Student Work: Advertisement

"Attack of the Killer Origami"
Student work by William Deem
A Review by Instructor Cori Ratliff

This is the second time I've featured the work of William Deem. There are definitely some new pieces from the recent class that just completed I plan on highlighting, but I love this piece, so I wanted to make sure it was included. This was a piece I found not only outstanding, but totally hilarious. This assignment was to use between 5 and 7 images to create an advertisement. The subject matter is totally up to the student. The goal is to successfully apply the elements and principles of design to create a visually compelling layout that utilizes effective use of typography and graphics. The students combine at least two images into a background texture, and then the rest of the graphics are up to them as to how they choose to implement them. Something I really liked about this piece was that the graphics really grab your attention and the use of lighting and shadows make it appear realistic. The cracked glasses and the blood, all added for the graphic effect, along with the running figures being chased by the origami in the background all add to the sense of drama in the piece. In my opinion William did a good job at capturing the feel of a movie poster, and really put the flair of "horror" into the design. I also thought the use of color with the limited color palette worked very well for the overall design and contributes to the sense of unity in the design. A really nice example of student work in my book.

Digital Painting in Photoshop: Phlegyas

This is a character painting done in Photoshop CS2 of Phlegyas from Dante’s Inferno. While the character may not be totally accurate, I always imagined him as being more robust and more warrior-like than some of the other paintings portrayed him. This painting took around 6 hours to complete and used a variety of the custom brushes in Photoshop. I had a separate layer for all of the major elements – water, boat, skin, hair, cloak, armor, leather, mounds, sky, etc. This made color adjustment really easy. I also worked with the brushes all set to lower opacity (50% or less) so that the paint blended together and took on a more natural paint look. I also used the smudge tool set to finger painting frequently. I think my favorite part of this painting is the boat and the water as well as his eyes. I had done three color comps for this scene and now I plan to go back and shift the color of the layers to see the final painting rendered in the different color schemes. I love layers! Enjoy.