Reflection

I really enjoyed working with photoshop. Through all the frustration and stress I faced, there was always the fun and creative side which I loved to experience. I had never worked with photoshop before, and masking seemed totally new to me! I had a bit of trouble with masking before. I used to accidentally unlink the masks and cause myself all sorts of stress! Hue and saturation was great to work with, especially the colourizing and saturation- very fun to play around with and create cool designs. I began to get very annoyed with creating layers! They took a while to make and really became tedious towards the end of my piece! Luckily, I didn't experience too many problems with it. Sometimes, I accidentally forgot to inverse and pressed delete when I was using a marquee and got a heart attack. Luckily, good old history panel was there to help me! Whenever I did something wrong which I couldn't undo, I was very relieved that the history panel existed. Otherwise, I'd be failing this assignment at the moment! The clone brush took a while to get used to. I was annoyed that I had to keep selecting the area I wanted cloned because I sometimes ended up getting hair on a nose! I found that frustrating but I became really good at it towards the end. (If you couldn't already tell, I cloned out the nose!) I also found changing the hue and saturation was very easy for Linaghi because her hair was blonde and did not need much saturation so it looked more natural when I coloured it. However, Myling, having darker hair, needed a slightly more saturation. I found changing it annoying and it took me a few lessons to finally be happy with it. The skin feature (seeds) worked well. I had difficulty with brushes though. Mr Powell helped me with it, and he said to use a soft brush and reduce the flow. I found that the skin looks much better and more natural and a lot easier to do than use a hard brush with 100% flow and make the outline perfect. I used the soft brush for the hair on both of my avatars. If you look back on a photo of me with purple hair, and one of my avatar's, then you'll see a difference in the hair straight away. I used a hard brush in the first image as well as too much gradient and saturation so it looked artificial. On my avatar, let's say Linaghi, I used a soft brush and not too much saturation to improve the realisticess of my avatar. I had to experiment with certain flows to find which brush worket best in my situation, and it was usually 58% that did the job. I found that working with opacity saves a lot of time and the opacity I used for the seeds on my Mennemmas was perfect and added the effect I desired- bumps around the seeds and a slightly red-ish tinge. Overall, I rate Linaghi 9.5/10. If I could improve her, I'd definitely add more alien effects so she could look even more sci-fi than she already is. I rate Myling 8.5/10. If I were to change him, I would definitely change the pink tinge where the nose used to be and make it more like Linaghi's- blue and blended. Linaghi's dark eyes helped convey her calm nature, and her crossed arms help her look serious and smart. Myling is very energetic, and has bright eyes. By lookng at them, one can tell that he is excited and energetic. I used hue and saturation of the eyes to help deliver their personalities.

I liked the idea of making an avatar, but how they were made really frustrated me at times- especially when things did NOT work out! The paragraph above will explain what I found frustrating. As annoying and repetitive as it was, the emu and frog hybrid we made for the first fortnight or so really helped me understand masking and opacity as well as hue and saturation. If not for the fromu, then I would not have had the understanding of masks and layers that I do now. I learn by watching a professional (Mr Powell) do it first instead of wandering into the mist and not doing the right thing I was meant to do. I found one-on-one help was fantastic and suited everybody's needs. Demonstrations were essential when introducing us to new topics and combined with one-on-one help suits my needs. I completed the task quite simply by listening and looking at Mr Powell's demonstrations on the smart board, then attempted to do the action on photoshop. If I failed, I would write my name on the help list and Mr Powell would show me how to do it one-on-one which was great and helped me achieve my final avatar. He showed me the clone brush and the soft brush which I probably would not have discovered in time for the submission date.

I think I used my time wisely somewhere in the middle of the term. In the first two weeks, I must admit, my friends and I were obsessed with photobooth and got easily distracted by the little gadget! However, towards the middle when we got our assignments, we started using time wisely and spend 95% of the time fully focussed on our avatars. Towards the end of the term when my avatar was complete, I found myself helping my friends and working on Blogger. I was 79% concentrated then. I started writing my reflection earlier this week but didn't get much done because I was pondering whether to submit my avatar or not and whether I had done enough to please Mr Powell and myself. I started my blog, then I forgot about it before having an epiphany and realising I had a blog which I needed to post on! I kept it up-to-date for the rest of the term, and I won't do something stupid like that again. I managed to save everything in PSD and JPEG and didn't lose any files and I believe my saving method was effective, and I saved a separate file for each avatar. This was effective so that if I make a mistake, I can track back and start again on, let's say, update 5. I am quite pleased with the resulting avatar. You can find my ratings and reasonings in the first paragraph. If I did have my time all over again, I would make sure to use it wisely and remove the nose better to make it look more natural. I like my avatar design and believe that it's very interesting, original and quirky.

~Annie K