digital imaging / sammy luscher

  This is my final image! I decided to add some rays to the "sun" image to give off a feeling of freedom and excitement. My image is inspired by the feelings of returning to some kind of normalcy with the pandemic and the vaccine, and having a summer that feels a little less stressful now that my friends and I have been vaccinated. There seems to be an excitement in the air for our summer, and a freedom that we haven't felt in a while.

  At this point I like the elements that I have, but I'm working to figure out the best way to execute my concept and idea in a cohesive way. I removed the shadows of the shoes and included the repetition of the leaf pattern. I may remove the "spotlight", however, underneath the moon shape, because it didn't exactly go with the idea that I was thinking. I feel like I'm almost there, but not completely satisfied yet.

                                                    I worked with some more vectors I drew in Illustrator and layered them on top of each other. Right now I like where this is headed on the left side, but I want to figure out how to tie it all together in the right half. I may incorporate another image that has that pattern  and texture masked into it.

  For my first progress image, I put the traced image I did on Illustrator on a Photoshop canvas and masked out a pattern I made separately. My plan is to make it more abstract than I intended, with a lot of flat patterns.

My idea is to use different images together to create a final image in the collage style that I found myself enjoying this semester. I want to use meaningful images that capture the growth I've had since the beginning of 2020, and how I've become the person I am proud of today. I am going to include some hand-drawn outlines in the style pictured above, with funky, fun backgrounds that are lively and exciting.

  These are my final two images. I can't decide which I like more. I finished up with the masks I was working with, merged some layers and applied a color halftone filter to it to give it a printed feel. In the top image, I included another filter with a blending mode of a paper texture, which tinted the color a little bit. I can't decide which of the two I like more, but overall I'm really happy with the final image.

  These final process photos are pretty minimal in their format, but include some cleaning up with the masks. I chose to include a background of the oranges to trace back in some more hand-drawn work, which I found was more successful however I do miss the horizon line with the surfers in the ocean that I had before this. 

  I made more iterations in illustrator of the melting smiley-faces and then placed them in this image. I figured out a color palette of sorts and messed around with that, too. I traced out a mask of the image with the lemon and lemonade, and then moved even further with it by adding a "traced" look in illustrator, then transferred it to this image. I think I will include a few more photographs as well as hand-drawn things as I move forward with it because I like the mix of the two!

  My first take involved me masking out this image of a girl and organizing it with photos I have taken and patterns I enjoy. My concept is going to be the idea of the beginning of summer and the excitement of freedom from obligations.  I included more images and patterns, masked some, and layered them with each other. I have a few images I found that I really like, and I'm going to use these traced images I did in Illustrator somewhere on the image. I also want to compile other images of fruit and layer them with this.

  Here is my final piece that I put together. I contemplated using this one or the iteration with the record in the bottom left corner, but I thought this one worked together better. I also changed the "shadow" marks of the word "Time" so that they fit with the rest of the words, since the shadow was falling on the opposite side in previous iterations. I am happy with this project and honestly tried to do more with it, but ended up leaving it as it is because I am so happy with it.

  Here are some different iterations of my work with this piece. I started with a few elements and gradually added onto them. Because my theme is nostalgia and growing older, I think that the bold statement, "Time flies, doesn't it?" helps communicate more about this theme and having it layered with the blending modes gives it a nice feel. I thought about using a certain font for this text, but ultimately decided that because it is such a personal project that it is best communicated using my own handwriting. I have some overlaid backgrounds of band posters I have collected and sneakers that remind me of my youth, as well as a few different lyrics that mimic my feelings about growing older and my adolescence falling away from me.

                                                                             Because I liked the use of lyrics so much in the past few images, I started to create a new image using more song lyrics that I liked. I also used a mask and did content-aware fill to make the wall fit the canvas size, which I wanted to be stretched vertically. I'm sort of stuck, though, and don't really know where I want to move toward with this.  I'm thinking I will mask just the record player out and use it in the images I was working on in my "Process 2" post before this one.

  This was my first image. I included a few transparents that I made with masks and collaged them onto a square canvas size.  I developed the first image into the second image by adding a few more layers and removing what I thought was too busy. The concept for this part is images that remind me of my past, whether its my childhood, my adolescence, or the past few years. It is a good mix of many things, and to fill in the empty space I included lyrics to one of my favorite songs, which happens to have to do with time passing. I messed with some blending modes and curated an image that I actually really like. 

  For this first iteration, I am working with blending modes and masks to combine certain elements of some of the objects and images I captured. I want them to interact with the background, which was an image of the sky with a house at the bottom. Right now I'm liking the colors and idea, but I want to develop it a little more as I add things. Considering this is only combining four of my images, I have a long way to go before I'll be trying out new ideas-- for now I want to just add onto this and incorporate as many of my images as possible.

 

 

 

  I'm getting annoyed