Reflection

There were a lot of things that worked for me and went really well in this project. These included layers and masking, as they were super easy to use and were very effective. Also, the process of changing colours worked really well for me. Even though most things worked really well for me, there were a few things that gave me some trouble. For example I found it very hard to find a suitable background and hair piece that had a high enough resolution to not pixelate when placed on the image of my avatar. This meant that I had a very narrow range of images to choose from for my backgrounds.

I changed a few things along the way, but not too many. First of all, I changed the lip colour. It was originally going to be a colour similar to that of the skin, but I wanted a colour that had a higher contrast, so I went for a colour that was more bluey. I also did not end up adding in scars, or changing the ears and eyebrows. This is because they did not quite look right on the whole image and made the image look way too busy. I decided that the image looked a great deal better without these changes and that they did not match my avatar’s personality profile.

I learnt many things by doing this project. I learnt how to use layers, mask, desaturate, apple U, the opacity slider, free transform, and the marquee selection tool. I used each of these by doing the following. For the colour change in each feature or the addition of the hair and background I made a new layer and labelled it appropriately. I sometimes duplicated this layer. In the case of the hair and background, I pulled the opacity slider down so it was fairly see through and used ‘apple T’ or free transform to get them the right size on my avatar. For most of the layers, I then applied a mask and rubbed out all but what I wanted with the opacity slider down. I then used desaturate, and ‘apple U’ to change the colour of whatever I was changing to one that I liked. To change the colour of the eyes, I used the elliptical marquee selection tool, used desaturate and ‘apple U’ again and then rubbed out the middle of the eye – where the pupil is – and softened the edges using a mask.

I really like using Photoshop and learning about all the cool things you can do with the program while doing this project. I also liked and really enjoyed creating my avatar on Photoshop.

I dislike using and keeping the blogs, but realise it is a necessary part of the process. I dislike them because I find that the work we do on them is kind of boring, and that all I really wanted to do was the practical stuff on Photoshop, not the theory. I was frustrated by the speed of which my Photoshop images opened and saved on Photoshop, as it was really, really slow. I think this was because my original image was so big as I took it on a 12 megapixel camera.

My preferred learning style is to do a little bit of group discussion to get some ideas, and then work independently for most of the lesson. I prefer to have group demonstrations on the smart board and to take notes from these by myself. I also like a combination of visual and aural teaching, as I learn best this way. I like to take a few notes while we work on projects and to learn as I go on a basis of trial and error, as this helps me remember things better. I also like learning by doing lots of practice.

In this project, I took a few notes and brainstormed a bit at the start and then leapt straight into the creating part of the assignment, experimenting a bit with everything. I listened to the group demonstrations and applied what I had learnt from these to what I was creating, sometimes taking notes in the process. If I then did not know something, I would try to figure it out by myself, but would then ask for help if this did not work.