Evaluation
I have been constructing this project now for around three months, all of my work and revision can be on blog which is www.benslater.wordpress.com, i have kept the blog up to date in a diary type form and is recorded on a week to week process.
I have been working individually on this project and the task was to create a college magazine or a video, i immediately chose a magazine cover to the video because i believe i could express my skills allot more through making a cover. I wanted to do something different to the others and make it something that was a bit different. I first came up with he idea of a cooking and catering college but i thought this was a bit to simple so i thought about it for some time and i came up with the idea for a college for superhero’s.I held a focus group of six students in my class to decide which idea i should use, everyone in this group chose the superhero college idea because the main reason of being i had allot more to work with and that no one else had thought of anything like it.
I began researching different magazines, this was hard because there was no magazine that would be like my idea so instead i looked at different types of magazines, i looked at a magazine that had a college audience (aim higher magazine) and also i looked at some more famous titles such as marvel magazines, i chose these two because there both hugely successful and i knew that they could give me some good ideas for my front cover and contents. I studied all these magazine carefully and looked carefully at the layouts of them, after i had done this started to jot down ideas for how the title would look and the text and picture layout on the front cover, these can be found on my blog. I also thought about my colours and decided to use red and blue throughout, i chose these because i think the represent very strong and bold people which superhero’s are. I wanted to keep this theme throughout so i decided to put these in my contents page also. I also drew a logo which i would end up creating on photoshop to use on my front cover and contents. I knew that the idea in my head would push my media skills to the limit because i wanted the magazine to stand out.
In the magazines i researched i noticed that all the contents pages had intriguing headlines, i knew this would be quite easy to think of because of the wide range of aspects i could choose for my idea. I wanted to put these in a box-out on my front cover and in my contents. After putting these ideas on to paper i started to think about my image and how i could represent my actor to be a superhero and a student. I came up with two ideas that could do this one being a student in uniform and performing there power at the same time, a example would be lasers shooting from the ideas, i thought about it and i thought this could be quite hard to do so i came up with another idea. It was a student in uniform standing straight but instead of a shirt underneath the blazer they could have there costume instead, i knew that this would represent both superhero and student.I did not have to worry about mise-en-scene in the picture because i planned to cut the picture out and put it on a different background which i had yet to choose.I knew this would be a hard task for me because i had not used photoshop before and i knew i would have to master it quite quickly.
For the next few weeks i had been using photoshop and trying out different techniques such as feathering, magnetic lasso and basic skills like handling the brush.I practised on different images that i took of goggle, for one of them i put animal faces on people and for the other i took an image of a man in a suit and turned it into something what my front cover would be like.This was struggle and pushed my photoshop skills to the edge, but i believe i succeeded in my task and it was good for me because it gave me an idea of how my picture might turn out.These images are posted on my blog and are under the early stages of my production log.
After having a good amount of practice on photoshop i started to construct our mock front cover and contents, i started with the contents because i wanted to get this as close to perfect as i could. I began with a simple layout of two circles going diagonally across the page and that would meet in the middle.I chose this because i thought it would represent it as very modern.I also put all my text in these circles, i put them at slant and in proportion with the circles because it is easier on the eye. I added some pictures in the corners and added effects to them, the pictures where linked with my titles so it was not confusing for the reader. After i had put the finishing touches on my work i printed it with a questionnaire beside and handed it out to 10 students who where also working on this project. I got some valuable feedback off of the students and by getting this i knew what desperately needed to be changed and what was good. I saw that most people did not like my title some went into more detail and said what they did not like about it like font,colour,position etc. But i did get some good feedback about my layout i saw that people liked the circles and that it went well with my idea so i knew this was something to keep.
After completing my contents i started to construct my mock front cover, i did not have that long to do this as i could see the deadline was becoming closer. I took an image of google as a boy dressed as Scarface, i new this would be a challenge for me because he was wearing a white suit and i wanted it to be black, i had to take this image because it was extremely hard to find a picture of a boy in a suit and i did not to waste to much time looking for it. I used many different photoshop skills to change this picture into something that i could base my front cover around, i made the suit the colour i wanted by changing contrasts and using the brush tool, i also used the brush tool to take the shadowing off of the original image. I then magnetic extracted the model from the photo and placed him onto a background i had also taken off of google. After this i added text and a title to get the idea of what my layout would be like on the front cover, i did not spend a long time choosing the fonts and colours of the text because i wanted to perfect other things. I believe the mock cover that i produced was not the best piece of work i have came up with but i believe it really stepped up my skills onto the next level of photoshop and i was pleased with the transformation. The transformation between the two pictures can be found on my blog.
After completing the mock front cover i showed it to a few others students and from their feedback i could tell that they did not like the text and the title.I could tell that this needed work on i could see that i needed to use better fronts, taglines and a headline that could pull readers in. I knew i could easily do this because my idea had so many stories that you could work around and i knew i could make a headline that would draw readers in.
Now i had finished my mock cover and contents it was time to start on my actual piece, i wanted to create the contents first because i knew this would be easier due to the fact that it would be very similar to my mock cover. I started by forming my basic layout and trying out some different colours, i finally settled on blue and red because i believe these represent the colours of a superhero because they are strong and bold. I then added some images around the layout that i had edited or created my self, the images that i added all link with the stories. I then added the text and the page numbers in the circles, i wanted to make it a bit different so i didn’t put them in a straight line i made it curve around in line with the circle, i done this because i think it is more easier on the eye for the reader. My contents was nearly finished but i had to make a title, i knew this would take a bit of time because i had learnt that people did not like the last one i had used. I took time in changing the inner and outer glows around the text and trying out different textures but i believe that my final product was the best that i could get it.
I now had to take my original images for my front cover, the task was to take a medium close up of a student. I took many images of my model in medium close up and brought them in to work on, after looking through all of them i couldn’t find any i wanted to use so this was a huge set back for me. Because i didn’t want to waste the time that i had i began to create a background layer for my cover and a title. My title took quite a long amount of time because i had to liquefy the text, i also found it very difficult to come up with a name for my magazine so i went with super hero college i abbreviated this text down to shc.
Now i knew i had to take an image quickly because i did not have much time left, so i took and image of another model in a suit, it was not ideal but i could use it. I started work on the image and i found it extremely difficult to get a costume underneath the suit so i had to come up with a different idea that could represent a superhero and a student. After a long time spent thinking i came up with the student in the suit but also with a laser coming from his eyes. I also knew this would be difficult but it would be easier than trying to draw on the costume underneath the suit. I carried on working on the image changing the contrasts and the angle of the image. All i needed to do now was add the lasers it took a few tries but i managed to get the affect of the lasers with a brush tool and by using a glow round the outside.
I believe that my front cover was not the best piece of work but i was pleased how it came out because of the circumstances i was in. I showed both superhero and student, the image was medium close up and i think i represented the my idea through not just the picture but through colours fonts etc.
