Unit 23 Graphics: Super Villain Update, My Final Iteration.

I have added some mid-tones and highlights for effect on the cape to make it look worn out and ragged. As-well as this I have included a lightning bolt effect protruding from his hand to give an effect of his power. I have also added a whirlwind effect underneath his feet to show that he has the ability to hover. I have also included a layer where I have sketched out part of one of the background buildings. Finally, I used the magic wand tool to select part of an image. In this case, I selected some electricity to add to my characters hand to give the effect that he is wielding a weapon, his own power, channeling through his fingers, ready to be used. I am very pleased with my design and very glad the final outcome turned out the way it did.

This year has been my first time using Photoshop in a way that I can understand its tools and use them in an effective way. I am very glad to say that I have learn't how to use many new tools and aspects of graphic manipulation to help me for the Information Technology course I plan to take in the future.

Unit 23: Graphics - Almost finished design of my villain!

The only things I have left to add now are some mid-tones and hightlights on the colours for effect and to maybe add a fingertip lightning effect. I have not completely decided whether to add the lightning effect in or not because it could be a challenge but I will do it if I have time.

I managed to add in a background for my splash art which shows my villain floating within a city bringing down lightning upon it. I'm also close to finishing off the annotations.

I used the free transform tool to enlarge my chosen background image without it becoming pixelated and distorted. Free transform allowed me to keep the image crisp and sharp to look as good as possible for the overall design.

Unit 23 Graphics: The evaluation of my ability to use Photoshop to create & edit computer graphics

This blog post will go into detail on my ability to use Photoshop to create and edit computer graphics for a given purpose such as splash art.

First, to edit/create any graphics  you are going to need the correct tools. The correct tools for the job range from selection tools, paint brush tools, resizing tools, cropping tools and sharpening/blur/gradient tools etc. And from my experience and time with working with Photoshop every single one of these tools is integrated into the software. These tools allow you to change the graphics colours, transport them onto different images, resize them and edit a lot of things out etc., which is essential.

The graphics software should also be able handle the right file types for keeping layers intact, allowing exportation to .jpg, .png etc. and should also handle vector and bitmap graphics. Photoshop allows you to save as a .psd file which can be quite large in size but keeps every single layer and its content in tact, the .psd can also be flattened into one layer so that it can literally be compressed and become a smaller file size. Photoshop can also let you import images as .bmp (bitmaps) and

The newest things I managed to learn in Photoshop were being able to click the paintbrush and set it up to the correct settings e.g. the flow, opacity, brush size etc. to make my graphic outline look not too big but not too small either. I also learnt how to use the clone

The things that went well with using Photoshop are that all the tools work seamlessly without error and easily allow you to work as-well as the fact that I was able to set up my brush very well to what was required for the work and that I could export/save the file so all the layers could be intact and would open to how they were last time I used them. The interface was rather simple and things were relatively easy to find comparing with GIMP where I find it harder to view the layers and the overall interface was split into separate windows which I found confusing.

To improve my use of Photoshop in the future I would like to suggest a "side by side" feature to view graphics in the same document but alongside one another for comparison or for editing both to see different effects, I think it could be a lot easier than the drop and drag via the small image windows in the file.

Unit 23 Graphics: The Aesthetics, Semiotics and Archetypes of my graphics design.

The Aesthetics:

Aesthetics are the studies of beauty within objects and the things that you find beautiful.
What I find beautiful about my graphical design of a super villain is that it is riddled with simplicity as-well as the image of a darker, evil villain who looks as if he really means do wreck havoc and destruction, his facial expression and pose all give you an idea of the anger and hatred he is harboring with-in for humanity. The hooded cape is a very nice touch which I really like because it just makes him look that much darker.

Semiotics:

Semiotics is essentially the study of signs and symbols that have
The lighting symbol that my villain carries is a very simple lighting bolt which comes from the idea of the Marvel Avengers heroes of a very simple design but yet says a lot about what the person can do, giving an idea of what their powers might be associated with or maybe who or what they are fighting for. For example, the Captain America symbol which is a shield coloured with the American flag is a very basic design yet tells you so much about Captain America, for one its actually giving you an idea on who he is fighting for. Since lighting bolts are usually associated with death, fear etc. It really does help portray the villain trying to spark those emotions/thoughts into the people he is trying to harm/destroy.

Archetypes:
Archetypes relate to characters, for example, from comic books and movies where they have very recognizable traits such as the 'Trickster' or 'Hero' A good example of this would be Loki as a trickster and Thor as a hero from the Thor series. The ideas for my villain stem from archetypal characters such as Doctor Doom, Thor, Electro and Darth Vader.

Comic book super heroes and villains have not been random, they have been redone from mostly things over the course of human history such as the Vikings, where they had Thor. Thor has now been re-created as god of thunder in the modern day with super strength powers and the ability to channel lightning and call upon storms etc. I definitely had Thor in mind when drumming up what super power my villain would carry. This stems on archetypal cliche characters seen today in movies and comic books on where the idea for my character stemmed from, an example of this would be Doctor Doom. While carrying no insignia as it is quite unusual for villains to carry emblems he has the same type of look as my villain. The powerful stances, the cape, the angry facial expressions etc.

Even the Lego version of Dr. Doom follows the same principles as the normal characters. The Lego Dr. Doom has had all of the ideas from the normal Dr. Doom channeled into him to produce him in Lego form. The cape is the same, the stances are the same, the face mask shows and he is using the same costume.

As you can see, Darth Vader from Star Wars is another example of an archetype that I have drawn character ideas from. He has the cape, as-well as the the menacing, powerful stance he is showing. My character uses the same stance to show that he is asserting his dominance over the city backdrop and looks to be a very powerful and in control villain. The low angles from which you can see these characters also show this.









Another, more recent archetype that I used was from the new Amazing Spider-Man 2 movie with the super villain named Electro. Electro uses the same hooded cloak look that I used for my villain and also harnesses electrical powers, much the same as my villain. This is conclusive proof that we are always going to be influenced by other character designs, you will never find a character design that has even a little part of it based off of another character or something belonging to an ancient tradition or time in human history.



Finally, I took a look at the actual characteristics of lightning to determine what effects it would have when used against the general populous of human enemies or heroes. One major one that I found out while researching is that wind currents, humidity etc. all have different effects such as strengthening the lightning bursts or affecting how it is distributed. I merged these into my own characters ability, meaning that he can change the severity of the lightning he is creating to maximize its power to take out larger or more resistance foes. The distribution factor means that he is able to control who is struck and where across vast areas, to target as many people as possible.

The fact that my character can also shoot lightning from his fingers was inspired by the force lightning effect in Star Wars, especially in Episode 6: Return of the Jedi where Emperor Palpatine shoots lightning from his finger tips (force lightning) to inflict pain onto Luke Sky-walker.

My Inspirations:  I am quite a big fan of the Marvel universe, cinematic and the comic book side and always look forward to the new films such as, coming in 2015, The Avengers, Age of Ultron and recently, Captain America 2 as well as the latest X-Men film. All of these inspirations create an amalgamation of archetypes that I sourced into my design for inspiration on where to take it and what to include. The fact that I am a fan of these different movies and comics gave me much inspiration to fall back on when thinking up ideas for my character.

Edit: Here is my final iteration of my character to support what I have stated about the archetypes and inspirations surrounding my design.

Unit 23 Graphics: What is my Super Villains backstory?

Name: The Electricutioner

Species: Human

Gender: Male

Power/Ability: Ability to change electrical systems, use shoot electricity from his hands/eyes. He can also fly by pushing himself into the air with electrical power. He can also use it to propel himself through the air. He can distribute lightning to massive distances and also increase or decrease the power of his electrical currents.

Origin: The Electricutioner was a death row prisoner that was forced to be used in the government research of harnessing the ability to maintain electrical currents within the body using robotic hardware in the U.S. – At the research facility in Nevada they were able to fuse him with electricity. He then became strong enough to break free from his chains and bring his rage upon the world.

Motive/Credo: He is seeking extreme vengeance for being ab-normal and deformed and wants to take out his anger on the rest of the world.

Good/Evil: Evil

Weakness/Vulnerability: Water, electricity doesn't mix well with it so The Electricutioner has to be careful.

Personality: Witty, arrogant and smart.

Physique: Strong figure, heavy built.

Colourways: Grey chest, black suit, yellow lighting strike on the middle of his chest and a brown hooded cape.

I found this picture on Google images which is similar to my character so I am using it as an example. This is a character from the video game "Infamous 2."

I will posting an update of my design in its current stage with text annotation in the coming days to add to its development story on this blog.

Unit 23 Graphics: Super Villain Update (Annotated Text)

Update: Annotations!

Image: This is the first image of added annotations.

From colouring most of my design I finally added annotations around it on a separate layer to pick out different tools and techniques that I used. This is because, for future reference I can go back and see what I did for different techniques encase I forget. While colouring this design I used the eye dropper tool to enable me to find the same colour I used previously to keep as much consistency as possible.

Unit 23 Graphics: The impact of image size and quality on:

The impact of image size and quality (Distinction Task)

File Format:

File format can have differenteffects on the image. A .gif image is a form of lossless compression and can only handle 256 colours so the quality could be a lot worse due to the fact that not all colours are covered and if some colours are used but are not included they won’t show up properly. A .png image preserves the full quality of the image since it is transparent, even when compressed. While it also has the biggest file size over most other formats. The .jpg format uses lossy compression which results in the reduction of file size creating blurry or blotchiness in the image, therefor reducing the overall quality. The bitmap file format, .bmp, is uncompressed which means it keeps a big file size so it will always been in full-on quality with no blurriness etc.

Compression Techniques:
Image compression means to lower the size of the file without losing quality, because you want the image to look as good as possible but also at the same time don't want to wait ages for an image to upload or take up valuable space on a storage device.
The compression techniques are: Lossless compression and Lossy compression.

-Lossy: When compressed, it removes details that won’t be naked to the human eye in the image so when the image is reduced in size from the compression you won’t notice a difference. This is good because it literally keeps the original image but in a smaller size. And also, Lossy compression does not need to retrieve original data.

-Lossless: No data is lost, and all the original data for the image can be retrieved after compression since when the file is opened it decompresses and retrieves how it originally looked., however, this method of compression doesn’t reduce the file size as much as Lossy. Lossless compression has a good use for images on the internet such as .gifs since they are simple graphics. All the quality is kept when the image is compressed in these technique and while also the fact that this is also widely used for graphics it can also be used for text compression with applications such as word documents.

Image Resolution:
Image resolution means the amount of detail that an image can hold, the higher the resolution, the more detail.
Image resolution can affect file size since when you are using higher resolutions, you are using more pixels which ultimately results in more file data needed. You can rasterize an image into a smaller file size but that also means that the image quality won’t be as good. An example of a wide-screen resolution would be 1920x1080. Resolution is measured in DPI which means “Dots per inch.”

Colour Depth:

Colour depth means how many colours you are viewing on your monitor and the most common one used is 256 (8 Bit), or the minimum used anyway. 16 Bit colour depth allows over 65,000 colours. Colourdepth affects image size way that so that a higher bit version you are using results in more colours per pixel making the file size very big. The picture below details the different colours per pixel for the different bit sizes.

Unit 23 Graphics: Individual Action Plan

I plan to meet all my deadlines in the next 3 weeks by:

Independent Distinction Work:
- Do some work on TSR.

Task 1a: (in progress) Producing my online blog.
- Aesthetics
- Semiotics
- Photoshop evaluation
01/04/2014

Task 1b: (Finished) Explaining the difference between raster and vector graphics + different files & compression techniques
25/03/2014

Task 2: Produce a piece of splash art with my villain
- makes sure to add black costume w/ chest detail (also add belt) + give it lighting features. - (Done)
- Add mid-tones/highlights & give fingertip lighting effect - Done
- Make sure to add annotations in PS - Done
- Add in background - Done
01/04/2014

Task 3: (Finished) PowerPoint assessing hardware/software needed to create computer graphics
01/04/2014

Once all of this is done and out the way I will need to get this unit up to Distinction for myself for it to be in sync with my other level 2 units which I have currently completed to distinction level. I will do this by meeting all of the Merit and Distinction criteria before there deadlines for unit 23.

Unit 23 Graphics: Aspect Ratio

So what is Aspect Ratio?:

Aspect Ratio is the width and height of a monitor or image in which it is displayed, for example, like this: 4:3 or 2:1. The most common aspect ratio used in modern day for TV's is 16:9 which has much higher resolutions and better quality. An example of a 16:9 would be 1920x1080 which is essentially the High Definition level. When talking about a TV aspect ratio means the inches of the display. For example, 16 inches long, 9 inches wide.

Unit 23 Graphics: Super Villain Update:

I have begun to colour the outline, while saving a non colour version as a backup. After filling the character I will try to work on his costume design which will have some yellow stripes on black sort of patterns. I will also begin to add mid-tones, highlights, and any other addition that the colour could use. Once completely finished this can be added to the backdrop poster.

Unit 23 Graphics: Choosing a backdrop for my Hero v Villain poster.

I have been looking at a range of different environments and will be choosing from the following:

I am currently favoring towards this backdrop has my evil villain wields electrical powers and this would represent him about to destroy a city.

Unit 23 Graphics: A piece of Spash Art and its uses:

I have been learning about splash art and how it is widely used for the covers of films, games and from where it originated, comic books. Splash art basically gives you an idea of the main characters in the piece of media and an idea of their personalities, for example this Batman poster shows the good side and the evil side to the film and how both characters will obviously end up fighting each other.

The use of this poster is to give the audience an idea into both of the characters going head on against each other.

Unit 23: Graphics - What have I learn't so far?

So far;

- I have learn't about Vectors/Bitmaps
- Sketching in a professional way on Photoshop
- Common Photoshop tools (helpful/useful) including the Clone tool, brush tool etc.
- The definition of Iteration and Metadata
- How to approach creating a character for a graphic design
- Assessing specific pieces of hardware and software for graphics editing/creating

All of these new skills will enable me to effectively work on graphics projects in the future, especially in terms for my next course in Information Technology that I plan to progress onto.

Unit 23 Graphics: The First Basic Sketch Of My Super Villain

I have started off by using the tablet to lightly sketch around the design I imported to Photoshop via scanning from a book. I set up the tablets pen correctly so that I could make my drawing look like it was actually sketched. I set up the flow, to about 25% and the opacity to 100%. The brush size was set to 19 and the thickness was around 80-90%. In later updates I will be finishing the sketch and adding a lot more details including weapons or other types of layers.