Citizen Cope Presentation

This assignment was to create a PowerPoint Presentation based on one of our favorite music artists. I chose Citizen Cope. The purpose of this project was to display our knowledge and skill of working with PowerPoint. In the past I have worked with PowerPoint for various reasons, but this was different. This time everything that went on every slide must have been created by me.

What I was hoping to create in this Presentation was all the different sides that Citizen Cope (Clareance Greenwood) has. Each photograph displays him at all different ways and locations. When it came to choosing the photographs I had a lot of fun with it. Since I was already slightly educated in Photoshop I was capable of editing and enhancing most of the images used in my Presentation. I was mainly hoping to achieve a Presentation that flows with connections, but each slide has major differences. For example, in slide two 'Who is Citizen Cope?' one of the photographs I used has an orange based background, so in order to make the Presentation smooth, I created a yellow/orange background for slide three 'Citizen Cope - 2002'.

One thing I found particularly challenging with this project was keeping enough contrast. One of the first things I noticed was that the exact colors and contrast differs on the screen it is seen on. The only way to solve this problem was to create enough contrast that no matter the screen, it can be seen. When selecting most of the colors for my fonts, I used the dropper tool, keeping all the colors on one slide fluent.

So far this semester, I have enjoyed this project the most. Alike to the Photoshop documents in the previous assignments, I was able to use my creativity and imagination. There were no limits in this Presentation as long everything needed was included.

I am most proud of the diversity in my Presentation. Each slide has a unique was of displaying Citizen Cope's different sides. The incorporation of photograph editing was definitely my strongest part of this assignment. If I was given more time to work on this project I may work on the visual effects. Although I am happy with effects I added, more would create a more enticing presentation.

Do You Tube?

YouTube is a video sharing website where users can upload and view videos. YouTube was created in 2005 by three former PayPal employees. [Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim] In the next year Google Inc. purchased YouTube for $1.65 billion. This subsidiary of Google is based in San Bruno, California.

YouTube began primarily by an $11.5 million investment by Sequoia Capital. The initial headquarters were located above a pizzeria and Japanese restaurant in San Mateo, California. The domain name of ‘www.youtube.come’ was activated on Valentine’s Day in 2005.

YouTube uses Adobe Flash Video technology to display the videos. The wide variety of videos seen on YouTube include; movie clips, music videos, video blogging and of course user-generated content videos.

The VERY FIRST YouTube video was uploaded on April 23, 2005 entitled Me At the Zoo. It is simply a video of founder, Jawed Karim, at the San Diego Zoo.

There was a slight controversy with the website name ‘youtube’. The owner of the site, www.utube.come filed a lawsuit against YouTube in November 2006. UTube (Universal Tube & Rollform Equipment) of course lost the lawsuit and resulted in the change of its website to www.utubeonline.com

YouTube has made it possible for anyone with an Internet connection to post a video world wide that can be seen within minutes. YouTube also made it possible for everyday people to gain a celebrity status from doing a six minute dance routine, to charlie biting your finger.

Released on YouTube on May 23, 2008 was the band, Weezer’s music video for their single titled, Pork and Beans. The video itself is a video of YouTube videos. According to director, Mathew Cullen, “the video was to be a celebration of creativity.” Numerous famous YouTube videos were featured in the music video. The list goes from One Man Band, Numa Numa, Dramatic Gopher, Afro Ninja, Diet Coke and Mentos Experiment, Chris Croker, Miss Teen USA, Crank that Solja Boy, Evolution of Dance and many, many more. The YouTube Celebrities who were featured in the video were flown to Los Angeles to work with the band in the making of the video.

Entertainment Weekly put it best when they put YouTube on its end-of-the-decade “best of” list saying...

“Providing a safe home for piano playing cats, celeb goof-ups and overzealous lip-synchers since 2005.”

Animated Font Poem

(Click for full view)

The font poem in animation reads itself to the audience. That's what I enjoy most about it. In the photo version the reader does not receive the story telling when compared to the animated.

I had some trouble uploading the exquisite corpse version of my font poem, so until it is up I will try and describe it for you. After the font words are pasted together, the background switches to my 'forest dancer' exquisite corps. That's what I am most proud of.

The white font on top of the purple exquisite corps brightens it, and gives the reader a chance to understand the poem before the animation begins again.

To be honest, if I had more time before deadline I would not do anything different. I achieved exactly what I was hoping to.

Post Card

I chose three photos for my Post Card. The forest, a ballerina and floating balloons.

I started my post card by cropping just a small section of the forest. I wanted to incorporate a decent amount of trees and leaves, with some of the sky still visibly. I layered the same photo twice, the second slightly to the left creating a blurred look for the background. I did that so my main focus point (the ballerina) stood out. Before I positioned the ballerina I inserted a third layer of floating balloons. I placed each balloon specifically giving the background depth, I also made the balloons transparent on the forest so they were slightly seen. Finally, after cropping the ballerina’s photo, I placed it on the entire background.

When it came to color, I played around, a lot. My first draft with colors was the forest being a strong green and brown, and the same with the balloons. But the background took away from the distinguish beauty of the ballerina. Finally after playing with duo-tone colors I finally chose the pink/purple color you see. The bright white ballerina on top of the faded woods and balloons draws your attention to her, just like I wanted.

I liked this project the most I think. It was fun being allowed to play around with the photos I chose and the colors I want. I was very indecisive at the beginning. Starting with what section of the forest photo I wanted to use for my background. The entire photo looked like this... It certainly was challenging. The best way for me to decide how to crop it was to do it several different ways and then select. I arranged them all on the screen and decided by process of elimination.

I was hoping to achieve a post card that with two dimensions and the focus point of the stunning white ballerina. What I enjoyed most of the project was playing with coloring. I had two major color decisions to make, how many and what colors. Ultimately I am happy with the choices I made, and I am very proud of that.

Considering the time restriction there was one thing I didn’t do. I initially began with the image of the ballerina fading away. I tried to accomplish it by layering the ballerina slightly to the left, and slightly dimmer over, and over and over again. I just could not accomplish the look I wanted. Frustrated I gave up. In the end though, I am extremely happy with how my final Post Card ended up.

Font Poem

The second sight project consisted of creating a font poem. The poem I chose to use was an excerpt from 'An American Prayer' by Jim Morrison. (With his poetry he went by James)
Included at the bottom is the entire poem. I suggest reading it :)

















This project was a lot of fun, it gave me a chance to learn how many different fonts, or typefaces, Photoshop offers. I had a few difficulties when designing the layout of the words. There are so many approaches to a project such as this, so many possibilities and so many ideas.

The first draft of my font poem looked absolutely nothing like the final. I am much much happier with the finished product. I must have tried almost every single font choice for each word. The fonts I ended up using are:

• Orator Std
• Kabel LT Std
• Myraid Pro
• Shelley Script LT Std
• Bermuda LP Std
• Flood Std
• Zapfino

I tried to keep a sense of formality with the less significant words and used Kabel LT Std for those. My favorite font was the one I used to recognize Jim Morrison with, Zapfino. Favorite font for favorite poet. The font had a very clear and beautiful script, just as Morrison.

I ran into a few difficulties when doing my font poem, but of course there was a simple fix. At first I was only working with two layers. Once I began to create a layer for more and more words it began to be more fun. A sense of perfection came upon me to have each and every word placed exactly where I saw fit. By the end, I ended up with a layer for almost each word of the poem. I really, really enjoyed this project. It was not much of a struggle, but it gave me the chance to deliver the words of someone else, in MY way. One thing I wish was more involved was color!

An American Prayer
By: James Morrison

Do you know the warm progress under the stars?
Do you know we exist?
Have you forgotten the keys to the Kingdom?
Have you been borne yet & are you alive?
Let's reinvent the gods, all the myths of the ages
Celebrate symbols from deep elder forests
[Have you forgotten the lessons of the ancient war]
We need great golden copulations
The fathers are cackling in trees of the forest
Our mother is dead in the sea
Do you know we are being led to slaughters by placid admirals
& that fat slow generals are getting obscene on young blood
Do you know we are ruled by T.V.
The moon is a dry blood beast
Guerilla bands are rolling numbers in the next block of green vine
amassing for warfare on innocent herdsmen who are just dying
O great creator of being grant us one more hour to perform our art & perfect our lives
The moths & atheists are doubly divine & dying
We live, we die & death not ends it
Journey we more into the Nightmare

Contact Sheet

By creating this contact sheet I wanted to achieve the ability to display basic skills for photoshop. I gained the knowledge of different resolutions and where they are needed. For example, a newspaper or magazine requires 300 dpi (dots per inch) when a picture photo displays a higher resolution; 1200 dpi. When dealing with pixels, they can only be taken away, not added.

I also learned all different ways to edit and play with the visual effects of a photo. Photoshop offers a number of ways to edit a photo and I am excited to continue to learn and play with them all.

One problem I ran into was with resolution. I rushed into the project and even though I knew pixels cannot be added, I did it anyway. I quickly learned my mistake and fixed it the only way possible, going back and doing it over again. Practice makes perfect.

Another problem I ran into was with my contact photo. Although no mistake was really made, I learned what photos work well with what effects. The photo I originally chose was a white snowman with a primarily white background. I fixed the problem by once again, starting over with a new photo of a background playground.

Here is a close-up of my favorite image.


This image is the CMYK color version of pink flowers and a green leafy background. This version of color is normally used when printing, versus on the web.