Craft and Technologies II
Photography—Portraiture
Assignment:
· 1.Produce a CD case and other accompanying images. The front cover will consist of a main ‘cover shot’ portrait, along with any other designs.
· 2. The second image is to replicate a another portrait CD cover, matching the design and quality of the original.
Our Group: Danny Mitchell, Matt Heaney .
The first thing we decided to tackle was the second part, where we have to imitate an existing portrait CD cover. After browsing through Google for images, we came across :
The reason we chose this image is because the overall style and composition is something we all liked. Also we were able to pick out what kind of processes we would need to go through in Photoshop to recreate it. We also had the perfect model in mind, my friend Blackjack.
This is what we came up with. Starting with the photo of your model. We first tried to adjust the actual person, to better/closer match the original. This included liquefying the proportions, and giving him the exact sunglasses from the original.
After that I moved onto the basic composition. Placing a city image from Google between his arms. Putting a gradient in the background to give me the lighting. Then it was a case of using the default brush to get all the highlights/glows and the little stars around him. Then composited with Matt`s text which he created in flash.
Matt:
After researching the original album cover font and layout I discovered that the album used a modified version of the font Impact A. Without access to the original font I decided to create my own.
I proceeded to do this by loading in a close representation of the font “Impact” into Adobe Flash and then used the “Break Apart” tool to allow me manipulate the font components directly and mold them into the correct shapes.
This process also kept the text images as vectors so that they could be scaled to size without losing any quality.
The hardest part was finding a picture which was similar to the original cityscape, along with capturing the same sense of scale.
The second task was to create our own CD Cover from scratch. When we thought of this. Since we had various other projects with more that needed doing. We felt confident enough to jump straight in with the photo-shopping. We did some light research into old 80’s hip-hop albums, NWA, Public enemy etc. Focusing on a group shot of the artists around their area.
This is what we managed to create. The colour blue was a choice of our photography models. So taking that, along with the way they portray themselves. That set the starting theme for us to build on. The actual technical tasks were just simple text effects and using of the smudge tool. The original photo was only slightly retouched, to crunch the blacks and make their faces smoother/cleaner.
Matt:
I am happy with the way this photo turned out and I think that it represents the original concept that we had. I think lighting for the original picture was an issue and if given a choice I would like to of lit the area better so that the lighting was more even . This would of also made manipulation in Photoshop easier.
