Self Portrait Challenge: Pop Art
I’m not normally a huge fan of doing these sorts of manipulations, but I made an exception for this month’s Self Portrait Challenge. Afterall, you can’t really have good Pop Art images without some sort of tweaking/changing/messing around.
For this week’s entry, I went for a more graphic/photocopied look to my self portrait. I’ve always really liked the lo-fi look of cheaply produced flyers and posters using copy machines. They’re simple, bold, and straightforward. None of this fancy 4-color junk on glossy paper.
This photo of me at Gasworks Park in Seattle seemed like a nice fit for this particular look. I totally dig how the industrial junk in the background came out. Just the right amount of detail to break up the big expanses of white.
For those who are curious, here’s how I created the image using Photoshop:
- Convert to B&W using Channel Mixer (R:24% G:68% B:8% monochrome).
- Apply Threshold image adjustment (don’t remember the exact value).
- Apply Gaussian Blur filter with a 3-pixel radius to kill some of the tiny details.
- Convert image to Grayscale.
- Convert to Halftone (Dot type and other default settings).
- Convert back to Grayscale.
- Convert back to RGB (I considered adding color).
- A bit of touchup to get rid of annoying lines and spots.
Nothing really fancy about this. Just your normal built-in Photoshop features that have been in there since at least version 2.0. That was back before layers existed. Scary times.
Oh, lookie-lookie! I’ve gone and added a photography section to my website. It’s kind of a combination of a photoblog and a gallery that I hope will eventually become a collection of my best/favorite photos. I’m still going to be using Flickr as usual, because Flickr just plain rocks, but I will be picking select images to post to my new photo site. Chances are you won’t see too many pictures of me and my friends going out drinking. There might be one or two pictures of Sheena, but I’ll try to keep those to a minimum. ;)
General site navigation has been updated. The menu bar at the top of my blog now has a link to http://photography.dannyngan.com, and there are links back to here from that site. I’ve also changed my site’s home page to be a hub for my 3 main interests: animation, photography, and blogging. That way, everyone going to my site knows what they’ll find.
Props go out to the guys at PixelPost for developing a really simple and straightforward photoblogging system for me to work with. KISS is good. Free is great. :)
Here are some goodies that showed up in my news feeds today:
Animation Podcast - Clay Kaytis has started a really neat blog that will “present today’s voices in animation in their own words to create an audible record that is hopefully a source of knowledge, insight, and inspiration.” I’ve got the first two podcasts loaded up in iTunes and ready to go for tomorrow. It’ll be nice to listen to something animation-related as I animate pirates getting stabbed left and right. (Tip from Drawn!)
Blockbuster is going to start renting PSP games. This makes me very happy.
Could Apple have a Tablet Mac in the works? According to MacObserver:
Apple Computer was granted a patent for an enigmatically titled “Electronic device” Tuesday, May 10th, 2005. Illustrations for the device clearly indicate it to be a tablet-style Macintosh, and patent filings specifically compare it to the “HP Compaq Tablet PC” and several other tablet machines.
I know I wouldn’t mind seeing one.
Thanks to Drawn!, I have re-discovered the wonderful artwork of Michel Gagne. I first learned of him through his work on the animated short Prelude to Eden and the underrated Iron Giant. I had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Gagne at the San Diego Comic-Con a few years ago, and I was utter inspired by his range of work. I even got a custom drawing in my signed copy of Insanely Twisted Rabbits.
| animation | apple | blockbuster | drawing | michel gagne | podcast | psp | tablet
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