Jagdeep Singh Sahota

I am quite satisfied with both, my leaflet and my poster. If I were a casual tourist the poster would draw my attention. My finial design (poster) is quite similar to my idea, which I presented on my mood board. Basic things such as map in the centre, views of landscapes on the sides and small pictures showing the most popular landmarks in the Kirklees, were kept exactly as on the mood board. The detail, which I add while working on the poster, was an idea of promotion local landmarks though advertising a Bus Company. All my doubts, which have appeared during my work in Photo Shop, were partly dispelled by myself through the practice and partly by tutor. Without this second help probably I would not be able to explore all Photoshop’s functions which I known now. More over, all Photoshop’s possibilities which I were shown during the classes, have encouraged me to use more advanced photo editing options.

Thank you very much for opening Photoshop world for me. I hope it is only my beginning in this subject and the future fruits of my Photoshop work will be more impassive.

Hanna Cytawa

Digital Graphics Level 3

September 2009

Final Review Blog

As stated within my proposal and showed within my mood board, I tried to design the posters using bright vibrant colours, and bold strong text. I also tried to promote the artwork side of arcade machines, by including images and graphics of arcade machines and arcade graphics through the design of the posters. Using fonts such as the Crackman font and the Namco font, give the poster an arcade and fun feel, but at the same time, are bold and readable. Using these fonts also promotes the product itself as it gives the viewer something they can relate the product to, other than the images on the poster.

I tried to use colours that where common within arcade machines, such as strong red, blue and yellows as arcade machines often use strong colours. I also used effects on the text to help it stand out more and make them stronger on the page and also easier to read. I felt that using real arcade machines on the posters was very important, as part of the promotion of the product is the artwork of the machines, so what better way to promote the artwork than using the art itself.

Overall I think I have met the brief well and I am pleased with the overall finished product that I have produced. I think it would have been nice if I had the time to visit the warehouse, and rather than using images from the web, I would have taken my own pictures of machines and used the best ones within my poster designs. I think if had been doing this for real, that is what I would have done.

Digital Graphics Level 3

September 2009

Creative Process Blog

Designing the First Poster

I first started by researching the internet to try and find some suitable fonts that I could use as part of my poster design. I found some un-usually fonts such as the Addams Family fonts and Sonic the Hedgehedge fonts. The Addams Family font was good but I thought was a little too abstract to use even though it had a connection to the subject matter. The sonic font, although fun was not actual characters, but was images of characters out of the game. I noticed on the arcade warehouse site, that they had used the graphics of Pac-Man for there banner, so I did some searching and came across a font called Crackman, which was a Pac man font. This was a fun looking font and was immediately a front runner for use on my poster. I also found some fonts such as the Akanoid font which I found a little difficult to read but was a good font and the Namco font, was very bold reminded me of the Impact font.

After some playing around, I decided to use, the Pac Man font for the main title banner of the poster. As this was the style that Arcade Warehouse used on their site, and was easily readable and also good fun to look at, it was the obvious choice. After adding and sizing the font, using the Type Tool, I positioned the font at the top and centre of the poster and filled the white gaps of the lettering with yellow. Yellow worked well as it is the Pac-man colour and it also stood out well on the page.

I felt it was now time to start finding some suitable images from the web that I could use within the poster. I started by finding images of arcade machines such as Space Invaders, Tron and Chase HQ, all classic arcade machines. I found it quite difficult to find whole images of arcade machines in a suitable resolution, as I was searching images that where greater than 2mexapixels in size, the images needed to be this size, as otherwise that wouldn’t be suitable to use as they would come up blocky on the poster when resized to be used. With some patience I soon found some suitable images that I could use.

I decided that I would firstly use the Space Invaders image. Using the Polygon Lasso Tool, I selected the image in the picture, I would have used the Magic Wand Tool but as the background of the image was very busy, it was difficult if not impossible to use this tool to get the desired effect. At this point I felt that the background of the poster was somewhat boring and plain white and needed to be changed. Just changing the colour again would have been quite boring, so I came up with the idea of using arcade machine Marquees as a background, as this worked well with the subject matter. After finding some nice marquees, such as Bubble Bobble, Defender, Joust and Galaxian I cut, resized and positioned the marquees in a tile on a separate page. As you can see from the pictures below, they were to bright and colourful to use a background, so using the hue and Saturation tool, and a layer mask I adjusted the image so there was just a hint of colour, but was largely a greyscale image.

With these settings, it was now useable as a background. While I was researching the marquees, I found an interesting marquee, of a custom arcade machine which I thought looked really good, it gave me the idea of jazzing up the arcade warehouse banner and making it look more eye catching.

I didn’t want to make the banner as complicated as the marquee, as it is quite difficult to read the lettering within the image. I searched for some game characters that I could use, and using the Magic Wand tool, I resized and positioning the images, so that they were hanging of the text which gave a fun feel, but also allowed for the text to be readable.

As you can see the banner looks much more attractive and eye catching, with the fairly simple addition of some arcade characters. I decided on adding the second arcade machine of Tron, again I used the Polygon Lasso tool to cut out the image of the machine, and add it my poster. As the poster was starting to take shape, I thought it would be a good time to add some informative text to the poster. I felt that ‘own your favourite Arcade machine’ would be a nice slogan for the poster, I decided that the Namco font worked well for this as it is a nice strong and solid impacting font. I used a nice bright red so that it stood out. The text still looked a little plain, so using the blending options function within Photoshop, I gave the font some drop shadow, some contour and texture effects, a colour overlay to make it  look a little bright and a stroke to make the text a bit thicker and bolder.

I then moved onto the text which held information about the company such as address and contact information, and also a small part about the services offered. This time I decided on the Comic Sans font, as it was a nice funky font that was easy to read but didn’t look to informal like a font such as Times Roman which would have been unsuitable for this project. I felt that the other fonts I had found didn’t really work for this purpose. I used a nice deep blue for the large text and again red for the rest, I think if had used red all the way through it would be to strong, and the use of blue text broke the flow of the poster up nicely. Again I used some blending effects to help the text standout such as drop shadows, colour overlays and stroke.

My poster was coming close to completion, but was still short of something. I decided to add some screenshots to the poster, to reminder people of the classic games that where available. After some searching on the web, I found some good pics, and using the rotate tool, and the use of layers in Photoshop added some pics in the top right of the poster. This addition seemed to just nicely finish of the base layout of everything on the poster.

Looking at what I felt was a nearly finished piece, it seemed that the arcade machines where a little too static, so I decided to add some effects to them. I decided to add a mirror. I did this firstly by duplicated the first layer, then doing a Vertical Flip under the transform settings and then rotating and moving the image till it hit the bottom of the machine to give a mirror of the image, then using a layer mask and the gradient tool to give the effect of a mirror or reflection. I then added a shadow using a separate layer, and the brush tool set to a large brush and the hardness set to 0. As you can see below the effect worked well, and gave the poster that final finishing effect that it was short of before.

Designing the Second Poster

It was now time to move onto the second poster. As the first poster was base on arcade machines, the second poster was going to be based around pinball machines. I decided to keep the same style in the second poster, so that the posters would be consistent in look and approach. I copied the banner from the first poster to the second, and also the text, again this promotes consistency. I used a similar idea from before of using a hue adjusted background on an image layer, this time I used a nice image I found of a pinball machine playing surface which I thought worked will.

Again I researched the web for images of pinball machines that I could use on the poster, with some searching I found a few different images that I could use. I finally decided on the Mousin Around pinball machine. I first used the Magic Wand tool, as the background was plain grey, inversed the selection and copied it onto a blank sheet which I could then edit, I didn’t want to edit the original in case I made a mistake that I could not reverse. I felt that the image was too big with the legs on, so using the lasso tool I cut the legs off the image which made it a more useable size. I could now add the image to the poster.

I wanted to have a slightly different feel to the poster, so I decided to change the main text on the poster which previously read, ‘own your favourite arcade machine’ to ‘own a piece of history’. I wanted this to be more prominent than before, I felt that the style I had chosen previously worked well, so I kept with it except this time I made the text quite a bit large so it was much more of a focus point on the poster. I basically want the poster to spicily advertise the one machine rather than promoting various machines like the previous one did. This isn’t to say that the company can only provide that machine, but the poster tries to promote the idea of ‘owning a piece of history’ and promote that machine. This would have been a confusing statement if there were two or more pinball machines pictured on the poster, this way its keep simple, direct and straight to the point.

Now it was just a case of final touches. I did a similar thing as before by adding a mirror to the pinball machine, by duplicating the layer, flipping vertically and manually rotating and moving until the edges meet up. Then using a layer mask and the gradient tool, gave the mirrored effect. Finally I added a shadow, on a separate layer, just to mount the image into the poster and give the finished product.

File Types

The main two file types used within Photoshop are JPG and PSD, both have their advantages and disadvantages over each other. Firstly JPG is much easier and more compatible with other programs, also the file size with a JPG is much smaller this however can lead to a reduction with overall image quality, this may not be viewable present when viewing on a screen, except when zooming in close, but will be present when printing the image out. Also a JPG image is much harder to edit, as any layers, image adjustments and different effects used cannot be changed as everything is held onto a single layer. Also JPGs are far more suited for use on the internet due to the file size and compatibility.

A PSD file takes a lot more hard drive space than a JPG, but holds the highest image quality out of the two. A PSD also holds the image or project, its original state, with everything on its own separate layer and all the effects and settings present so that they can be changed or edited easily. Also the print quality from a PSD is better than that from a JPG file. A PSD however is not compatible with programs outside of the Photoshop catalogue, this could cause problems if you where passing work back and forth with someone who is working within a different editing package. PSD files are also unsuitable for use on the web due to file size and incompatibility.

From completing this project, its easiest working with the PSD files because you can change and edit everything much, much easier in a PSD than with a JPG. However if I wanted to send a sample of my work to a customer, for example, sending the PSD file would mostly cause problems with the customer being able to view it, and would also take a long to upload to the internet. So the ability to produce JPG files is not completely without use.

I feel that i have done very well on my dvd game cover and cd cover and stuck to most of what i said but had to tweek it some way though.

I had to change the backround picture becouse it was to pixelated for my cover so i went on the net and found one that worked well. I also had trouble with the barry white picture i had to get a better picture as the first one was blury and you could not see his face propley. I tryed many fonts and different colours to work with but found that impact font was the best choice to go with.

I had a lot of problems with pixelation on some of the pictures i used but with a bit of searching i found what i needed with the right pixel size. The good thing that came out of my work was that i learned how to do things i never new how to do in photoshop and can now go away from this with and insite on how game companies make there covers.

(A)

This is the picture of barry white i went with as you can see it is not pixelated as much.

(B)

This was the first picture of barry white i used but it not work well when i resized it. It became very pixelated and blured  i think i made the right choice to get a better quality of finish on my work.

(C)

It was the samething when it came to choicing the backround picture it was to pixelated so i went on the net and found a new backround picture.

(D)

As you can see this not pixelated and was my final choice for my backround picture.

Front cover

This is how i put my final piece of work together. I started by creating a canves for my dvd case at width 3299 pixels and hieght at 2230 pixels resolution 300 pixels/inch. Then i searched the net for a backround picture for the front and the back cover i used two picture’s for my front cover backround. I started with the front cover first as shown in exhibit A (A)

I then put another picture over the top to get the right look for my cover. exhibit B

(B)

on this picture i had to change the opacity down to 59% to get the look i was looking for. I then placed a picture of barry white under the flag.Exhibit C

(C)

In the picture i had to get a picture of barry white and useing the polygonal lasso tool to cut out what i wanted to use.

I then started to work on the top logo for my cover Exhibit D

(D)

I put my logo bar at the top of my cover and put a layer mask on so that i can rub out what i did not want to use. I got my top logo from another game cover witch i got for the net exhibit E

(E)

I then went on to putting  two picture’s of a befor and after shot of car’s exhibit F,G

(F)

On this picture i had to use a masking tool and magic wand tool to get the car looking how i wanted it on both picture’s.

(G)

I used the magic want tool to remove the backround of the picture’s and had to use the paint brush to take out parts the would not work with my cover. On the bottom car i add a shadow to give it more depth.

I then put the age rating logo on and the PAL logo on the cover shown exhibit H

(H)

I use the age rating and PAL logo from another game cover. I used the rectanguler marquee tool to cut out the logo’s to place on the cover.

I then started to put my text and thq logo on the front cover. Exhibit I

(I)

I got the THQ logo for the net shown in exhibit I. The font i used was impact witch work’s well i also added a shadow to my text to give depth.

Spine

I started by useing the rectanguler marquee tool to outline where i wanted to fill in white and then put a black box at the bottom. Exhibit J

(J)

I then went on to putting the xbox 360 logo on and rating logo. Exhibit K

(K)

I used the copy and paste my rating logo. I got the 360 logo from the net shown in the next picture. I use the rectanuler marquee tool to cut out the logo and place at the top of  my spine . Exhibit L

(L)

I then put my text onto my spine by copy and paste. Exhibit M

(M)

Back cover

I started by draging and droping my backround onto my cover. Exhibit N

(N)

I then went on to put some screen shots on the back for the game. Exhibit O

(O)

With these two screen shots i  had to turn down the opacity down to 79%  to give a real look to the cover.

I got a bar code and copy write logo from another cover. Exhibit P

(P)

I used the rectanguler marquee tool to cut out the copy write and placed on the bottom left corner then i used the same tool to cut out the barcode then placed in the bottom right corner of the back cover.

I added some text to the back cover. Exhibit Q

(Q)

That is how it all came together for the dvd cover. Now for the cd

How i put the cd disc together

first i got a cd template with the width at 1465 pixels and the height at 1465 pixels and the resolution at 300 pixels/inch. Exhibit A

(A)

I then went onto getting my backround to put on the cd i used drag and drop to put it on the cd. Exhibit B

(B)

I then put another picture over the top of the backround and turned the opacity down to 69%. Exhibit C

(C)

I then used the rectanguler marquee tool to fill an area in white. Exhibit D

(D)

I then put a picture of barry white under the flag and had to put a layer mask on the picture and use the paint brush tool to take out what i did not want to use. Exhibit E

(E)

I then put the two picture’s of the car’s onto the cd but draging them from the dvd cover and droping them onto the cd. Exhibit F

(F)

I then went onto puting the age rating logo and and the THQ logo onto the disc by draging of the dvd cover and droping onto the cd. Exhibit G

(G)

I then put my text onto the disc useing impact font. Exhibit H

(H)

And finally i put the xbox and xbox live logo onto the white part of the cd. Exhibit I

(I)

This is my finished piece.

On reflection i took another look at my finished work and changed the backround picture as it was very pixelated. I also changed the xbox header as it was also to pixelated.

I think I have managed to convey the essentials of the brief.

However, because I used images of built, & not natural, landmarks in the finished design,  the colours were more stone than  greens, as in the mood-board. The health aspects are deliberately left low-key, as I feel that there are plenty of other sources advising on walking as part of a healthy life, & over-emphasis has negative results. I chose to use clear, attractive images that appeal to the eye, & hopefully will entice people to have a look at the heritage of Kirklees.

I now have a basic skill-set for Photoshop, & I would like to find an advanced-level Photoshop course next. The skills are transferable to The GIMP, (the open-source image manipulation program), & I have made use of them already.

I have been somewhat frustrated by the clunkiness of WordPress, as it has taken me several attempts to find an acceptable methodology for uploading images, (screen-shots) into the blog. It will not load a .doc or .odt file WITH the images embedded, I have had to re-take screen-shots, save them as .jpg’s in Paint, & insert each image where required into the blog. Consequently, I have also greatly expanded my knowledge of how WordPress operates during this module.

]]> http://dgl3sep2009.wordpress.com/2009/09/30/reflections/feed/ 0 archolman http://dgl3sep2009.wordpress.com/2009/09/29/final-review-band-striplight-butterflies/ http://dgl3sep2009.wordpress.com/2009/09/29/final-review-band-striplight-butterflies/#comments Tue, 29 Sep 2009 22:53:38 +0000 sydin http://dgl3sep2009.wordpress.com/?p=1004 ]]> Final Review

Promotional Poster

I believe that within my Poster I have successfully portrayed the moods and themes I have set out within my Design Brief and Mood Board. By enhancing and modifying sections of colours in the foreground and removing the background in its entirety, I feel I have successfully conveyed a haunting feel to the image. Although downplayed in the final product itself, the image also retains elements of desolation through use of custom brushes and colour reduction/desaturation in the carpet surrounding the seating. I also managed to create a strong three-colour theme (Being White, Black, and Red respectively), which although was not part of the initial design, has worked to aid the catchy and iconic feel of the image.

However, there were some issues with the creation process that I feel has affected the overall quality of the image.

• Firstly, the photograph used to create the Background layers was of low resolution and only mid quality compression. This has caused a major issue with the rescaling of the image, as even in its current resolution the image is showing large defects or ‘artifacts’ in its bodies of colour.

• The use of the CMYK colour profile has made it difficult to create a vibrancy within the red colour range, leaving some bodies of colour looking drab in comparison to the original draft.

• Also, in the design brief, I stated that I would be implimenting four butterflies into the image, in order to represent each member of the band. However, it was only towards the end of the creation process that I realized I had not placed the final butterfly. As I had already scrapped a first poster draft since I had not documented the creation process, I felt that either interjecting the method with a final admission of a minor object would further distrupt the creation process, and thus omitted this object.

• Finally, a very minor issue currently, the date and entry fee stated on the poster are incorrect. The actual date and entry fee are the 23rd and £4 respectively. Due to time constraints, I will not be rectifying these errors. The correct information is stated on the Flyer [Front] design that shall also be admitted as part of this project.

Flyer [Front]

Flyer [Back]

I found that documenting each step of the creation process was limiting my artistic ability, and so I decided to focus the documentation of the creation process soley on the promotional Poster. Without the constraints of self-scrutany and having to report every little change made, I feel that I was able to create a much more intruiging and complex piece for the Flyer. As most flyers handed out via hand are discarded after being read, I decided to create a piece of pseudo-viral marketing, by disguising the flyer as an aged postcard. This was to create an initial confusion for the reader that would intruige them to discover the Flyer’s actual purpose. All of the nessercary information for the flyer is present – It has simply been placed in manners that would cause the reader to check the flyer three or four times before discarding it.

The required typefaces, VAG Rounded & DIN, are only available commercially. I have substituted Ariel for the lay-out, the correct typeface must be substituted at printing.

A similar situation appertains to the logos, however, by using a template layer, the Council’s final editing & lay-out team will add the logos with correct placement & background.

The contact details are not yet finalised, so this layer is, again, a place-holder for the final template.

FILETYPES.

Using .psd files, all the above editing is simple, but the resulting file is very big.

For final printing, digital transmission, storage, etc, a JPEG file is much smaller, cannot be edited, & is consequently more robust.

Poster1

Using the sketch (in Misc) as a guide:

I cropped the image of one of the arches from the Lockwood Viaduct, and placed the image onto the stage, stretching the image until it gave the balance of space & shape I wanted:

With Quickmask, I inserted a cropped picture of the Titan Weirs behind the arch:

As the resulting image was too bright, I applied a levels layer to correct it:

With a bit of adjustment, Huddersfield Railway Station was placed on top of the arch, & the contrast adjusted to brighten the image:

The Lion & the Victoria Tower were cropped from the originals, & inserted as shown, with a feather-edge for the Lion, & a blended-edge for the Tower:

I then decided on the final wording & placement for the strap-line & contact details:

These layers could be merged in the final approval/printing stage.

And now the place-holders for the logo templates:

The last 2 layers are deliberately at the top of the layers-panel, & thus easily edited in the final approval/printing stage.

Poster 2

I used the same basic design, & altered the position of the layers in the panel to give a different result. I found that the resulting image seemed too dark, & deleted the levels layer. I should have just turned it off, then it could have been applied & adjusted as necessary at the approval/printing stage.

(for some reason, the WordPress ‘insert’ dialogue was stuck in ‘large picture, centre position’. I have been unable to correct this. Consequently, only the left side of the screen-shot is visible, losing the layers-panel)

Note: the above problem has been modified by the tutor.