Georgina

Georgina is my model for our avatar assignment. This is the 'happy' picture of her that I am going to work on. Her character is a water elemental, so I am planning on putting her in an underwater/beach background. I am also planning on turning her eyes blue and putting a water texture in them and turning the tips of her hair blue. I am also going to put a texture on her skin, which I haven't decided on yet. I may also use the healing brush and clone stamp to fix up a few spots on her face and I may also use the liquify tool to reshape some of her face. I am also currently trying to figure out a way to get rid of her school uniform! I'm sure I'll think of something soon!

Backgrounds for my avatar

These are the backgrounds I collected for my avatar! As my avatar is an underwater/ water elemental, I decided that I should put her in front of a reef or on a beach or something like that. So I collected a few photos to choose from.

My Brushes

These are my brushes that we made in class a while ago. We had to draw a random picture to turn into a brush, so I chose a lightning bolt (because I'm a bit Harry Potter obsessed). After we had made the brush, we played around with the scatter, angle and other settings and had a play with it as you can see in the picture above. It was a very fun lesson and it is an essential skill for me to learn, so I'm glad we did!

Justin Bieber Zombie

This is my Justin Bieber zombie. In class, we had to choose a celebrity and do whatever we wanted with them. So because I don't like Justin Bieber very much, I chose do to him and turn him into a zombie. First of all, I went on flickr and searched for a zombie skin texture and found the one above. After I had found this, I saved it and opened it in photoshop. I then selected part of it and pasted it onto the picture of Justin. I then changed the opacity levels so I could see slightly through it and I applied a mask. I rubbed out the excess parts of the texture that I didn't need and that weren't covering the face and I rubbed out the eyes, mouth and eyebrows. I then turned the opacity right back up and changed the blending mode until one made it look right. I ended up using hue for this part. To improve the skin texture, I think I could have rubbed off the texture where the bandaid were on his fingers. I should have also covered a bit more of his hand. I missed a part of his hand with the texture and this should have been covered. After I did the zombie texture, I moved onto the hair, which I had decided to make grey. I painted the hair on a new layer and turned the opacity down again, so I could rub out all the excess grey they I didn't need. Once I had done this, I turned the opacity back up and played with the blending modes again. I also used hue on this, as it blended the grey in well with the hair. Once the hair was done and I was happy with it, I started to change his eye colour. I changed his eye colour to red. I once again painted them on a new layer and applied a mask, which I used to rub out the red that wasn't covering the eyes. Once this was complete, I played with the blending modes again and decided that soft light made the eyes blend the best with the red. I believe that a background would have completed the full effect of 'Zombie Bieber', but I didn't have enough time to put one in during class, as we were moving onto another task. Although there is no background, I still believe that 'Zombie Bieber' turned out well and I am very happy with it.

Crazy Hermione!

This is my crazy Hermione that I did in class. We were told to change her hair and eye colour and do whatever else we wanted. So I changed her eye colour to blue/green and her hair to a bright purple colour. This was a lot of fun to do! First of all, I did the eyes. I painted in a blue/green colour and placed a mask on the layer. I then painted out all the excess colour that I did not need. After this was done, I changed the blending modes and tried out a few different ones to see which one worked the best. Hue worked the best for this particular part of the piece. After I had done this, I copied the layer and deleted the mask. Once the eyes were done, I moved onto the hair. The hair was a lot harder, because there are a lot of wispy bits and gaps between all the hair. Firstly, I created a new layer, and coloured over her hair in the purple colour. I then created a mask and started to rub out all the excess colour. This took quite a bit of time, as I had to zoom in a lot to try and get some detail on it. I didn't end up putting too much time and detail into the hair, as I had to move onto another project, but I still did try to do as much as I could. I also touched up her face. This included getting rid of the pimples on her face and the shadows that were under her eyes. I also touched up her eyebrows a bit and got rid of some bits of hair that were covering her face. I did all this using either the healing brush or the clone stamp tool. These tools are very easy to use and it didn't take me long to fix up all of these things. When I was getting rid of the shadows under her eyes, I had to use the clone stamp tool, as I needed to change the flow. Lowering the flow made sure that I didn't get rid of too much of the eyelashes whilst I was taking away the shadows. If I had kept the flow right up, or used the healing tool, the eyelashes would no longer be there and it wouldn't look realistic. At one stage, I tried to change the colour of her tie from Gryffindor to another house, but this wasn't working and I didn't have any extra time to work on it, so I left it as it was. I had to get rid of some of the shadows on her uniform as well, I did this using the healing brush. This was a very fun task to do, as it kept my skills up in photoshop and I got to experiment a lot, even if some things didn't work.

Beagle Puppy Happy - Before and After

This is the same as my other beagle puppy, only on this one, I made the beagle happy instead of sad. I studied a lot of happy pictures and studied how peoples faces changed when they were happy and what they looked like. I saw that their eyes go a bit bigger and their mouths turn into a smile. So I opened the beagle picture in photoshop and I went into the liquify tool. In liquify, I used the bloat tool again, as I did in the sad beagle puppy, and I made the eyes slightly. After I had changed the eyes slightly I moved onto the mouth. I again used the pucker tool, but this time I pulled the corners of the mouth up instead of down. I had to redo this a few times as I couldn't get the mouth to sit right, but I got it right in the end. I think that this emotion didn't turn out as well as the sad emotion as on the sad one the eyes and mouth both stood out quite a bit and they both contributed towards the sad factor. But in this one, the eyes may be a bit too big and the mouth isn't very noticable. I could have put a smile in the mouth in this one, but I didn't have much time to do this, so I just turned the mouth up into a little smile. Even though this emotion wasn't as effective as the sad one, I still believe that I made the beagle look at bit happy.

Beagle Puppy Sad - Before and After

This is my beagle puppy. In class, we talked about emotions, and how we can change them in photoshop. Our task was to make an animal of our choice have different emotions. We did this using the liquify tool. At first, I just played around with the liquify tool for awhile and got used to it so I could work on this task properly and efficiently. Once I was quite confident with the tools in liquify, I began to make my beagle puppy look sad. I did this by making the eyes bigger and turning his mouth downwards slightly. Firstly, I went into Filter, then into liquify. In the liquify tool, there are a few different tools to choose from. I studied some pictures of people and animals looking sad and that gave me ideas on how to change my beagle so it looked a bit sadder. Once I was in liquify, I used bloat to make his eyes bigger. Making the eyes bigger gave the effect that he was pleading. In a lot of photos or cartoons, the writers/cartoonists make the eyes go a lot bigger when the character is about to cry, this shows quite clearly that the character is sad. As the cartoons do this, I did this to my beagle as well, and it had the desired effect. Once I had completed the eyes, I moved on to making the mouth look sadder. When people are sad, they frown and their mouths go down. So I decided to try and make it look like that's what happened to my beagle. To make it look like this, I used the pucker tool and pulled the edges of his mouth down. I believe that it worked and I am quite happy with how it turned out. The mouth of the beagle did go down and it made the beagle look a bit sadder. Together with the eyes, the beagle emotion had changed. I believe that I succeeded in making the beagle puppy sad.