Tag Archives: photoshop

2 Heads Are Better Than 1

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I love to create. Especially collaboratively. Sometimes it gets tricky when you have too many cooks in the kitchen, but I find that good ideas get reinforced with the right people at the table. Likewise, bad ideas get the axe before you waste too much time and energy going in the wrong direction.

At Awaken, almost everything is accomplished in teams of some sort. When we plan a new series or produce a video, it’s even more important that everyone is “fishing in the same stream.” There have been times when I’ve pitched an idea that sounded solid to me, but when I brought it to the team, for whatever reason, it is became obvious that the idea was incompatible with the focus of the project. Such is the nature of an idea.

You have to wade through them to find the ones that just leap off the page. That said, I’m currently working with a friend of mine at Awaken to collaborate on the art for the next series.  To give credit where credit is due, he did all of the work to create the scene, 3D text with beautiful shading, etc.

Here’s what he came up with:

He gave me permission (very important when working as a team) to play around with it.   So I did. It may not be the finished product, but it gives us options.                               Here’s what I came up with:

While the contents stayed the same (with the exception of the wind turbines), the effects change the tone entirely.

I wanted to give it a slightly different story. Something vintage, magical and worn.

 

Here’s an overview of what I did:
  • added film scratches (using a paint tool at a low opacity)
  • added blotches (also paint tool at low opacity but bigger in size)
  • a very light but dirty vignette (just a layer of brown via paint bucket brought down to an opacity of 20% and soft eraser also at a low opacity across the crest of the hill)
  • and some “fast” clouds (inspired by intro and outro of Toy Story 3, thank you Ed Catmull also using the paint tool, a subtle white glow and the smudge tool)

I seriously love the 3D text that my friend created. I didn’t want to lose all the work that went into making that but I wanted to accentuate the series title more than anything.  Using the blur tool, I swept across the lower third of the graphic at decreasing intensities as I worked upward towards the crest of the hill. This effectively miniaturizes the piece and gives it a unique depth of field.

If you remember one thing from this post, remember this:

 

Subtle vignettes do a really good job in assisting your audience towards the focal point. Frame the focus with a vignette and you instantly make your concept more accessible to the viewer.

 

Final Thought:  Art is subjective. What I did, you may hate. You may love. Artistic collaboration takes three things:

  1. holding your art loosely
  2. humility
  3. willingness to go with the better idea, even if it’s not yours

Good luck and play nice.

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Stream(s) of Consciousness

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The soundtrack for this post: TV On The Radio – Halfway Home.

The process of creating visual art has been just as rewarding, if not more, than ‘discovering’ the finished product.  I say discovering because often it feels like a stream of consciousness.  Here are a few projects I’ve been working on lately:

1. Potential


The concept of “planting a church” can be on the confusing side.  For anyone unfamiliar with church planting, it is simply a group of people seeking to cultivate organic connections in a new community.

For an upcoming gathering at Awaken, we are planning to discuss this concept of church planting.  The top 3 images are the raw materials I used to assemble the graphic.  My starting point was to ask myself one simple, yet often elusive question:

What symbol supports this concept?

I wanted to avoid being overly explicit.  A degree of ambiguity in art gives room for the real art to happen: interpretation.

I was drawn to the picture of the girl holding the clump of dirt with a sprout (above right) because it seemed to have a degree of sincerity.  In Photoshop, I selected the plant and applied an ‘outer glow’ effect.  As I reflect on it now, I realize that the glow suggests potential.  It implies a sense of unusual vitality.  This sprout is unique somehow.  There is a sense of hope deferred.  Waiting to be realized.  Gradients and shadows are subtle effects that enhance the contrast, visually and figuratively, of what the plant symbolizes.

2. Bird On Twig

I created this visual on Friday, December 10th, the day before a massive blizzard hit the Twin Cities.  A record 20″ of snow fell, marking the 5th largest blizzard in Minnesota’s recorded history.  Needless to say, the snow flakes were a last minute inspiration.  If you’re curious, yes, we canceled the 12.12.10 gathering.

In the first image, I selected the bird and twig, applied an ‘inner glow’ with a shade of green and an ‘outer glow’ of red to the bird.  The bird and twig in separate layers, I applied a blur tool to the bird and left the twig in focus.  The intent was to have the bird in the foreground but out of focus to draw attention to the text in the middle ground of the image.  Finally, the snow in the background was a simple circular brush tool at a low opacity with varying sizes and an added blue  ‘outer glow’ to give it a sense of softeness.

As I mentioned in my last post (intention + creative process), the goal of text is to blend it into the context of the picture.  Text that is merely slapped on top of the art is a bit rushed.  A helpful question to ask is:

What is the focal point?

If the text is not the focal point of the piece, as is true in the church plant graphic, it needs to support the idea, not compete.

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Intention + Creative Process

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The soundtrack for this post: Thom Yorke – The Eraser.

Much like writing, you always want to keep your audience in mind when designing graphic art.  The goal is to capture the essence of an idea.  Sometimes people want to rush this.  They find a pre-packaged, commonly used object that fails to express the unique qualities of this one, important idea.  You can’t rush it.  The graphic finds you as much as you find it.  It takes experimentation.  It takes time.  Don’t rush the creative process.  You need something you can believe in.  Something that propels people to the core of the idea without distilling it to the point of blandness.

Ask yourself:

How can I communicate the complexity of this idea in a simple, yet beautiful way?

Here are a few recent projects I’ve been working on for Awaken for gatherings and events:

Basic Ingredients:

  • Font: Helvetica Neue (ultra light and medium)
  • Effect on text and objects: outer glow (color: #33ff00)
  • Plus a couple simple images…

.           texture              +                object              =                    a simple, beautiful graphic

The beauty of this graphic is that it fuses traditional color schemes, which gives it familiarity, but incorporates abstract, non-descript objects.  The texture in the background helps the objects in the foreground have the feeling of dimension.  A subtle but essential element.  Lastly, the text “awaken” has shading helping it to feel like part of the foreground, instead of a hard layer on top.

Here are two other recent projects:

1. Creative Experience: Paper Hat Boy

.               before                                                                        after

Basic Ingredients:

  • Fonts: Helvetica Neue (ultra light and light) + Gabo4 (on the hat)
  • Effects: dodge, shadows/highlights, smudge

The concept here is that creativity in it’s purest form is imaginative.  The boy isn’t just wearing a folded newspaper on his head.  It’s a hat.  But not just any hat. To him, it’s a gateway to imaginative play.  It’s self-actualization.  He’s Peter Pan.  He’s Robin Hood. He’s the captain of a ship.

What is the boy looking at?

What does he see through his newfound perspective?

This is why this image supports the idea of a creative experience.  It anchors the concept to something familiar: imaginative play.

2. Gathering: Dandelion

.                 before                                                                        after

Basic Ingredients:

  • Font: Helvetica Neue (ultra light and medium)
  • Effect: glow (on the top right seed blowing away)
  • Shading + contrast + over-saturation

The things that I like about this graphic is that the difficulty of cutting out the dandelion gave it a “paper” look.  The concept here is tied to the seedling blowing away.  This may prompt some sub-concious questions:

What does a seed do?

Is the seed a metaphor for something?

The hand holding the dandelion also causes the viewer to assume someone is blowing the dandelion. What prompts a person to blow the seedlings from a dandelion? It’s a conceptual direction that evokes feelings. Hope.

When employing the creativity of visual art, be sure to give it dimension, conceptual direction and shape.

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