I began today by challenging the front cover of the CD That I had designed on Sunday, I have stayed with the Space idea, but instead of creating an earth-like planet from scratch, I decided to go on a free stock image site (SXC) and find an image of the earth, the one I chose was basically the earth with a reflection, problem was I didn’t want a reflection on the CD Cover.
I had anticipated that it would take a long time to get the image just right, but funnily enough it was just a 5 minute job with the magic wand tool. The initial idea I had in my head was to had a dead, crumbling earth with a massive chunk broke out of it, this was fairly simple to do, I used the Lasso tool to select the chunk I wanted and just dragged it way.
Next I had to create a space like background, to do this I clone the background layer and made the background black, then I selected the new layer and used the “Add Noise” tool and set it to had a nice amount. I then change the opacity levels so it would blend in nicely with the black background.
The last task I did today was to try to create a starry nebula, this is still an ongoing task but it was basically mad by adding clouds to a new layer, using the transparency tool and using the Dodge tool to make it thicker and the Burn tool to make it thinner.
I have had to develop more on my A1 sketch blog assignment, I feel that I just don’t have enough inspiration, I need roughly a third more to have the minimum that is needed but I need to obtain more, it will be useful for the second year.
I also had to complete my A6 referral work, so yesterday afternoon Steve went over the work and helped me edit some errors that I had missed, the rest I did last night and it is now handed in completely.
Unfortunately I now have to complete referral work for the A5 – Builder assignment, there is quite a bit to do, I would say about a day’s work, so my plan is to get this out of the way by Thursday and ask Steve for some feedback and then for the rest of the week I will crack on with both A7 and A1.
My tasks for the rest of the week:
- A5 Referral work
- A7 CD designs
- A1 Inspiration
4 comments:
Hi Liam,
The cover that you have developed has potential; however, I think that it still needs work with regards the details. If the separation of the Earth only took a few minutes, imagine what you could do if you put an hour or two into it; I think that as it is our final project of this year that it deserves that effort.
Referring any assignment always has a significant baring upon the current assignment. It is not just the alterations but its the thinking about it before hand. My advice is to get it out of the way as soon as possible whilst the feedback is still fresh in your mind!
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Shaun Bellis
I agree with Shaun. The concept of the CD design is brilliant. I'm not sure about the execution of the idea at the moment though. Particularly the background. It doesn't really look like stars, it just looks like fuzz. I recommend finding a stock image of stars and incorporating that in. There are plenty of tutorials around to help with that kind of thing.
And like Shaun said, imagine how you could make it look with a couple of hours work on the chunk out of the earth. It has the potential to look so much more realistic.
I also think that finding lots of inspiration will help loads as we will be able to look back at them for ideas.
I think that making sure you have planned to do sketch book work on your weekly sheet will help as when you have got stuck on what to do for the A7 work you can always go and look for inspiration.
Overall the concept your developing I really like, but I think your focusing on creating it on screen way too much. I've seen you stop to think about what your going to do next, which will also hinder your developmental process from your sketchbook. I think you should go back to the drawing board with this concept, and start trying to work other ideas into your sketches before going back to Adobe Photoshop.
I'd also try looking at some tutorials on how to do these things manually, which I know you've already started doing with varied success rates.
The chunking or breaking where you've put the other bit of the earth away from it looks abit unrealistic, I think you should work on some techniques to aid the creation of a more realistic breaking effect.. just to add abit more realism to your cover.
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