Mental Wave Explosion

Tutorial here.

First I opened the road photo to use as my background. I used a layer mask to cut out the guy from another photo, and placed him in the road photo. I made a selection of the guy to create his shadow on a new layer. Then I used the ellipse tool and direction selection tool to create the mental wave shape. I used the clouds tool and used the selection of the ellipse from before to make the clouds only appear within that shape. Then I used the liquify tool to make the shape appear to be bulging. I repeated this step three times. I used the outer glow tool to give the shape its desired effects. I used the elliptical marquee tool to make the shadow underneath the shape and then used the zig-zag tool to create the ripples. Next, I added the truck and created a shadow the same way I made the shadow for the guy. Then I just made a ton of adjustments with the lighting and coloring to make it the way that I wanted.

Good and Evil

Tutorial here.

This tutorial splits a face in half to make a good side and an evil side. First, I used a single column marquee to make the line in the middle. Evil side: First I desaturated the left side and then used the brush tool to make the eye black. I used a concrete texture for the skin and used a layer mask and erased over the eyes and lips. Then I used to burn tool to hollow out the eyes and cheekbone area. The tutorial included a link to a brush set to make make-up smudges on the face. Good side: I used the spot healing brush and gaussian blur to make the skin look perfect. Then I used an elliptical marquee to select the eye and made it a bright blue color. Then I used a star brush and changed the settings to make them look random and put some over various parts of the face.

Chocolate Skull

Chocolate skull tutorial here. The point of this tutorial was to take a realistic skull and make it look like melting chocolate. It was pretty simple (only a few tools were used) but the detail was very important. I started by making the skull black and white and duplicating the layer and making it a chocolate brown color. Then I used the smudge tool to make 'drips' coming from the skull. This was pretty easy but I don't see how the person who made the tutorial made the little ball at the end of the drip to make it look really. Then I added some white for highlights and smudged those out too. Next, I found a cake background and dragged the skull over it. I used the clone stamp and smudge tool to make things blend together. The red background was not high enough, so I found a red fabric texture and added and used the clone stamp and smudge tool again to make it blend.

Flash Writing Effect

I have tried at least four other Flash tutorials before this one and I have been unsuccessful with all of them so I decided to start with something really simple. The tutorial can be found here. I began using a script front to write my name and I used the break apart tool twice to break apart each letter. Then I used the eraser tool and worked backwards from the end of the text, erasing a piece and then hitting F6 to create a frame, and repeating that until I reached the beginning of the text to make it look like my name is being written across the screen.

I can't figure out how to post flash things on here, so here is my Google page and I hope you can open and view it.

Cyborg Girl

This is probably going to be my last Photoshop-only project for this class. I began by taking the start image and camouflaging any blemishes on the model's skin. Next, I used the curves adjustment layer, made a layer mask and then erased over her eyes to make  them stand out. Then I used to magic wand tool to cut out the model from the background, refined the edge, and placed her on a gray background. Next, I added the cyborg parts, and there were a couple different methods for doing this. One method was using the pen tool to cut away part of the model, and then placing the cyborg part. Others were cut and dragged in and then I used layer masks to help them blend in.

Christmas Tree

Tutorial can be found here.

I found this Christmas tree tutorial and it looked really fun. I began with a black background and then used a green and black gradient overlay. Then I added two more gradient layers with the fill level at 0% to create the background. The tutorial used the pen tool to draw the tree and the shape tool to make the stars but I just used a star shaped brush and changed the size to create my tree. Next, I added an outer glow to the star layer. Then I used the snowflake shapes and placed them randomly on the background with varying fill levels to make them different shades of white. Then I used the shape called Registration Target 2 with a gradient overlay to make the top star look like it is glowing. The tutorial used the pen tool to draw the garland on the tree, but I just tried to use the shape tool to make a line and then warp it.

Cracked Portrait

This is another tutorial from the Photoshop magazine. The goal of this tutorial was to make to make a picture look like the Black Swan movie poster.

After opening the start image, I duplicated the layer twice. I used to texturizer with a sandstone texture on both layers, but the first layer had a lesser effect. Then I merged those two layers and edited the color and decreased the saturation and increased the contrast. They included a brush pack to use for the cracks. After drawing some of the cracks in, I filled in one section with black paint  to make a selection, then duplicated the selection twice and changed the blend mode to multiply. On the first duplicated layer, I added an inner shadow and added a drop shadow on the second layer to make the cracks look 3D. Then I added some random paint spots to make debris in between the cracks.