Dan Fergus Design > Student Resources > Syllabus > Project: Creature Creation

GMD•200 Digital media 1

Project: Creature Creation

Assignment:

Use Photoshop to manipulate a photograph of a person, turning him or her into an exotic alien or fanciful creature.

Specifications:

• Size: At least 2000 pixels in the shorter dimension.
• Orientation: Vertical or horizontal.
• Color Space: RGB, North American Prepress 2.
• Due Date: Week 8 (June 4/5)
• Deliverables: Upon completion, I need the following:
1. The digital Photoshop file (give it to me via jump drive or burn it onto a CD).
2. A print-out of the finished creature (black-and-white) with your name on it.

Procedure

1. Find references. Begin with a large, clear photo of a person. Magazine images work best for this. Avoid family snapshots (they tend to be small, grainy, and washed-out). Get my approval.
• Avoid internet images—their resolution is low and quality poor. Scans work best.
• Choose an image that shows a large part, or all of a body—not just a head.
• Avoid a lot of bulky clothes—the more visible the skin and the simpler the clothing, the more options you have for skin textures, colors, additional body part, etc.
• Use a full color image.
2. In addition to your main image of a person, you must locate at least one other photo that contains human, animal, vegetable, or mineral parts (eyes, horns, wings, spots, fangs, gears, branches, crystals, etc.) that you can add to your original. This additional part must be used as a major element on your creature (nothing tiny, hard to see, etc.). Of course you can (and are encouraged to) use more than one image/part/thing.
3. Find interesting textures to apply to your creature, perhaps the ones you created for the texture exercise....
4. Find interesting (& exotic) backgrounds (or create one out of various parts and effects).
5. Scan your image at 200—300 ppi. For best results, try to keep your image around 81/2 x 11 ('letter' size). Larger images will require too much memory. Smaller images are harder to manipulate (and shouldn't be enlarged).
6. Before you begin manipulating your image, make a copy of your original background layer (drag the “background” layer on top of the new layer button). Turn this background layer off and don't touch it again. Now you have a built-in back-up image you can refer to. Additionally I can see what your person used to look like for sake of comparison.
7. Save your file as yourName_creature.psd
8. Brainstorm: ask yourself: how can I manipulate this person? What would make him/her appear truly alien? Have fun with it, be creative. The goal here is to try to preserve the photographic quality of the image, to try to make it as convincing as possible (as if the creature actually existed). And yet it must look truly alien, not just a painted human in costume!

Suggestions:

• Change skin, hair, eye, clothing color with Adjust Hue/Saturation or by painting on a layer above and using a blending mode.
• Overlay a texture or pattern on top of the skin with the healing brush tool or a custom texture brush.
• Change the size/shape of selected body parts using Edit > Free Transform and/or Edit > Transform > Warp.
• Rearrange body parts; add/subtract limbs, facial features, etc.
• Add parts of animals/machines/plants/etc. from other photos.
• Paint on your person with the paint tools (make tattoos, scars, etc)
• Use the Filters to Liquify, add textures, distort, etc. Be careful however, that you don't destroy the photographic feel of the image.
  
9. As you work, you may want to merge some layers to cut down on file size & rendering time. However, make sure you don't get rid of the copy of the original image (see step 6 above).
10. When you have finished, merge all the layers except the original background layer. (This way you will have a “before” and “after” version on separate layers). You should also keep an un-merged version for yourself that you can edit and revise later if necessary.
    

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