Midterm Project

So I haven't posted anything new in a while because I just happened to have all my tests and projects due on the same week. So I have been busy making art and attempting to study for chemistry for the past 2 weeks (mostly making art). Anyways, for this post I am just going to be talking about my midterm project for my digital imaging class.
For this project everything was totally up to us: the subject, the method, the style. All we really had to do was use either Corel Painter X or Photoshop. I had an initial idea to make my pieces about how busy my life was and how much I was juggling. I made my initial sketches and I wanted the style to look like a collage that would be found in a scrap book. I wanted to make an environment of scraps of paper and things pertaining to my life. For example one piece would focus on my marathon and I would use elements such as my running bib and my medal. Another would have to do with my homework and classes. Well regardless I ended up trashing that whole idea when it came time to take my pictures. I just had a realization that nothing would end up turning out right. So I began to stress out because I haven't really had to put an idea together quickly in this class yet. I ended up just taking some pictures of myself and began to improvise in photoshop. The only thing I was really inspired by was images of Hindu and Indian gods that had many arms and bright colors. So I went with that and my first image represents that idea well. Then instead of keeping with the Hindu god theme I began to take the idea in my own direction. The project became much more about movement than anything else. I was fascinated by the movement of just one arm and begand to ponder what other movements I could emulate. So for my second piece I forcused on the movement of a back dive. I worked in photoshop and did some overlaying of the different poses and I ended up pleased with the results. The most exciting parts are the portions that overlap. I had to go in and erase certain portions so that the piece was more easily read and looked better but where sections intersect I feel is really dynamic. Finally, for my third piece I focused on an even more dramatic motion; the motion of drowning. The fear, the stress, the whole overall feeling of being completely helpless. This image is very different from the second and third one because there is no set motion for drowning which made it a lot more difficult to put together. With the backflip the bodies slowly moved to the left, there was no other way to put them. But for drowning all the images were overlapped over eachother, and without at least some space they ended up just being a jumbled mess. So I had to think a little more about the composition and how i could successfully piece the different bodies together. There were two head shots that i thought worked well together so I decided to just delete the rest of the heads and keep only the arms and torso. This immediately made it simpler to put together. After that I just tried to make that flailing arm feeling and motions of stress become realistic. In the end I felt happy with all three images.