Polygon Art (Low Poly)

Low-poly art is a throwback to the early days of 3D animation, where mock-ups of scenes would be created in 3D using a relatively small number of polygons, which allowed for faster rendering times.

In the past ten years, though, low poly art has emerged as a sort of retro tribute. For our purposes, it means to take a photograph and distill it it down to a series of polygons.

Please take three minutes and look at this excellent overview of what this is all about, what is (or isn't) a polygon, and just how pervasive this medium has become in a number of different art and design fields.

Good news: The actual steps in creating this effect in Photoshop are actually pretty simple.

Bad news: The more polygons you create, the better your results will be. In other words, this will take you a long time and involve a lot of repetition.

As you can see, some of these examples contain hundreds of polygons:

(Source: https://inspirationfeed.com/geometric-low-poly-art/)

In Photoshop (or Photopea), you will be using a whole lot of:

- Polygonal Lasso Tool

- Blur > Average Filter.

Project: POLYGON ART

You are to choose ONE image (from your collection or from the internet) and give the subject a low-poly treatment. You need to choose a photograph, not an illustration, drawing, cartoon, etc.

Your subject should be extracted from the original photo and a new background (colour or gradient of your choice) put in its place. Google "Low poly photoshop" for many examples.

Suggestions:

- For a first attempt, it is recommended to choose an animal. You may find it more forgiving than a human face or a whole landscape scene.

- If you wish to save time, you have the option to choose a subject that is directly facing the camera. You can then only "complete" half the face and then mirror it to complete the other half. The first tutorial below does this.

- Don't just draw random polygon shapes. Pay attention to the natural lines and gradients within your subject and try to follow these. More detailed areas will require smaller (and more numerous) polygons.

TO HAND IN:

- Add your final result (.jpg) and the original image (.jpg) to Classroom.