Photoshop Work Critique

Photoshop Critique

Over the past couple of lessons I have been working on making several frames of an interrogation scene in a Noir style.

This involved taking pictures using three point lighting, a style that is most prominent within Noir films and images. The idea is to use a 'Key' light to act as the light source, this would be the brightest light and would be placed at an angle to the character. Behind the character would be the 'Back' light and would be responsible for adding depth to the characters and objects. The final light would be the 'Fill' light which is a dim light that is there to fill in the shadows.

After taking the pictures I exported them over to Photoshop and began to edit them in order to achieve a style similar to Noir and Frank Miller.

I began by making the image black and white. I wanted to increase the contrast but as the images where too dark the image became unrecognizable, This meant that I was unable to make a Frank Miller style image.

Then, using the paint tool and by lowering the opacity, I began to add colour to parts of the image, including blue on 'the interrogator's' jacket and red on the eyes and necklace of the 'criminal'. This was to symbolize who is good and bad within the image.


In future work similar to this, I would first make sure that the scene is adequately lit so that I am able to edit the images fully. I would also try to make the contrast of colour and black and white more prevalent, as you could easily not realize that the image is in black and white.

Advertising

Advertising

For part of out interactive novel we also need to design both a print and interactive piece of advertisement. Before I began to design them I first needed to look at what examples exist and what makes them successful.

Print

Here is an example of a poster and while this is for a film, I believe that most of the aspects from this would be viable on a poster for a novel. The aim of the poster is to show you what the film is about and make people want to watch or buy the thing that is being advertised. The poster is also supposed to give people information, such as who its suitable for, when it will be available and who created the product.

When choosing whether to use a poster or not, you need to understand a few things, Is it suitable for all ages and will people its aimed at see it. Firstly as it is a poster that will be displayed in public areas, you need to remember that people from all ages, genders and beliefs will see it. This means that you need to make sure that it will not disturb or offend these people, while still being interesting to your target audience. You also need to think about the placement of the poster, and whether the people you are aiming at will see it. There is no point putting a poster for a rock concert in a library, as the people who would be interested in it would be unlikely to see it.

Interactive

This is an example of interactive advertisement from a website. This 'banner' allows a website to switch between multiple adverts, this saves space and has a higher chance of advertising something of interest to anyone visiting the website.

The banner features several numbers, which the viewer can click to switch between different slides. On each slide is a different advert that consists of a picture, some text describing what the advert is about and a link to take you to the main page.

This allows a page to advertise itself on other sites with similar content. This gives it a higher chance of attracting an audience.

My Work

Here is the design of my novels printed advertisement. The aim of the poster was to convey the theme of the novel, without giving any plot detail away. This would make people who see this want to know more and would go to the site given to find out.

From the advertisement you can tell that this novel will feature dark and gory elements and is clearly not aimed at children.

This means that this could not be posted in public as it is not appropriate for young people. If I were to have this placed anywhere it would be inside the covers of comics of similar style. This would allow people who are interested in this style of novel to notice this and possibly gain interest.

Above is my interactive advertisement. I designed it in the form of a "banner" which could  be placed on a website and used to advertise and to find out more information by following a link to a web page. The style of this is similar to the poster so people who see one will be able to link the two together. The banner would be one of a few different advertisements that the person viewing will be able to switch between using the arrows or by waiting a few seconds. By clicking the 'Enter' button the person viewing the site will have a new window open up and take them to a website about the thing that is advertised.

Reflective Writing

Reflective Writing

In today's lesson we looked at reflective writing and how it can be used to set the scene within a story.  In the lesson we began by trying to write what our earliest memory was. This was to help us see how we reflect on events and to see if we could improve.



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Our next task was to read through what appeared to be a short story called "Brownie Points" which recalled the experience of a young girl performing a ceremony at church.



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By cutting out lines from the text we were to locate pieces of reflective text that matched what the chart was looking for. When going through the text I noticed that there was a couple of examples that were not in the text, this included reflective text on smell and taste.

When writing reflective text it seems that adding detail greatly improves the quality of what you are writing about. Reflective text is best used for describing past events as it can give the reader a clear indication as to what is happening and how characters feel.