Digital Photography and Imaging - Final Project

28.5.19 - 15.6.19 (Week 10 - Week 13)

Abigail Bea Chong Ka Yee (0333966)

Digital Photography and Imaging

Final Project - Surrealistic Artwork

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FINAL PROJECT

For our final project, we had to recreate a surrealistic artwork from Instagram. We were given this link https://surrealismtoday.com/17-mind-blowing-surreal-artists/ to pick and choose which photo we wanted to recreate. This is the photo that I chose:

Fig 1.1 Handcut collage by oejeRum 

These are the pictures that I chose to recreate the image above.

Fig 1.2 Pillars

Fig 1.3 Birds

Fig 1.4 Statues

Here are the images together in Photoshop. In the image below I added match colour to the statue and to the birds so it will blend in well with the background.

Fig 1.5 Process 

After getting feedback from Mr Jeffrey and Mr Martin I decided to change my statue and the pillars. These were the pictures I used:

Fig 1.6 Background

Fig 1.7 Birds

Fig 1.8 I used the grass

Fig 1.9 The pillars

Fig 1.10 The statue

After finding the photos I started working on the project. I started out using this image as the background. I removed the other elements in the picture and changed it into grayscale.

Fig 1.11 Process #1

I then got rid of the path by using the stamp tool and added colour balance and hue and saturation.

Fig 1.12 Process #2

I proceeded to add the birds after the background.

Fig 1.13 Process #3 

Then I added the pillars to make it and masked the birds.

Fig 1.14 Process #4

I thought the pillars looked empty without the grass and the background was pretty plain so I added trees and grass to make it blend with the background.

Fig 1.15 Process #5

Finally, I added the statue with a layer to make it lighter.

Fig 1.16 Process #6

Here is the animated gif of the processes above.

Fig 1.17 Process in gif

My final image of the photo.

Fig 1.18 Final surrealistic photo

We also had to animate the photo and I had two ideas in mind. The first was to bring the statue in front like it was coming towards you when you look at it or the birds flying out of her head. Overall, I made three attempts; here is the first one where I moved the statue closer to the front.

Fig 1.19 First attempt

Mr Jeffrey told me that it doesn't tell the story if I moved the statue and not the birds so I made a second attempt by moving the birds. It did not turn out well because there were lines in some frames since I duplicated the layer to move the birds. As you can see the gif has really ugly lines as it moves out of the pillars.

Fig 1.20 Second attempt

For my final attempt, Mr Jeffrey showed me how to use the keyframe in after effects but it did not capture the top left corner so my friend showed me another easier way to move the birds without moving the grey part but only move the birds. Firstly, I made another layer with just the birds without the grey background.

Fig 1.21 Just the birds without the grey background

Then I moved on to recreate the background of the birds by adding hue/saturation and brightness/contrast along with adding a linear gradient with a radial gradient.

Fig 1.22 Grey Background 

The animation in GIF format.

Fig 1.2 The final gif

For the final gif, it kinda looks like gravity is pulling the birds.