Advanced Survey of Computer Arts

I'm starting this school year off by taking a course in computer arts. The class will definitely be challenging for me when we experiment with Maya and After Effects, but for now, I'm getting a nice review of the Adobe suite. During my high school years, I was lucky enough to take several media arts classes in the Tech Zone. There, I had four years worth of Photoshop projects, Illustrator assignments, and some video editing in Finalcut Pro.One of my favorite assignments in the Tech Zone was a multi-layer Photoshop composition based on personal narratives. I made this little beauty my senior year:

This composition was a fun way to experiment with construction, unity, and story. My experience with this project definitely prepared me for my first assignment for Advanced Survey of Computer Arts (CMPA 110).

My professor, Dave Kaul, asked the class to create two photoshop compositions: a multi-layer underwater scene and a self-insert into a movie still of our choosing. Here are two examples. Click the photos for more!

 

 

 For my undersea composition, I started with stock image of a church hallway. From there, I added creepy sharks and ugly fish. No real reason. I just think they're interesting. Most of my photoshop work was based off this helpful 'underwater scene' tutorial.

For the "Put yourself in movie history" assignment, I chose a scene from one of my favorite movies, Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World.

 

For Bluray-quality screenshots, I highly recommend Cinema Squid!

This seemed like a pretty manageable movie still to work with. It seemed like all I had to do was get my picture taken in a dingy little cafe. Unfortunately, the lighting turned out to be more of a hassle than I had intended. The final photograph was taken inside my friend's dorm room with all her room mates holding up lamps and breathing down my neck. Special thanks to all those lovely ladies!

Photographed by Gabrielle Manni

with help from Jordyn Moss and Sara Wasserboehr

From here was a lot of trial and error with photoshop. I mostly dulled the contrast, desaturated the color, and adjusted the curves and levels. Here is the eerie end result:

Pretty creepy, huh?