Blog 4

My Big Idea for the final project explores emotions.  I want to create a series of pieces that display various emotions.  I will be incorporating color schemes and various pictures to convey these emotions--specifically, I plan to use green to show tranquility, blue to depict sadness, red to convey anger, and yellow to communicate happiness.  The pictures I select will fit in with the emotion in the particular piece.  Additionally, I will incorporate motion through the use of a filmstrip and light effects (the techniques I will incorporate, see below).  This is to show how emotions are unstable and fleeting and they can change in the blink of an eye.  I can envision my work as decorative art--it is a colorful series so it would be fun to use somewhere.  It could also be used as album art.

I drew on several sources of inspiration for my idea.  The filmstrip idea came from Apple's iLife packaging, seen below:

My inspiration for playing with colors in a series came from Andy Warhol's famous silkscreen work with Marilyn Monroe.  A part of that series follows:

The last inspiration from my work comes from a collection of looks by designer Mondo Guerra.  He uses colors and shapes very artfully to communicate his point of view as a designer.  I also intend to use colors and shapes to make my point of view clear.  A sample of his looks:

I plan to use 2 new techniques that will from a majority of the project.  I will create a helix and using the pen tool and the warp tool as well as masking, gradients, and shapes to achieve the effect of a filmstrip.  The tutorial can be seen here:

http://www.webdesignerwall.com/tutorials/photo-strip-photoshop-tutorial

The second technique I plan to experiment with for my final project deals with glow and lighting that I plan to use behind the filmstrip.  I will once again use gradients, the pen tool, and overlay methods to achieve this effect.  The tutorial that I plan to use is this one:

http://psd.tutsplus.com/tutorials-effects/advanced-glow-effects/

I am excited to begin working on the project and experimenting with the tutorials.  Hopefully my project transfers well from my head to photoshop!  =)