The process of how I reached the finalization of the thumbnails.
The very first rhyme that I worked on was the, ‘old lady that lived in a shoe.’
Rhyme:
There was an old woman who lived in a shoe.
She had so many children, she didn’t know what to do;
She gave them some broth without any bread;
Then whipped them all soundly and put them to bed.
Given the variety of choices to choose from of a sentence to do for a thumbnail, I chose the second one which says, ‘she had so many children, she didn’t know what to do.’
My initial idea for this thumbnail was to show the old woman, the children and the shoe that they lived in. Which resulted in this:
I positioned the old woman at the foreground slightly to the right using the rule of third making her the key figure of the whole thumbnail and her many children on the middle ground which comes second important to the thumbnail and last the boots on the background. However, I extended the amount of the children from the middle ground to the background indicated the tremendous amount of children the old woman have. Playing with ‘balance‘ from design principle, due to the positioning of the old woman which is on the right of the thumbnail, i placed the children on the left side of the thumbnail for the level of balance. However, because the numbers of the children was too much it made the left side ‘heavier’ then the right. Hence, I compensated it with the boots which was placed on the right side of the background.
This thumbnail is not symmetrical in order to make it balanced. What I learnt from this is that position, scale and depth of each particular element is very important because they also play a big part for balancing the whole framing.
Yes, to me this thumbnail satisfy the sentence of the old woman living with her many children in the boots. However, after consultation, the remarks for this thumbnail was that it was too ‘straight forward’. There wasn’t any room for imagination for the viewers/audiences. After analyzing, I agreed to it. Hence, this is what I next came up with (also my first final one):
Instead of having the image of the boots, I clipped the layer of children onto the boots. Filling the boots with only the images of the children (repetition of the children image) . Similarly to also the images of the children forming up into the shape of the shoe(all living in the shoe) and then the old woman on top of the shoe (head of the house). I added textures on the background of the children on it, showing the tremendous amount of children the old woman have.
Following on, this will be my next chosen second sentence to work on. It is also from the ‘old woman who lived in a shoe’ rhyme.
‘Then whipped them all soundly and put them to bed.’
Playing with the positioning of the elements, I came up with this symmetrical thumbnail showing the old woman whipping the kids to sleep. Placing the kids all around the thumbnail showing that the old woman have so many children where its all around her. Design principles are considered in this situation, the images of the children sleeping are repeated while overlapping one another giving a sense of depth to it instead of just a flat image by itself.
I created this focal point with the help of the images of the children sleeping guiding the viewer eyes to the center and then placed the old woman in the focal point. Wanting the viewer to focus on the old woman beating her children to sleep. I readjusted the size of the old woman smaller because I want to bring ‘tired’, ‘lonely’ and ‘helpless’ out from it due to the fact that she alone has to bring up so many children.
Not to be fixated on one design, I continue to explore more for this second sentence and designed another thumbnail for this sentence.
This is what I came out with:
Similar but opposite to the previous thumbnail this time round. Previously, I made the focal on the center of the image but then for this, I made the focal point on the bottom right of the corner. I simply felt that “center” is a common point where artist would normally place their focal point hence I decided to made the focal point on some other point of the thumbnail.
As stated previously, this thumbnail is opposite from the previous one is due to the re-sized of the old woman. For this thumbnail it is bigger and instead of showing the 3 feels that I previously wanted to portray/convey, it is ‘domination’, ‘leadership’ and ‘fear’ that I now want to portray. This also made me realize, a simple change of size in an element can change many factors of how the artist wants to show to the audience.
Repetition is still used for the images of the children sleeping. As can see from the thumbnail, I created the fade effect (where it became darker as it goes further from the old woman) of the children. This indicates how the children slowly fall into deep sleep after the beating from the old woman out of fear.
Upon designing this I strongly felt that this thumbnail carries the ‘feel’ that I want to portray to my audience. Therefore, it will be chosen as my second final thumbnail.
Apart from the ‘old woman who lived in a shoe’ rhyme, I also used the humpty dumpty rhyme where almost everyone knows.
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king’s horses and all the king’s men
Couldn’t put Humpty together again.
For this third thumbnail that I am going to do, I chose the sentence of, ‘All the king’s horses and all the king’s men.’
This is what I came up with:
With consideration of design principles, scale, repetition, focal point, balance and movement I came out with this design for my thumbnail.
Of course to show the importance and how majestic the king is, the focal point would be at the king. With the enlarged scale of the king, I placed it at the focal point where eyes will be led to. The repetition of the horses and the soldiers shows the significant and superior amount of troops the king have and also the positioning of them creates a kind of movement where it sort of give aid in leading the viewer’s eyes to the king. With the symmetrical placing of the elements, this creates this well balanced thumbnail.
More design principles has been considered for this thumbnail, hence I have chosen this for my third final thumbnail.
Lastly, for the fourth thumbnail, I used the, ‘hey diddle diddle’ rhyme.
Hey diddle diddle,
The cat and the fiddle,
The cow jumped over the moon.
The little dog laughed,
To see such sport,
And the fork ran away with the spoon.
For this rhyme, I used the sentence, ‘the cow jumped over the moon. the little dog laughed.’
And this is what I came up with for the last thumbnail:
Also placing the moon on the foreground initially and with the dog at the back showing the dog look at it was kinda of boring. Hence, I clipped the repeated images of the laughing mouth onto the layer of the moon. Similarly to the first thumbnail for the boots, the laughing mouth now creates/formed into the shaped of a moon. However, I felt that the overall feel looks very flat. Therefore, I came up with an idea making the whole feel of the thumbnail into a theme of space. I placed more moons behind the dog creating depth for the thumbnail representing that the dog is in space.
Instead of portraying the dog laughing so directly, the point of conveying the laugh is now from the moon while the cows jump over the moon.
Because the moon of the foreground took up too much space on the left, even though after placing the dog on the right still doesn’t balance the whole thumbnail. Luckily after the placement of the other moons at the back of the dog, the thumbnail is now pretty balance compared to the initial state.
My last thumbnail chosen for this assignment will be this one.
All in all, I have learn a lot about compositing and compositing in negative spaces. I felt that this assignment gives me the chance to touch on photoshop more compared to other class which I haven’t been using for quite some time since poly. I really enjoyed this class and the assignments up till now as this is sided more to what I love to do or rather major in, compared to the rest of the modules which are included in the foundation year.
I will continue to give my best effort for this class. 🙂