Spongebob and Totoro GIF

1. Concept: Spongebob jumping on Totoro. Totoro is sleeping, which represents my "chill" side of my personality, Spongebob represents my "hyperness." By making Spongebob jump on Totoro, it gives the idea that I could be both at the same time.
How I came to this idea: I changed my idea to Totoro and wanted to put someone sleeping on Totoro (like in the actual cartoon), but then I realized that it would be too complicated since I didn't have enough pictures. Then I figured that I could add something "funny," so I thought of using Spongebob instead, thus changing my idea once more.
The image of Spongebob further enhances my concept because throughout the GIF, he is always smiling, which represents optimism.

2. How has the animated GIF evolve from its original idea through the use of Photoshop?
When I started out with the thumbnails and post its, I had a really cliche idea of just someone sleeping. I realized that because of this, my GIF would end up really boring--therefore, I decided to think of something more iconic, and incorporated it with another cartoon to make the idea more interesting.

GIF: Poly Bear

 http://i.picasion.com/pic81/8eced3c7a78a08612e4bc232c15fd120.gif

Concept: A polar bear going around in circles.

Portrait Transformation

1. Concept: Tracy is transformed so that her palm is "releasing" a fireball. The image is supposed to be a replica of Peter Petrelli from the T.V. show Heroes. This is to represent our true selves, that there are good qualities but also flaws in each person. The fireball is to represent who we really are- our hearts are "made of fire."
2. Satisfaction: I am satisfied with the glow and the fireball because that's the main subject of my concept-- I worked on this part of the project the most. However, I am not happy with my background. I think that the background was so bright that it took away much of the attention from the fireball. If I had chosen a darker image of a street, maybe a more suburban area, the "plainness" of the background would draw more attention to the fireball.

Original Photographs:


Final

3. Process: When I first started the project, I was hesitant to pick a "busy" background because I thought that if the background was too plain, it would make Tracy look very lonely, so I tried to pick a city street background. The sky was overwhelmingly bright though, so I used a layer mask to darken the entire background. After the layer mask, the image still seemed very bright, thus I was forced to have to paint black over the sky. I lowered the opacity of the brush so that the sky wouldn't actually be "black." For the glow of the fireball, I used yellow, orange, and red paint. Again, I lowered the opacity so that the paint won't be so strong. I also smudged the colors lightly so that they could blend in with the background but still stand out.