Month: February 2011

A Quick Update

February 16, 2011 / Rick / 0 Comments

I showed my final project to the rest of the class yesterday. A lot of people seemed to like it for its creativity and use of garish colors. I was actually quite surprised to see how many people weren’t even half done with their projects on the due date. I think the instructor is going to accept them late because of the inclement weather and resulting closure of the campus on 2 different occasions (thereby cutting off some from use of the open lab computers), but since I was done I can’t say I’m too worried about it.

The 3 courses I’m taking this semester are definitely taking up a lot of time outside the class. You all know about the Digital Art course. The Art History professor just dropped 2 major assignments on us (an audio tour and a scavenger hunt) that need to be started soon along with a 500 word essay that will be due next week. I’ve been writing about one paper a week in my English course (why didn’t I take this class sooner when I had a smaller course load and less responsibility?).

But I have been shooting. Below are the new additions to my gallery. Let me know what you think.

Clicking on any of the above images will take you to my gallery, which is now starting to populate. Soon I hope to have a splash page.

Have a good night, everyone!

Done!

February 11, 2011 / Rick / 0 Comments

I have completed the first project for my Digital Art course. And now, without further ado, here is “The Smurf Village Vikings Superbowl Adventure””:

Click to see full image

As I’m sure you can tell, this did take me quite a bit of time to complete. I would guess in the beginning time was split equally between thinking about what I was going to do and getting used to the tools. As time went on I found myself thinking more about what to do as the tools became easier to use. All that is left now is to print it and hand it in on Tuesday.

Now I need to get started on my next project.

Comments are welcome and encouraged.

Something Gross

February 6, 2011 / Rick / 0 Comments

For the past month or so I’ve been battling a kidney stone. On January 11, 2011 I had a CT scan done and this is what it showed (note: the arrows are my own but based on the report the Urologist received):

The black arrow is pointing to the stone (3.5mm in size according to the report) itself in the distal right ureter and the blue arrow and circle are pointing to a slight edema which is preventing the stone from moving forward.

Fast-forward one month: I think I passed the stone as I saw it leave my body. I pulled it out of the strainer and dutifully placed it in a Ziploc for the Urologist at my next appointment. For the next 24 hours, however, I’m finding it very uncomfortable to urinate and I have a weak stream. As I looked, there was a larger piece of stone right at the external opening of my urethra. After some trouble, it finally passed through. Here’s the result:

Click Image to Enlarge

The larger stone is clearly bigger than 3.5mm and could cover Lincoln’s face on that penny. I feel soooooo much better now, especially since I was looking at surgery to laser the stone. It was explained that they could only use the shockwave treatment if the stone was visible on normal X-Ray, which mine was not (I’m wondering why, given the size of that thing). Hopefully this is the end of the kidney stone saga. Now I can get back to artwork and photography and not have to worry about how I was going to meet my deductible and still keep food in my belly.

Comments are welcome and encouraged.

More Practice

February 4, 2011 / Rick / 0 Comments

We got some ice in Houston overnight. As this city rarely sees wintery weather, it is ill-equipped to handle it. As such, the city pretty much shuts down and people generally stay home. If the city planned a little better, maybe shutting down wouldn’t have had to have been an option… Let’s get back to the subject at hand.

I realized today that I needed some more practice with the mixer brush if I was going to get some good results on my digital project. So, that’s what I did today and I ended up with this:

Click Image to Enlarge

Ok, I’m going to toot my own horn here and say that this is probably one of the most sophisticated pieces I’ve produced using Photoshop (aside from some logos I did a few years ago). I got some elements of highlight and shadow, along with some shading. I didn’t pay too much attention to elements of composition and concentrated more on the use of the mixer brush. I think I may be getting on to something.

Moving Right Along

February 3, 2011 / Rick / 0 Comments

The project is nearing completion in the creative phase. Soon I will be in cleanup phase. Here is how it looks as of about 3 minutes ago:

Click Image to Enlarge

I have some fine detail lines to finish up, then I need to fine a way to neatly paint in the field markers. I may also go in and darken some colors in the shade areas in order to make it look a little more painterly. Once that is done I can do the cleanup work like filling in missed spots and cleaning up some of the more messy lines. I have a few titles kicking around in my head, but nothing set in stone. I do know it will have something to do with the Smurfs.

Well, anyway, what do you all think so far?

What the Hell…

February 1, 2011 / Rick / 0 Comments

I can’t sleep anyway so I worked on the project some more. I found there were issues with the black and white version of the photo I was using. The issues came from adjustments I had made to the color filters in the black and white. The reason I made the adjustments was to lighten some of the darker tones in the photo. Well, this led to a few problems with skin tone (especially when both coaches and Tarvaris Jackson and Joe Webb looked like they had nasty skin rashes). I went back in, removed the adjustments to the tones, and found that the darker tones actually help the picture. Well, without further ado, here it is:

Click to enlarge

I’ve always referred to the Vikings former Head Coach as Papa Smurf (every time I saw him his beard reminded me of Papa Smurf), so I decided to turn the coaches and players into Smurfs (albeit very large and very human looking Smurfs). I went with the garish colors on the clothing because these are colors one normally does not associate with the NFL. I did have the field painted purple, but there were some mistakes I made in the coloring process that show up when the layer is visible. Unfortunately I’m going to have to start that part all over again, but that should be no bother.

At this point I would estimate I’m about 3/4 of the way done in the coloring aspect. Then I’ll do the touchups on the bleed areas and some outlines to give it maybe a comic book feel (perhaps “The Smurfs Play in the Superbowl”).

For those geeky/nerdy types – the original TIFF file I started with came in at 79MB (the picture was taken with an 18 megapixel DSLR camera). Now, with the layers added, the PSD file comes in at 349MB. The size of the JPG alone is 6MB.

Well, that’s it for now. I need to try to get some sleep. Goodnight, everyone.