For our first project in Photoshop Fundamentals, when I attended Northeast Wisconsin Technical College, we had to create a flyer with an image that showed our personality with our name included.

Before NWTC, I attended University of Wisconsin Stevens Point with a bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts. For my final project in Point, we had to decide which medium we wanted to individually focus on. I chose to create a seven-minute film that showed imagery and sound, similar to Disney’s Fantasia. The link is available for you to watch: 

For my Photoshop project, I found an image from my Stevens Point video since that described who I am as an illustrator. I then included my name where my first is far to the top and my last is big at the bottom to make the flyer pop more. I spread out the letters of my last name to fill up the bottom by increasing the tracking under the Characters panel.

This is one of my human morphs that we had to teach ourselves how to create based on the many tutorials that were available to us. This morph had the double exposure effect where an image is embedded inside a human profile.

I wanted to create an image where it showed me thinking about an inspiration of mine. In this case, the image inside the outline is Cinderella’s castle from Walt Disney World. Disney has left an impact in my life which made me appreciate animation and drawing.

The Disney castle was converted as a smart object so it could be embedded inside the human outline. The human was selected and inverted in ‘select and mask’ to make it open for the castle to appear. Another layer of the selected human was created to show the facial features while the other human details were erased. The facial features had a low transparency to make it see through.

This is one of my animal morphs where we had to combine two animals together. I chose a wolf with an eagle face because I used to make this combination before back in Stevens Point. In the past, I took a ceramics class where one of our projects had us combine two animals as a head mount.

For this project, I used ‘select and mask’ for the eagle face with an outer glow effect and the clone stamp tool to bring the wolf fur out around the eagle’s facial features. I also used the spot healing tool to blend the eagle outline with the wolf fur and brightness contrast to lighten up the entirety.

For this animal morph, I chose a combination that is a reference from one of my favorite cartoon shows, Gravity Falls. In one episode, the show spoofs the Dungeons and Dragons board game where one character summons a centaur-taur. The creature is referencing a centaur but it is only showing the horse half top and bottom, creating a weird looking abstraction. The design was so original that I had to pay respect in this project.

I used ‘select and mask’ to select both horse bodies separately before I pieced them together. For the neck in-between, I used the spot healing tool and the blur tool to blend both horse skins as one synced body. The chess background is mimicking the board game from the show.

Image composites sourced from Pixabay and Unsplash.

This was our mid-term project where we had to create a television ad for a show that would not make it on a cable channel. Since the non-fresh idea was in mind and we had to include a guinea pig as the main character, I wanted to spoof a more successful film like Ratatouille. Replace the rat with a guinea pig and you have an original idea, right?

We had to use at least eight images in the poster, including the guinea pig, show title and TV school logo. Each food plate is a separate image that was doctored in ‘select and mask.’ I wanted the use of space to be the focus, so I placed the food images in areas that can properly fill up the poster. Even the text was placed in areas where the viewer can easily read it.

As an exercise, this was an interesting piece where I got to create an electronic painting with the mixer brush tool. I choose a stock image of a pizza to apply the mixer brush on top when all layers were selected.

The workspace itself had to be changed to ‘painting’ in order to use certain selections and tools. I used my Wacom tablet to apply paint strokes and pressure points for further detail. What you get in the end is one advertising pie.

For this project, we had to do three different color selections. This is my favorite one that has the partial black and white effect where only the selected stands out with color and the rest is black and white.

I chose a picture of myself and my sister holding cupcakes from our local bakery. The cupcakes were selected to keep their color while the rest became black and white after doing the ‘select and mask’ reversed. I made sure the cupcake frosting was sharply selected since the skin color stands out.

We were supposed to create two sets of postcards that referenced a holiday and/or place. For my favorite postcard set, I decided to have a Halloween theme featuring the fictional town of Derry, Maine, from the hit horror films and novel, IT.

With the cover itself, I wanted to show an image where the creepiness is not shown in plain sight. You would really have look inside the picture as if something is going to pop out, like one of those “once you see it, you’ll s--- bricks” pictures available online.

For the creepy clown, I used ‘select and mask’ to crop him out of the stock photo and then I decreased the transparency so that he was harder to see. For the text in the cover and back, I included inner shadow and drop shadow effects to make them stand out.

This was a motion GIF I have created that was definitely worth the extra credit points! I wanted to make something comical so the joke could be shown as a loop. The GIF is a living tennis ball that is going back and forth on a tennis court. Since the tennis ball is alive and is always moving at a fast pace, the ball has a screaming face the entire time.

I created the imagery on Illustrator with my Wacom tablet. The tablet allowed me to use pressure points so that the lines were not the same thickness. I then transferred the images onto Photoshop and made the GIF frames through Timeline.

I would like to end my portfolio with a design that connects to my first project in Photoshop. For my last project, I decided to relive my Stevens Point years and created another image that was based on my Senior video. The link is available for you to watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=io4s-pYYaa4

The image shows a blank figure discovering imagery and color through the lenses of his glasses. I first drew the human figure in Illustrator and then transferred the image onto Photoshop with a stock image of a puzzle vortex behind it. I then used the mixer brush tool to stroke the puzzle vortex, creating a motion blur as if the figure is moving.

Like the image on my first Photoshop project, Name Flyer, it brought back memories from when I was releasing my imagination to create abstraction and meaning. Like any artist, I never stop being creative.