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Type Face Project

Welcome back! I hope you all enjoyed your spring break. Your next project will be to create a portrait using text in place of lines. You will have to use Photoshop for this assignment as I am not aware of any free programs that have the particular feature set necessary to complete this. You will find that working with www.pixlr.com and other online image editing applications has prepared you for working with Photoshop.

Type Face: Creation of a Typographic Portrait

Create a portrait consisting of nothing but text. Portrait must be of someone you know. No images of Obama, Britney Spears, etc. I would strongly encourage you take a portrait of someone for this assignment, but I am not requiring it. You do have to have taken the photo though. If you do decide to take a new portrait, don't use the wide angle setting of your camera/phone when taking the photo. That will result in unwanted distortion. I would suggest you zoom the lens out (make things appear close up) as much as possible, then get closer until fill the frame with the head and shoulders of your subject. 

You will find that the better the quality of the photo you start with, the better the end results will be. This is because a better image will have more detail to work from. 

You are welcome to use different color text. You can do this by changing the color and/or tone of your text as you write it, or you can do some clever stuff with masks later on. I can show you both ways.

The final image should consist of nothing but text. 

Save the file as a Photoshop as you work on it. The Photoshop file extension is .PSD.

The text that you use must be relevant. It can be song lyrics, things the person says, things you think about the person, etc. 

You need to have the portrait that you are going to work from and the text that you are going to use by Wednesday so that you can work on it in class. You will have next Monday to work on it in class. It is due the following Wednesday at the beginning of class. You will have to work on this outside of class in order to complete it on time. Please plan accordingly as you will need to utilize Photoshop to complete this. FYI, you can download a 30 day trial of Photoshop from www.adobe.com if you want to work on this at home and don't have Photoshop at the moment.

 

Some great samples here:

http://abduzeedo.com/45-amazing-type-faces-typographic-portraits

Tutorials on using the pen tool in Photoshop

Excellent tutorials by Ken Hulsey, a real technical master of digital illustration
http://www.melissaclifton.com/tutorial-pentool.html

http://www.photoshopessentials.com/basics/pen-tool-selections/

http://psd.tutsplus.com/tutorials/tools-tips/photoshops-pen-tool-the-comprehensive-guide/

http://www.elated.com/articles/editing-paths-in-photoshop/

Tutorials on using text in Photoshop.

Putting text on a path in Photoshop.

A simple how to tutorial here.

The final image must be 16x20(ish) at 300ppi or larger. You don't have to use the exact aspect ratio of 16x20, but I want it to be close to that size.

Almost over...list of what is due

Okay, almost over....
I went through everyone's blogs earlier. There are a number of you with missing assignments. Before break I presented a list of assignments. Here is an updated version.

Summary of assignments so far, reverse chronology:
Mashup up- must be hosted on your blog as well as hosted on YouTube or Vimeo. Include the link to YouTube or Vimeo so I can find it.
Quicktime movie with sound made from animated GIF.
Animated GIF.
Type Face/Text Portrait
Grid Project- should have it posted on your blog as well as have made a print
Silly photo edited in Pixlr.com
Ran an anti-virus program, posted screen shot on blog.
Backed up data to Mozy.com, Adrive.com, or other free online storage site. Posted a screen shot on your blog.
Post a day in the life slide show presentation.
Posted two Animoto videos. One on the Urban Landscape and one on whatever.
Posted on the various music formats and differences in quality after ripping a CD in multiple formats.
Posted your five favorite Urban Landscape photos after editing them in Picnik.
Posted a link to your Flickr account with your 20 favorite Urban Landscape photos.
Created a Blog. Took some time to customize it. Made an initial posting.
I think that was everything...
I will give you extra credit for each substantial blog posting your make. It can be on anything that you want. Your dog, how much you love beer, whatever.

Online Video Editors

Just as we used multiple free online photo editors such as Picnik.com and Pixlr.com, there are free online video editor programs available. The biggest problem with online video editing is that you have to upload the video that you want to edit. It may have taken you a fair amount of time to download the video in the first place. Upload speeds are always significantly slower than download speeds, so may take a very long time to upload the video to online video editor.

JayCut is perphaps the most popular and feature rich. Interface is fairly simple and should be pretty straightforward for anyone who is used to using Microsoft Movie Maker or Apple's iMovie.

Re-cap and end of semester plans

Today I allowed time to work on the mashup/video projects. They are due Tuesday at beginning of class. I will demonstrate how to export the movie from iMovie and add a soundtrack using GarageBand this Thursday.
Attendance has a been a little flaky for some of you lately. Please try to make it to the remaining classes as there is only a few left.

RiP: A remix manifesto

Last class, in preparation for your mashup project, we watched part of RiP: A remix manifesto. It is a documentary film about copyright and remix culture. You can watch the whole film for free here or you can also watch it on Hulu, but there will be commercials.
Next class, I will introduce you to working with digital video using iMovie. We will also watch another section of the RiP film.
Please remember to bring in or locate footage that you want to use in your mashup.

Garageband

Been awhile since I updated this...
Last two classes we spent playing around with Garageband. You are to have read chapters 1-4 of Take Control of Making Music with GarageBand '09 by Tuesday. This book is available online through UT's library system.
You get to the book by going to:

http://www.utoledo.edu/library/

Go to the Quick Links section and hit Search

Or go directly to

http://utmost.cl.utoledo.edu/search

Once you find the books, you click on the read online link or something like that. If you connected to the internet via a UT connection, you will not have to sign in. If you are at home, then you will have to sign in using your name and R number.

Last class, I also showed you how to make an animated GIF using Photoshop.

Here is a tutorial on how to do this.

Here is another tutorial on creating an animated GIF using PS. The first part of it doesn't pertain to class, but you could do it if you like.

You are to create a 600 x 600 pixel (or 600 x whatever) animated GIF and host it on your blog by Tuesday. It is to have at least 30 frames. We will learn how to create a video version of this file and set it to music in GarageBand on Tuesday. Be sure to bring in the Photoshop or TIFF version of the file as well.

Seder