Case Study

By Catherine Ludwiczak

What is Hyper-Realism?

Hyper-realism is a genre of art that resembles a high resolution photograph. It essentially creates a new realistic piece of art that could look like a photo, without being a raw photo. This could be created with painting, sculpture, photoshop, and many other medias of art.

Materials and Research

I gathered all of my images via Google. Since there are billions of photos that could be accessed on Google, it was very important to have high quality images. There was plenty more options to create with using low resolution images, but I feared that if one piece of the project was pixelated, it would make the entire project look unprofessional. To filter Google to only find high resolution photos, I took advantage of their “tools” feature on Google Images. In the tools feature, I was able to select only images larger than 2MP. After filtering these images, I was able to find all 7 photos used for my project.

Strategy

My strategy going into this project was to make sure all of the images I had gathered worked together cohesively. If shadows, lighting, angle, color, or saturation was off in any of the photos, it would present more challenges down the road, so it was important to me to limit those factors as much as possible. Following that, my main goal was to allow the focus of the image to shine, and the other attributes to do their job in setting the scene.

Challenges

The most difficult part of this project for me was attempting to have the sand and the garbage behind it look natural. I added some shadows to the further part of the sand to add depth, and I think it helped make the two come together quite a bit. Another challenge I faced was attempting to make dry, land-based items like the billboard look as if they have been underwater. Given more time, I would’ve liked to add some grime and rust to these items. One of the more frustrating moments of this project was the water line. I had originally used the base water line of the iceberg photo, but it made the polar bear look completely unnatural. Once I had taken the waterline from the polar bear photo, I had some complications as well. The polar bear water line was a different shade of blue than the rest of the water below it. On top of that, it was also not long enough to cover the width of the project. To resolve this, I used the clone tool and added a color filter.

Final Result

What is Cubism?

Cubism is a style of art where perspective is more abstract and geometric planes and shapes are used to form the piece.

Materials and Research

For this project, I only used one photo. A photo of my dog, Paulele that I took at the park one day. With that said, materials weren’t much of a concern. Research on the other hand, absolutely was. For whatever reason, it was hard for me to fully grasp the concept of cubism and come up with a unique idea of my own to make something with it. I spent a good amount of time analyzing all different pieces of cubist work, and noted what attributes from those pieces were interesting to me.

Strategy

My strategy for this piece was to divide my dogs face into geometric shapes based on the actual shape of his face, and the lighting that formed the natural shadows on his fur. After all the shapes were established, initially I wanted to use all different types of patterns to create the shapes that formed his face. This plan changed when I found all the filter styles that were available in photoshop.

Challenges

The biggest challenge I faced during this project was allowing each individual shape to have it’s own look to it. I didn’t want the piece to look like a checkerboard, or bland. I wanted it to have more personality to it. To prevent this, I spent time making sure each shape had it’s own unique filter on it. I did this until I realized that certain shapes will appear different, even if they have the same filter, because the base fur in that shape is a different color or a different pattern. Once I came to this realization, it sped up the process tremendously.

Final

What is Type & Motion?

This project is based on creating a motion graphic video with photoshop.

Materials and Research

Originally when story boarding this video, I had a completely different idea in mind. I wanted to create a scene that had an oil spill in the water in a stop motion form. I wanted to create that by using materials such as tissue paper to represent the moving water, balsamic glaze to represent the oil, etc. I was devoted to this idea until I got my hands on the paintbrush in photoshop. Then everything changed and I decided to create the entirety of the video by hand, or by mouse.

Strategy

Once I committed to creating the materials in this video via the paintbrush tool, my main strategy was to figure out what should be moving, what could stay still, and how to put it all together. I thought about days at the beach and what stands out to me, and the first thing that came to mind was waves. The second thing I thought of was clouds. The final thought was wildlife. I knew that these three components would be the most important pieces to my video, so I did my best to focus on them.

Challenges

The moment I decided to change this project from a stop motion to a painting, my list of challenges grew tremendously. However, the painting aspect really inspired me and made me feel passionately creative. The painting itself wasn’t challenging for me, it was actually very relaxing. However, the layers that I painted on frequently got switched and I would paint on the wrong layer. My largest challenge was understanding the position motion. For the pelican, it was a struggle to make it look like his legs were moving properly because both of his legs were on two separate layers, and they both had to move cohesively with the body.

Final