MULTIPLE EXPOSURE
"Did you win?" "Yeah. But I lost more than I won."
When we got this assignment, I thought it was gonna be pretty awesome. Five Jeds in a picture, all doing seemingly interesting things. Besides, it was all copy-and-paste. It'll look awesome, and it didn't seem too hard.
Then I actually got started.
I used ImageReady mode to copy and paste the five Jeds. It was made somewhat difficult, however, that my photographer forgot that she WASN'T supposed to move the tripod. But still pretty fun, having to try to cut pixel-perfectly from every picture. But the most annoying bit was that some Jeds were noticeably darker than others (I blame it on the lighting). Especially the Jed in the green shirt. But I made it through in the end, and I'm pretty proud of it.
CIRCUS THAT SURROUNDS ME COLLAGE
Nothing too hard, really, just scanners, a story chart made on Paint (since I didn't know about Illustrator at the time), a photo of my family, a text wrap tool, and a photo of myself that I probably should've taken in the white-walled video studio (it was pretty annoying to have to remove the sunroom background). Don't forget the eight or so layers involved and the text warping.
This DEFINETELY could've been better. Of all my pieces this year, I think I'm the least proud of this one. I mean, it was just a bunch of random things mushed up together. I know that it was the point of the collage, but still... (By the way, I was a juggler. Really.)
PATTERN/ECCENTRICK INSPIRATION
Mom: "Why do you need a picture of your little sister?"
Me: "...You'll see."
My pattern consisted of a bell, a hat, and a switch. To compensate for the seeming normality of the hat, I picked the most random hat I could find. They were pretty simple to vectorise, except for the BELL. The bell...it was bright in some areas but dark in others. But after vectorizing a Goomba during the tutorials, it wasn't too difficult. It just required a LOT of layers.
Then I got started onto vectorising my sister. I spent three hours vectorizing the WRONG things. I spent another three vectorizing the outlines. Then I spent another hour waiting for the darned thing to save. Looking back, I guess it could've done without the black outlines, and the pattern probably could've been better compressed. But I'm still pretty proud of it. Besides, my sis loves it. What more could I ask? And now, I'm a vectorizing master! Mrs. Powell was right; the pen tool is awesome! (Heh, I started using it in Flash for TIK just because it was so neat.)
WECCENTRICK VIDEO
(VIDEO REMOVED DUE TO BEING UNCERTAIN IF MY PARTNERS WERE TOO EMBARASSED BY IT.)
"Excuse me, can you hold my lightsaber while I get the tripod?"
I was a Jedi. Aristo was a ninja. What could go wrong with just an awesome concept? Lots of things, apparently.
00:03-Seriously, Aristo's not that fast. We just used effects to speed him up.
00:05-In order to freeze the frame, we had to actually take a screenshot of the film using "Print Screen"
00:38 - It's floating. Really.
00:40-Okay, fine, I got the idea from the Unit 15 film.
00:56-In order to make it seem like I was jumping really high, I lifted the tripod as high as it could go. Did it work out okay?
1:07-We took a screenshot and inverted the colours to produce this scene.
1:20-Picture + Effect(3D Ripple). Okay, you can stop laughing now.
1:27-1:30-These were also the only two transitions used during the film (blur). Note also, the Effect (to make it seem like a flashback)
2:21 - In retrospect, music probably would've fitted perfectly at this point.
3:27 - Whoa. This part was so tricky to fix. I don't even think we fixed it probably.
Also, we decided to dub our voices using the Windows Sound Recorder into the film so that our voices would be clear for sure. Besides, we kept on laughing as we filmed because...it was pretty silly. Imagine the looks on the faces of random hikers. By the way, to eliminate the original audio, we simply muted all of it. I think I'll improve this video over the summer and Youtube it for your entertainment. Maybe. (UPDATE: Whoops. I didn't. Maybe some other time.)
Props to Kyle Michaels and Michael Chen, who we forced into helping us. Thanks, guys, I owe you big time.
CD COVER
"This. Is. A. Sick. Looking. Cover."
Photoshop was used to make the entire back cover, and to merge the swords on the front cover. Oh, don't forget the awesome-looking flashes of light on the back cover; courtesy of brightness/contrast under "Filter".
Illustrator was used to create the ying-yang symbol, jedi logo (yes, that is a jedi logo) using a combination of the circle tool, the pen tool, and the aid of the grids. In addition, both the text-on-a-line tool and the text-in-a-box tool were used to manipulate the text.
SO IN CONCLUSION...
It was a good year. Fine, so maybe the computers were slow to load (well, having several Adobe art problems crammed onto one computer wouldn't be too good for it) and maybe I vectorised the wrong thing, or maybe my movie files were too huge for my poor strained USB to handle, but it was an AWESOME year! From the hours spent in the comm tech room, to my first newspaper layout, to every neat little thing learned during the tutorials, to going into the forest after school to film, to getting to participate in Eccentrick.
So where to from here? Seeing as I'm not taking any tech course next year, I don't know, but I'm going to end up using these programs again in the future. Whether to help in a business or just for a hobby, I haven't seen the last of these programs. Mrs. Powell, thanks for everything!
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