Year 9 Creative Media

Avatar Reflection/evaluation

Creative Media Yr 9 - Photoshop – Term 01 2011

Mr Andrews

Avatar Reflection/evaluation:

· Describe any problems or difficulties you encountered during the creation and editing of your avatar. These may include; technical difficulties, corrupt or missing files, knowledge of Photoshop tools issues. etc;

I didn't encounter many problems during the creation of my avatar, it was all fairly straightforward, but I did find it hard to find an appropriate image for my Avatar - I wasted a week or two in looking for one. One complication did arise on the Friday in the second last week of school. In that lesson I had been saving my work throughout the lesson, not realising that Julia had taken my USB and my Avatar had been saving to the documents folder. As a result, I managed to lose a lessons work, in which I had experiment with the blending modes of my layers and techniques for creating gills because my avatar is an underwater creature. Fortunately though, I borrowed out a laptop for the weekend and managed to complete both my first and my second avatar over the weekend - it only took a while longer than I had planned. I also succeeding in getting my blog up to date and post the stages of creating and editing my avatar, a feat which I am very proud of.

· Explain whether your planning and organisation (of ideas, files, inspiration) helped during the technical creation;

My planning and organisation, which included images of other avatars and ideas for mine, as well as the character profile sheet, did help me during the creation of my avatar. It helped me to work fast and efficiently and build this really great, strong character like I had imagined. The planning really helped me to bring my dreams about this avatar to life, to organise my thoughts, and work efficiently this term. The planning also helped me to keep moving forward - not once did I have to completely undo something because I didn't like the way it looked or because it didn't suit my avatar's character.

· Discuss whether you made effective use of the provided profile template to organise and prepare the required image assets and assist in the creative decision making process;

I believe that I did make effective use of the provided profile template because I completely filled it out in a way that helped me to organise my thoughts and used it to succeed in creating and avatar that perfectly matched my ideas, notes and planning.

· Clarify any time-management issues you encountered during the process and describe the steps you implemented to improve in this area;

I didn't really encounter many time management problems but, as I mentioned before, for the occasion when I lost a lesson's work. This only slightly set me back, and I still managed to complete both my avatars and pretty much all of my blog on the weekend. Another slight problem in terms of time management that I did have arose when my home internet stopped working on wednesday and is currently not working. Fortunately, I managed to finish my blog by going to Tory's house, which just meant I didn't get to finish it on Wednesday as I had planned.

· Discuss whether you undertook adequate and detailed reflection to throughout your project. Have you provided enough evidence to support your work? (Look back at your blogs/journals and think about whether it looks like a whole terms worth of work);

Yes, I do believe that I undertook adequate and detailed reflection throughout the creation of my avatar. I have posted reflections of all my work in class, as well as all the stages of both my avatars. In this I recorded each step I took and tool I used, I tried to put in as much detail, and I believe that the end result does look like a whole term's work.

· List any skills, techniques or tricks you have discovered during the project.

During this project I learnt many skills techniques, and tricks in Photoshop. Mr Andrews taught us many shortcuts so that we could work faster and more efficiently. Some of the skills and tools I learnt include the burn tool, the spot healing tool, masks, the blending modes of layers, and many more. This term I really extended and expanded what was previous a limited knowledge of Photoshop, thanks to Mr Andrews.

Discuss your feelings about the Avatar task:

· Are you satisfied with the final result?

Yes, I am very satisfied with my final avatars because they look pretty much exactly like I had first imagined and it is so great that they are finally finished.

· Would like to change any aspects of your avatar?

No, I would not change and aspects of my avatar because there is not anything that I can think of to change in them and I already believe that they have reached their full potential.

· If you could start the project again what would you do differently?

If I could start this project again, I wouldn't do much differently, except that I would complete a few more experiments and tutorials in photoshop to put on my blog, because I didn't really complete and of those.

· Are you pleased with the progress you have made in using Photoshop?

Yes, I am pleased with the progress I have made in using Photoshop because I now know what pretty much all the tools in Photoshop can do and have managed to complete numerous this that I would not have believed possible. I can effectively use tool to manipulate and experiment with images to create weird and wonderful and awesome images and I am very pleased with this.

Male Avatar

So I started making my second avatar, which is to be a male version of Lilliath. I used this image to do so:

http-_www.feastoffun.com_wp-content_uploads_2010_09_allan1.jpg

To start off, I liquefied the image to change the shape of his mouth, lowered his eyebrows and bring them closer together, make his cheeks more prominent, and enlarged his eyes. I duplicate the image and used the magic wand tool to select only his skin and add a mask. After this I changed the hue and saturation of his skin to make it a similar colour to my first avatar. I then duplicated this layer and inverted the mask so that its showed the hair and the background. To select only the hair I again used the magic wand tool to select the background, then selected the mask and used the paint bucket tool to fill the selection with black. When this was done I changed the hue and saturation to match my first avatar.

Next I added the nebula image from the eyes, by copying it from my first avatar and pasting it onto my second one. I then moved and stretched them into place and added a mask to paint out the extra parts. When this was done I duplicated the layer and moved the nebula image to over the second eye. After this changed the blending mode of both eyes to overlay. Next I made a new layer and added a mask to show only the lips. When this was done I changed the hue and saturation to a blue colour and the blending mode to colour burn to make him look more like a fierce Lunarlithian warrior.

Next I added the moon texture to my avatar's skin. I did this by using an elliptical marquee tool to select the moon, copied it, and pasted it onto my avatar. I then used the mask from the skin layer from this one and changed the blending mode to overlay.

Next I made a blue background. I did this by duplicating a layer I already had, removing the mask, then using the magic wand tool to select the grey background and adding a mask. After this I chanded the hue to a blue colour, slightly increasing the saturation and drecreasing the light to make it darker. I also changed the blending mode of his hair to vivid light so that it glowed more.

Then I added gills to my male avatar. I did this the same way as in the first avatar.

Finally I created the underwater affect again. I did this by creating a new layer, filling it with white, rendering clouds and choosing chrome. After this I lowered the opacity. Then I added a new layer, again rendered clouds, changed the blending mode to colour burn and used a mask and a very soft brush to paint pretty much all but the edges out. This created a dark and mysterious effect and added a finishing touch to my male avatar.

In the final steps before completing my avatar, I liquefied my avatars face to make her expression fiercer, more protective, and more guardian-like. Because did this I then had to change her lips and so I did, altering the mask and the layer to match. I also changed the hue of her lips to make them look more natural and match her skin colour. After this I created gills on my avatar. I did this by using the polygonal lasso tool to draw a gill-like shape and then fill it with white. After this I used a spotty sort of brush and yellow and red/orange to paint it. When this was done I went to layer properties and added a drop shadow, inner shadow, inner glow, bevel and emboss as well as a mask to fade out the gill. I then duplicated this gill twice and moved them into place to create a set of three gills.

I have decided to add a dark blue background behind my avatar and I found this quite complicated. I first duplicated the hair layer and then used the magic wand tool to select the hair and create a mask, which I then inverted to show only the background. After this I changed the hue to a blue and decreased the light so that it was darker.

After extensive research (not really) I have discovered the perfect way to create an underwater affect on my avatar, for she is an underwater creature. I created a new layer above all my others, and then filled it with white. I then rendered clouds on this layer, and went filter - sketch - chrome.

After this I simply changed the opacity and taadaa:

This lesson I used the healing brush tool to change parts of the texture on my avatar's skin because in places such as the hand and the neck, the pattern simply goes over the top. And so Mrs Andrews showed me how to use the polygonal lasso tool to select the section underneath the neck and then afterward the hand so that the healing brush tool would not go over the line. I then also used the burn tool to create shadow on the hand, below the neck, and around the nose and eyes to create a more realistic and dramatic affect. After this I changed the hue of the hair to a more blue/pale colour. I also changed the blending mode of this layer to hard light so that my avatars hair looks like its glowing with moonlight. I also experimented with the hue and the blending mode of my avatar's lips to purple and colour burn. After this I changed the blending mode of the eyes to colour dodge because it makes her look more mysterious, knowledgeable.

This lesson I experimented with the blending mode of the moon texture that I used for my avatar's skin, and also the hue of my avatar's hair. I decided to choose overlay for the texture because it makes my avatar look fiercer and stronger. I am not quite sure about the hue of the hair and so I have decided to try out a purple colour. I also used the smudge and the blur tool to create a sort of webbed affect on my avatars hand, because she is an underwater creature.

This lesson I added the texture from a picture of a moon, http-_ecuadorupdate.files.wordpress.com_2008_09_full_moon_02_20001, onto my avatars skin. I did this like I did with the eyes, by pasting the pattern onto the image, moving it into place and copying the mask from the face layer on this new layer. I then changed the opacity and used a soft brush to touch up the mask. I really like the end result of this but i think it could look better somehow.

Today I duplicated the layer I made last time for the skin, then went to the avatar face layer, into channels, turned on the mask, selected the mask using the magic wand tool, and pasted the mask on one I had created on my new layer. I then inverted the mask so that it showed only the hair, and not the skin. After I did this I changed the hue and made it more of a green/blue colour but kept the same saturation so that its was still a nice pale colour. I also made a new layer and used another mask to paint out all but the lips out. This so that I could then change the hue to a purple colour that goes with the face.

Avatar Part 2

This lesson I found an image of a nebula that is perfect to use for the eyes of my avatar:

http-_www.remnantofgod.org_images_OrionNebula2.jpg

And so I used an elliptical marquee tool to select, copy and then paste part of the image onto my avatar. After this I moved it into position above the eye, and added a mask so that I paint out the parts I did want with a soft brush and black.

I then duplicated the base layer of my Avatar and added a mask so that I could paint out the hair and the lips with a soft brush. I then change the hue on Hue & Saturation to a more purple/blue colour, and lowered the saturation so that her skin was very pale with only a hint of colour as Lunarlithia does not have a sun, only 9 moons.

Photo for Avatar

I finally found a photo for my avatar, after many lessons spent searching for one.

http://images.fanpop.com/images/image_uploads/Amanda-americas-next-top-model-518400_1488_1920.jpg

This lesson I started to edit and change the features of my avatar. First I liquified the image to make the cheeks more prominent, the eyes bigger, the eyebrows higher, the face and the nose thinner and the lips bigger, so that she looked more like a fierce warrior, as pictured below:

I would like to a have fierce warrior-like expression on my Avatar similar to that on the Avatars pictured above.

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEip5SjpSGJM37D0mDuqWqM1qQkuF2iXHfqI0nwEnWDK_4MkWCYEWXFEtxDNLUXMrpIn-1CgzWEQHxItuJHGyGfnjvTH1Vh1BMnKO_g0KU-KFhZ0Hg2IiQ3AxvbcfiOX0jHvdxtZI9qXcR77/s1600/Avatar-movie-Wallpapers.jpg
http://www.coronacomingattractions.com/sites/default/files/avatar_neytiri.jpg