Final Piece

 

I produced what I wanted from my sketch, achieving a decent looking piece as seen here:

 

 

First I isolated the subject, placing it on a solid black background before overlaying it some colour and random shapes. Then I proceeded to overlay the skull on the face, it was a different size at first however I managed to manipulate the skull to fit the face neatly. I blended the two subjects together using the layer blending options and opacity meter before using the burn tool on the areas that were too light and the dodge tool on the areas that were too dark. I then applied the cutout layer only to the original image of the subject to give the pop art effect, connoting Andy Warhol's style. However I wanted the skull to remain in full detail to give off its gritty connotations.

 

Obviously the piece conveys Dan Mountford's - the overlay of the skull connotes the gritty personality that lies beneath us. The skull is split down the middle, one side is lighter while the other is darker - this represents the fact that we all have to capacity to be good and also evil however the premise of our moral compass is often misguided by our personalities

(the skull).

 

After finishing the piece I realized that I wasn't actually happy with it so I decided to produce more with it. Since I'd been experimenting with the production of GIFs, I decided to try and produce a rotting effect using these three images:

 

 

I followed pretty much the exact same process as the previous GIFs, however I raised the quality intensely so when the GIF was compressed it lost barely any detail. After following this procedure I ended up with something I was actually really pleased with:

 

 

The images combined show a slow deterioration phase - the skull has connotations of age and the fact that it slowly moves in represents the ageing process. The fact that GIF develops a more serious tone as it progresses represents that innocence can be lost as age develops, which depicts the psychology behind the ageing process. It also takes on a far more gritty tone which shows how life experience hardens you as a person and the older you get, the wiser you get because you learn that your weaknesses help develop you to be a stronger person. It then finishes on the image above, of which its connotations I discussed earlier on in the post.

 

So yeah, the piece definitely shows what I wanted to explore during the project - I got to show the idea behind a person's "mask being off" and then moved on to depict a physical representation of that by overlaying textures and objects into the images. Overall I'm pleased with the outcome of the project and enjoyed the development experience.