Poster Reflective Essay

I chose the theme of movie poster because to me it seemed more eye catching and easier to do. I tried to make up a movie but had no luck with the amount of time I had and the ideas I wanted to convey so I picked two movies that were already out there. The first one was Black Swan and surprisingly it had a couple posters made for it already that weren't the original movie poster design. I had a hard time making sure I didn't copy them, but I believe I did a pretty good job. The second one was Spiderman because I thought I could do something cool with a spiderweb in it and I think it turned out pretty good as well.


The main tool I used for these two posters was the masking tool. At first I planned on making everything from scratch with the shape and pen tools but decided that would take to long and since I'm kind of an OCD freak I wouldn't have it finished in time for the due date so I decided to mask the main characters front he movies and then put a solid color overlay on them. The Spiderman one I did all gradient overlays and the Black Swan one I did all solid color overlays. It turned out pretty well except for the fact that I'm really OCD so I took a very long time making sure the edges were perfect with the picture. Doing the solid colors to me made it more dynamic and abstract. I didn't want to have any part of their faces or outfits showing but at least have the main outline so you still knew what it was.

One of the main compositional components I did was symmetry with a little abstract in the Black Swan poster. The dancers and the swan are all perfectly symmetrical with each other but to add the abstract I put in the red feathers in random descending order to show the sort of chaos I guess of the movie and the fact that their red as opposed to all the black and white and grey draws the audience's attention towards them and makes the poster pop a little more. The Spiderman poster was suppose to be sort of abstract but I sort of got a little lazy with the the placement of the figures and name. That was the poster I'm not the most proud of because I ran out of ideas in the amount of time I had for cool effects.

Spiderman Movie Poster

Black Swan Movie Poster

Portraiture Reflective Essay

I believe that participating in a global project is exciting. Knowing that something small as one contribution to a huge collection can make a difference in the world. Knowing the background of the project by watching the video about how it started is also very exciting because you know it worked if it’s still going on. 

The people I used in this project were myself, and my two friends Shannon and Taylor. When I asked them if I could take a picture of their face the first reaction was “Can you take away my acne?” and I was like “Of course so is it a deal?” And they accepted. First they didn’t now how close I was going to get to their faces and if they were suppose to smile or not. I told them to make a strong face of something they believed in and at first they didn’t know what I was talking about so I told them to just smile. The pictures still turned out great. I used photoshop to take away their acne like I promised and the lines under their eyes so they look young and awake. Other than using black and white afterwards there wasn’t any major changes. It took me awhile to get a picture of myself since I was alone but after about 20 pictures I got a good one. 

I believe very strongly that art can change the world. Art is what everyone sees on a daily basis. Art isn’t just painting and drawing. Posters and advertisements are art as well and people are swayed by what they see in the media. So yes art can change the world if you get enough people to look at it. 

Shannon Inside Out

Taylor Inside Out

Me Inside Out