Description: My vision for this project was to make our school inside and out look like it was just set on slightly on fire. So nothing is falling apart but I wanted to make the outsides look really burnt. To achieve this effect I used the burn tool. This tool has the ability to make certain spots of your photos darker which therefore makes it look more spooky and burnt which is exactly what I was going for. Perfect for this project. I also used the outer glow style in the layer → layer style → Outer Glow panel. I used this on all the word areas to make them stand out. I couldn't use a drop shadow because it wouldn’t do anything so that is why I choose the outer glow. I chose the fonts I did because I was going for the horror movie type look but it is for a high school so I added a more high school looking style and added texture behind it with the outer glow (just turning up the noise) to give it a more of an imperfect look. To create the faded edges on both of the photos of the school, I used the ellipse tool marquee and the rectangle marquee tool. This really helps fade the images to not make them as harsh. I want your eyes to go to the words first so that you understand what the image is showing. Then If you look at the sky in the picture on the top of the outside of the school, I added lightning and the clouds. I love this because it makes the sky look more textured and not as bland and it helps it fit in more with the dark theme. For the lightning I used the outer glow effect, to make the lightning glow and look realistic, and the brush tool and applied it in a lightning shape. For the clouds I downloaded a photo of clouds and lowered its opacity and added more of the burn tool to it to make it look darker. And the last thing I added was the blood. I put it around the outside behind the rectangle and the circle shape because I didn’t want it to take away from the main part of the movie poster. I used the brushes from Mr.Matson’s sandbox in a deep red to mimic actual blood (they were the blood brushes and dry blood brushes).
Reflection: I used many different design elements in this project. The first one I used was emphasis. My main 2 emphasises were on the words ``Horror High" and the school pictures (specifically the one with the uskego logo so they know where this is taking place). My design choice to emphasise these points was because they were the most important elements in the poster. If you didn’t have those words, you would be lost on what it is and if you didn’t understand the setting with those pictures then you would be even more confused. The second one I used is contrast. I used contrast to change the images to make them look darker then they were and I used the burn tool to create more contrast because I wanted certain things to be pretty dark so they would match the vibe of the movie poster. If it was really light then you would be confused and you wouldn't get the memo that it is a scary movie poster. And the third one used was color. I incorporated color in not only the “Horror High” words but also in the blood. Now as you can tell these are very simple places to put color but I wasn’t trying to make anything pop off the page too much besides the title because then it would distract their attention if it wasn’t the main part of the poster. So yes the only stand out colors are red but that is because it matches a movie poster theme and looks good with it simple and dark.
Tools used: Effects (contrast, layer adjustments, opacity, layer stye), eraser tool, move tool, brush tool, ellipse marquee tool, rectangle marquee tool, burn tool, outer glow, text tool, paint bucket, eyedropper tool, magic eraser, and crop.