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Digital Painting In Photoshop

Description

My art is a recreation of a digital painting called The Dragon and the Raccoon by Jeremiah Morelli. He used Photoshop to create this work. Within this work there are birds in the background as well as trees and fences. The main thing that draws attention in this work is the dragon in the center followed by the raccoon offering the dragons some flowers. I notice the skies and details on the dragon and the sky. The ground looks amazing as well. This is mostly using warm colors like yellows and greens. The only pattern I see is the use of lines on the background pieces.

Analysis

The focal point in the artwork is the dragon. To me the color yellow is most prominent as it is used sparingly. The main unifying factor is the use of similar shading and lighting, there’s also the use of similar textures and colors. I see variety in the way the dragon is textured as opposed to everything else, that is to say most of the artwork uses lines to add texture whereas the dragon uses circles to add a scale-like texture to the work. I think the art is more realistic as opposed to abstract as the only thing you wouldnt be able to find is a dragon, and everything has realistic textures. There is a sense of balance within this painting because on one side you have the dragon and the other side has the tree to balance it out. I feel like the image has decent size relationships as the raccoon is smaller than the tree and there isn’t a way to know how big a dragon should be.

Interpretation

I think the artist was trying to create a sense of unity and cooperation between all living things as typically dragons are portrayed as carnivorous monsters that will eat anything that moves yet in this piece the dragon is laying there peacefully with a raccoon beside it. The raccoon offering flowers to the dragon makes it seem like they are friends which is why I think that the artist wanted to show how peaceful things could be if everyone worked together and stopped fighting amongst ourselves. The fact that it is a green dragon which are typically portrayed in games and other media to be territorial shows either that the artist just used green because it fit the color scheme he was going for or he researched which colors he should use based on past media. I know it seems like a bit of a stretch but that's how it seems to be to me.

Evaluation

I personally like this artwork because of the color scheme and the fact it has a dragon in it. The best part of this artwork is the dragon as it looks extremely well done and detailed. The raccoon is the only part that doesn’t look as good to me. My reasoning is that it doesn’t look as detailed as the dragon, though that could be because it is smaller and couldn’t be as detailed. If I were making this artwork I would make it a bit brighter as it feels a bit too gloomy. I think the artist used aspects of fundamentalism and formalism.

Compare

My digital painting followed the style as best I could, I tried to use the same brush style. I tried to follow the form as I added both the dragon and raccoon from the original work. The main difference between mine and the original is my lack of trees and fences in the background, I also added more birds flying in the background.

The most challenging part for me was getting the shape of the dragon and the tree correct. I also had a hard time getting the eye right. I think I was really successful with both the texturing on the dragon and the sky

I created an animation about who I am using Photoshop. I learned how to go frame by frame and make everything perfect or at least good enough. I also learned that I’m never using Photoshop to animate ever again because it sucked. My steps to complete this project was to make a rough storyboard and then forget everything about it except the opening and then go with the flow.

My animation reflects my personality because it shows that I am almost entirely shaped by band and Dungeons & Dragons. I used the imagery of a nat one which in D&D is very bad to show that at a glance me being in marching band was a bad choice but then it washed away to a nat twenty which is good to represent that band was actually a good decision.

I learned how to make backgrounds with gradients. I also learned how to edit photos and cut parts of them out. I taught myself a new way to make selections and also how to make a better photo.

My logo represents who I am with my choice of both blue and green to represent my love of the outdoors and relaxing as well as my birthstone respectively. I used a cross between a bearded dragon and a dragonfly as it was the best way I could think of to represent my love for dragons. I also used pink for my name as it’s a color that I think went well with my other two color choices.

I first found a couple of pictures of dragonflies and bearded dragons to use as a base, then I drew a couple of different trial designs and chose my first idea. I then started to recreate it in Vectr and drew up a basic concept for a few variations on my logotype. I then decided on the variation with my name being on the top and bottom of my mark and curved my name with the circle. If I could do anything differently it would be using Illustrator instead of Vectr as Vectr had a lot fewer options than Illustrator has. I personally believe that the most successful part of my project is my mark, as I believe it looks professionally done.

3D Model of A Dragon

My goal for this project was to try my best and make a dragon.

The steps to do so were to make the individual pieces of the dragon then combine all of them together in SkulptGL.

The hardest part of this project for me was making the wings as it required me to work with nearly flat objects which wasn’t easy to do in SkulptGL. To me, the most successful part of my project was the tail and the way I added in the teeth. I also believe I succeeded in making the dragon have relatively decent proportions.

Link to video

The goal of this project was to make an animation that follows a song. My steps to complete this were rather simple, first I found a song that I enjoyed listening to and listened to it on repeat for around thirty minutes. Then I started tapping along to the rhythms of the music until I understood the pattern of each beat. Finally I started animating my video and used colors that worked well with what was happening in the song.

I used rectangular people to represent different characters. At the beginning two were fighting as a ball bounced along the bottom of the screen to symbolize where the lyrics fell. I also had a black and blue ball growing and stretching along with the opening guitar part in the background, it was blue because the opening is slower and more somber than later parts of the song. As the song went on I had more shapes and more “characters” appear. The characters were mostly orange to represent the passion behind the lyrics in parts of the song. The dragon fading to gray and then collapsing as it faded away was my way of symbolizing age and time passing.

I think my symbolization of the different parts of the songs story was really strong whereas my timing on some parts wasn’t as strong

Musical_Animation_Austin_Phillips_Finished.mp4

F_VS_L_Austin_Phillips_After_Effects.mp4

My original goal for this project was to make an elemental battle scene with fire and lightning being opponents. I managed to add the lightning effects relatively easily as After Effects has a built in lightning effect that worked really well. Fire was a bit more difficult as I had to use a particle generator to create my own fire effects. Once I got the generator to work how I wanted it to, I was able to add the effects with ease and precision. My one failure with this project was that I couldn’t add fire effects to every attack, though it still looked rather nice.

I learned how to use the Effects Panel in After Effects. I also learned how to do motion tracking, though I didn’t use it during the final project as it was incompatible with what I envisioned for my project.

This project has a lot more strengths than weaknesses, such as the way the lightning looks being done extremely well in my opinion. I also did a good job on having the lightning moves look like they belonged in the world as opposed to just being thrown in. I adjusted the levels of the footage to make it look more cinematic and less like it was recorded in a random field. My main weakness was the fire moves not adding light to the world like it should have, however even with that downfall I still achieved my goals with this project relatively well. The one thing I would’ve liked to add was sound effects even though it doesn’t need them to look good

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