For this project, I decided to create a dystopian collage. The reading we did called “Elements of Design” was definitely the reading that helped me the most. One of the elements I really tried to utilize in my collage was that of size, although it was a bit challenging at times. I made the objects I wanted the eye to focus on first the largest, and I also moved them to the very forefront of the entire collage so they would be more dominant. Some of the elements in my design are pretty small, and I did this because I wanted them to seem like they were further away than other objects in the picture. Another element I utilized was texture. For my scan, I used a piece of wrinkled tissue paper. I used this as the very last layer over my collage to add a wrinkled texture. My dystopia looks as if the world is crumbling, so I wanted to add the effect of tissue paper to show that the world is literally crumpling and folding in on itself.
I decided to create a dystopia because I love reading books and watching movies about dystopias. I’ve read The Hunger Games, The 5th Wave, The Maze Runner, Divergent, and The Giver book series and have loved the ideas behind them all. On the right side of my collage, I have military officials in an office setting looking and observing the chaos happening on the other side of the collage. The scene I wanted to convey was a world ravaged by disease and disaster, all which are caused by the government. The people are crying out and pleading for help, only to have military men that are coming after them and only protecting the “important” government officials. Reading the first part of Ready Player One also inspired me to create a dystopian collage. That world was crumbling, and the people with all the power can be as corrupt as they want to get whatever they want. The normal civilians do not have much control over anything, which is something else I wanted to display through my collage.
I had a basic understanding of layers and a few simple tools in Photoshop because of a class that I took last semester, but watching and going through all of the tutorials was very helpful! I used so many layer masks to take out small parts of photos that I wanted, so that tutorial was very helpful.
I had a much better understanding of what a photo collage was after reading about the history of it. It was nice to know that not all collages have to be perfectly seamless and blended together, because I knew mine would not be that way with what I wanted to create.
As I mentioned earlier, using the select and mask tool helped me create my entire design. I used this technique on almost every photo in the collage. Many of the subjects were parts of much larger photos, so this tool really helped me focus in on the subject I wanted. Being able to move layers on top and behind each other also played a huge part in my design. There were certain subjects I wanted to seem farther away from others, so this was really helpful in creating this element. Overall, I’m really happy with how my final draft turned out and how it displays a dystopian world.
