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.