Animated Postcard

What I was trying to accomplish with the animated postcard was blending my font poem image into my postcard image I created. I really did not encounter any problems doing this because it was easy to follow my professor as she was going through the steps.

I made the images fade into each other by the use of "tweening" which was new for me but I also enjoyed it. This process is done by highlighting the last frame of the font poem and the postcard image at once and clicking the "tween" button.

I am proud of the accomplishment of finishing the assignment overall. If I had more time I am not sure if I would do something difference because of my limited knowledge of Photoshop. If I knew more it would be a different story.

Exquisite Corpse Image

The Exquisite Corpse image was a lot of fun but really challenging. What I wanted to achieve with this image was to relate to the poem on the other side, even though it did not have to. Also, I wanted to use all of my own images, which I did besides the background.

What I did first was I took pictures of my boyfriend's face, but in halves. The first time his eye was open, and the second time it was shut. I did this because the lyric that was going to be on the other side was from the Beatle's album, Revolver. All four of the Beatle's profiles are on the album cover so I did a little spin on that. The following link is an image of the Revolver album cover.http://tinypic.com/r/2im2ip5/4 I made sure I got his eyes because I thought it was a play on the word "mind." People say that the eyes are like a window to the soul. Also, I made sure one was closed to play on the word "off." Then I made a pile of CDs on white paper for a neutral background. with the shiny side up and took pictures of that. Then I did the same with the iPod and shaped the headphone wires into a heart.

What I found most challenging was resizing the images to fit the background correctly. Since I took them all myself and uploaded them from my digital, they were huge. It took some time, but I eventually got the size ratios right. I had to keep copy and pasting them onto the background canvas to see how they looked. I am sure there is an easier way but I am still new to Photoshop. I then decided to duplicate the CD image three times and scatter them throughout the image. I also played with the saturation of them to bump up the shine color.

I am most proud of the creative decisions I made with the images reflecting the lyric. I wanted to make sure I did that and use my own images. The background I only used because I liked the graininess of the image and how it made the images looked once I multiplied them. If I had more time however I would have really, really liked to work with the brightness of the two faces. I feel like they get lost in the image sort of. I could not figure out how to work with the faces without effecting the rest of the images. I am happy with the image considering I am so new to Photoshop.

Composite Activity

Font Poem

For the font poem project, I chose the first line of the Beatles song "Tomorrow Never Knows." The Beatles are a very,very important part of my life so there was no doubt in my mind from the beginning that I would use them for the project. I chose this particular lyric because I could choose fonts that conveyed a feeling based on the words used. That was a big part of what I wanted to achieve with this project.

The font decisions I made were based on the word. I put a curve setting on the word "turn" to convey the motion of turning. The word "mind" I used a creative font like Comic Sans and "relax" I used a smooth, hand written font and I made the same decision with the word "stream." The word "float" I used a bubbley font to convey the image of water, and the word "down" I decreased the font size as the word came to and end to give them feeling of a decline. Unimportant words like "and" and "your" I used fairly simple fonts.

The most challenging part of the project was finding fonts I was satisfied with and picking a size. To solve this problem, I just experimented. Some words at first I got a little too crazy with the size so I would have to edit that a lot. Also, the segment, "float down stream" I had to play with the positioning of to make it more pleasing to the eye.

The part of the project that I am most proud of is choosing fonts that did a play on the word's meanings. I am glad I thought a head to pick a lyric that I was able to do that with. It gives the project more depth. If I had more time I would have played around with effects more like I did on the word "turn" and just experimented more in general. There is never enough time.

Contact Sheet Project

The contact sheet was not too challenging, but I did want my final contact sheet to show contrast between the different images. For example, the resolution section really showed the difference between the largest resolution and the smallest.

The resolution section was the most challenging because I really wanted to use my own images, but mine were all too small for that part of the project. To solve this problem, I used one of the images on the computer which was a swan. It turned out nicely and it was big enough for you to see the difference in resolution.

Some decisions I had to make were which images would be most appropriate for which part of the project. For example, the content section I had a really nice black and white picture of my friend Rachel that I wanted to use. However, a person is not the best object to use for an abstract image like we were using. I decided on this photo of a spiderweb structure in my boyfriend's house I took. At first I was not abstract enough and had to really zoom in and crop the center of the spiderweb.

I am most proud of the Format/Mode section because that photo I took myself at my first Third Eye Blind concert that I was covering for my high school newspaper. The black and white image came out really nicely.

If I had more time to work on this contact sheet, I would have tried to figure out the Duo Tone better. It looked great on screen, but when printing it was too strong and distorted. I tried working on it but there was really no difference. Also, I would have liked to experiment with different images to see which effect looked best.

Current Topic: Podcasting

For this assignment, I needed to research podcasting. I think I am one of the few people that does not religiously use their iPod, so the topic was somewhat foreign to me.

A podcast is a series of digital media files, either audio or video, that is released episodically and downloaded through web syndication. Special client software, known as "podcatchers," are used to identify and automatically download the files. An RSS feed (Really Simple Syndication), is used frequently to download the podcasts automatically.

The term "podcasting" is a mix of the word iPod and broadcasting. However, podcasting did not originate from the company Apple like many believe. The first system to enable automatic downloaded and storage of files was an mp3 manufacturer, i2Go in September, 2000. It was not until June 2005 that Apple included podcasting to their Apple 4.9 software and podcasting directly to their iTunes store.

The cool thing about podcasting and what makes it so appealing is that there is a podcast to cater to anyone's interests. From comedy shows, to science and medical podcasts, and even literature. Also, most podcasts are free to download as well!

Companies and businesses are now using podcasting to reach new demographics of people easily. Information is easy to access and people can get involved as well because making your own podcast is easy. All you need is a microphone and video camera.

The following are the links I found information on about Podcasting:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_podcasting
http://howtomakepodcasts.com/
http://www.whatisrss.com/
http://smallbiztrends.com/2007/01/small-business-podcasting-trends-for-2007.html
http://www.impactlab.com/2008/02/04/podcasting-trends/
http://www.podquiz.com