Self-Critiques
When we finished our projects, we were instructed to write a self-critique for them. This way we could reflect on how our projects turned out.
This critique required us to assess three main points:
- How our assigned class readings on design informed our compositional strategy and choice of imagery
- How we hope our final image describes, references, or evokes dystopia or utopia, or 1980s culture and technology
- How specific Photoshop tools and techniques influenced our creative process
Take a look at the collage here!
To obtain an idea for my design, I considered the “photomontage” and “collage” entries in Grove Art Online through WSU Library’s SearchIT. There were some neat ideas found in there I really liked, and I based my project off the collages I found there. I looked up dystopian collages online as well to gather some inspiration for my project.
I borrowed from the frequent 1980’s pop culture references that Ernest Cline slings all throughout his book Ready Player One. In the top left corner of my project, I included a blue cassette tape and pink shutter shades, items commonly found in the eighties. In the bottom-right corner lies a picture of Ronald Reagan, the American president of the eighties. He was one of the most important figures of the time. I also used a variety of photos to suggest dystopia. In the bottom-left corner, I cut out the bridge and man from Edvard Munch’s The Scream, and placed a gas mask over his disturbed face. The mask signifies something terribly wrong with the surroundings, i.e. nuclear fallout, disease, chemical warfare, or anything else that may evoke the need for it. I also included two World War II planes in the upper right corner, a general statement of war and death. Lastly, the background is a city in ruins if you look closely at it – certain buildings are falling apart and there is some sort of growth appearing in others. I used a variety of aspects from The Elements of Design. The scanned image of flowers does not fit with the dystopian theme – I intended it to be the one piece of utopia in my image. I juxtaposed the flowers by setting them in such a dystopian scene, and then set fire underneath them. I balanced out my project by placing matching items in each empty corner, using one big background to fill empty space, and The Scream image as a centerpiece. I have a variety of color in my project, including some black and white photos of the planes.
The photoshop tool that influenced my project the most was the Quick Selection Tool. It made it very easy to pick out pieces of photos that I wanted to use. I also feathered most of my images to make them look less cropped and more blended in with the surroundings, which I learned how to do in the Photoshop CC: 10 Things Beginners Want to Know How To Do tutorial. I used multiple testing layers to copy some layers in case of a mistake or to just see how a change would look without ruining the entire layer.