

http://design.tutsplus.com/articles/how-to-create-an-ultra-glossy-flaming-ball-in-adobe-illustrator--vector-6024

Spheres symbolizes nature and have a global or earthy feel to them. They also can symbolize controlled chaos but at the same time they can represent unity, perfection, wholeness, and completion. Which is cool and unique that it can represent two opposites.

As for my work process I start by scetching an ideas that come to my mind then narrow down the options to a few spheres. After that I go in to the program, Ps or Ai, and start bringing my scetches to life. While doing this I start experimenting a little by chafing around the colors or messing with the shape. Then I choose the one i like the beast and focus one that one until I finish it. Finally I save it to my file.

While making these spheres I noticed a few differences between Ps and Ai.  Ps uses a bit map program, gradient overlap, and is a better use for photos. Ai uses fill and stroke, net layers, and to replaces gradients. In the Ps tutorial I learned how to use the gaussian blur to make it look like light is coming in. In the Ai tutorial I learned how to create a flame and use the blend tool. Both of these helped my understanding of each program a lot but I would like to learn more about creating a glow in Ps and softening a glow in Ai.

http://design.tutsplus.com/articles/how-to-create-an-ultra-glossy-flaming-ball-in-adobe-illustrator--vector-6024

Sphere

The top one is Illustrator and the one below it is Photoshop. I found that I like Photoshop better and easier than Illustrator. The shadow on the ball is a lot darker on the Illustrator ball and the shadow of the ball is outlined a bit more in Photoshop. The highlights are about the same, but the values are softer in Photoshop and darker in Illustrator.