I first had to do secondary research to find trading and competitive card games, when I had found the card games I copied and pasted the description and rules of the card games I had found. Then I had to fill the style column; in this column I had to list the styles of the card’s images(for example a card may have a holographic or a drawn image on it) and the theme of a card deck(for example there may be a dinosaur themed Top Trumps deck). At home was where the secondary research was carried out; for example I had dug up some old Pokemon cards and analysed the conventions of it then I had added it to the card research sheet.
Having to explain the styles and themes of the cards I was analysing jogged my creative thinking; this was because I had to learn and remember about the different styles used in each cards for example 3d, holographic and drawn. This also helped me choose a style for my alien trading card game. Researching the rules to each card game helped me figure out what the rules for my game could be; eventually I chose a to use an altered version of the Top Trumps rules.
One graphic process was the gaussian blur, this is a technique used to blur whole or selected parts of an image on Photoshop. I used this tool along with the lasso tool for mainly the background area of my card; the lasso tool was used to isolate the two of my characters at the front and the gaussian blur was used to blur the background to a certain extent. I also used the Feathering technique which blurred the lines that the lasso tool had highlighted and separated and added a filter to make the background darker.
I experimented with the HDR toning effect to turn some images ‘hyper realistic’; this put emphasis on some of the colours on the image to give it some depth. I’ve learnt that you don’t just use presets before starting a project on Photoshop and that you may have to customise it beforehand. For example when I was making the trading cards I had set length and the width to 64 and 89 respectively, after this I set the resolution to 300 to make sure the image isn’t fuzzy lastly I had set the colour mode to ‘CMYK’ which stands for cyan, magenta, yellow and key. This was to make the colours match some of the filters used.
I mainly chose the feathering technique along with the gaussian blur; this was to help my characters stand out. Blurring and adding a filter in the background helped disguise many of the people in the background and mold them into shadows; this gave the card a much more dark and threatening feel to it.
I didn't have many changes throughout the final product but I did chose to add a feathering effect mixed with a filter instead of just choosing a filter on it’s own.
Yes and no; firstly I thought designing it would be easy due to already being dead set on a format I had designed previously. I had a change of mind on a couple of occasions that lead me to choose a different more unique design path.
Yes I am happy overall with the graphic process and the result of it. I would however choose to edit the characters in the foreground rather than the background in future. This is because the image’s effects look like they just stop after approaching the characters in the foreground.
No comments:
Post a Comment