Re-write of the Brief for Postage Stamp project~

Brief:

This project is a live brief, focusing on the development of ideal images for stamps for our client, The Royal Mail.
The Royal Mail have recently announced their plans to produce new themed sets of stamp designs, which will be released every few weeks to the public.

The theme that we will be working around is ‘peace and freedom’, and at the end of this project, we must each produce four final visuals of stamp designs to present to the client.

Firstly we will need to conduct research for the theme of ‘peace and freedom’ by finding visual and non-visual pieces. We have to be sure to look at different types of imagery that relate to the theme, for example:
-Various works of art (e.g. paintings, illustrations)
-Photographs
-Poetry
-Song lyrics
-Historical articles & accounts

Also we must research various postage stamps to add to the mood board we will create with the researched imagery.

There will be limitations on the type of image we can use to convey peace and freedom, as not everyone will share the same perspective on the images we may choose to represent this theme. Very popular, typical images will explain the theme to everyone, but the ideas for designs you can create that incorporate these common images are limitless.

The client would prefer unique and innovative ideas which can make a simple, functional item interesting and collectable. Uncommon and new imagery ideas will appeal to the client more, but the public need to be able to identify the theme through the imagery. The images are generally used to commemorate and celebrate historical events, holidays and exceptional people.

The target audience is basically everyone, mostly aimed at the public who remember historical events that involve peace and freedom, e.g. the World Wars. These images will be seen by production staff, the general public, retail workers and, obviously, The Royal Mail staff themselves.

The stamps themselves will be used, obviously, for envelopes & packages. They will be used throughout the UK, and could possibly be sent across the globe. The images on the stamps will be linked to past events that the general public have seen, e.g. wars, riots, segregation; the peace that brought those difficult and chaotic events to an end, and the freedom humanity felt once the problems were solved, or the situations improved.

We will be developing plenty of ideas and imagery to produce final visuals for a set of four stamps that reflect our theme. We will be digitally producing these visuals after working through the development using mood board, hand-drawn mind maps & thumbnails.

Photo manipulation research/reference

(Taken from DeviantArt)


Technique:
Photo opened in photoshop, adjusting colour balance, using the dodge tool to brighten the eye, changing the colours with a new layer of colour over the iris & changing the blend mode of the layer.

My opinion:
I believe this idea is very effective concerning photo manipulation as a lot of manipulated images of people contain a lot of focus on the face, especially the eyes. I will attempt to use this technique for my own ideas for my final piece.




















(Taken from DeviantArt)

Technique:
Uploading a photo onto photoshop, removing the background. Importing a texture into the file to create a new background, adjusting the hue & saturation of the image colour scheme. Using a stock image at the base of the file, blending with the eraser tool. Importing a shell image; cutting, colour-adjusting & reshaping the image, blending both images to the rest of the main image, and finally using brushes to add a 'blood flow'-like effect.


My opinion:
This image stands out because of the amount of manipulation used on it; I think that creating an image like this is a very long and arduous process & would be too time-consuming to attempt, but, given more time, I would love to create an image as complex & beautiful as this in my work.

















(Taken from DeviantArt)

Technique:
Opening a photo in photoshop, duplicating the layer, desaturating the new layer & lowering the opacity to 80%. Filling in eyes (in a new layer) with a brush, using the paths tool to select the lips & fill them. Adding colour over the face in various areas, using the noise filter to adjust the patches of colour, overlaying black into the red, overlaying the colour layers. Stretching the nails out with the paths tool & circular eraser, using the blur tool to blend the nail together, adding colours over the nails.

My opinion:
This is quite a complicated image to recreate so I will probably not be using this technique, but in my opinion this is an extremely effective and realistic-looking manipulation, despite its content being quite macabre-esque.





















(Taken from DeviantArt)

Technique:
Opening a photo in photoshop, adjusting the levels, hue/saturation & brightness/contrast, choosing a part of the skin colour as an overall colour for the face, choosing a brush and lowering opacity to 8% or 9%. Brushing over most of the face, then using different shades of the skin colour to add shading & highlights. Using a smaller brush with greater opacity, overlaying lines onto the photo in a new layer. Finally adjusting the hue/saturation to a preferred colour tint.

My opinion:
This is a simple yet effective way to manipulate a photo to create smooth textures & outlines along the face to make certain features stand out. I shall attempt to use the idea of smoothing over an image to make it look softer, so that my idea images and final piece image will have a soft look to them.

Gif logo & photo comparison

The nintendo logo with 4 colours works better when compressed when compared to the 4-colour photo of Miyavi. The colour scheme changes quite a lot when the colours are decreased, but the colours are still needed to create tones in the photo. The logo, however, barely needs shading & highlights so it's easier to manipulate without sparing quality.

Personally I prefer the photo as the colour scheme the image has reverted to suits the photo and creates an interesting design.

Lowest quality gif & jpeg comparison

Comparison between 4-colour gif & 1% quality jpeg:

The gif has maintained a crisp quality but now has a sepia tone of colour (though I do like this effect to be honest, the detail created with just 4 colours is greatly effective), whereas the jpeg maintains better colour but has terrible quality and the image is pixellated and blurred.

Fireworks gif compression~

This time I compressed gif files with the amount of colours used (halving the colours compresses the file each time). Gif files only have 256 colours compared to over 13 million in a jpeg image.

Colours: 256

Size: 131.76k (21sec @56kbps)

Colours: 64

Size: 92.92k (14sec @ 56kbps)

Colours: 16

Size: 49.31k (7sec @ 56kbps)

Colours: 4
Size: 16.25k (2sec @ 56kbps)

Fireworks jpeg compression~

Task: Choose an image, open it in fireworks, change format to jpeg, compress at 100%, 80%, 60%, 40%, 20% and 1% quality, show the images, record the file size & describe the quality.

Chosen image is DoD Homme Ducan

Quality: 100%

Size: 178.45k (28sec @56kbps)

Quality: 80%

Size: 46.85k (7sec @ 56kbps)

Quality: 60%
Size: 25.34k (4sec @ 56kbps)

Quality: 40%

Size: 16.52k (2sec @ 56kbps)

Quality: 20%
Size: 6.49k (1sec @ 56kbps)

Quality: 1%

Size: 4.75k (0sec @ 56kbps)

Welcome to my Interactive Media blog!

Hey everyone, Azouie here.

This is my new blog, specifically for my Interactive Media work.

I'll be updating this as often as possible with progress concerning my projects and unit work, so please look forward to plenty of updates!

Azouie