Monday 2nd May 2011:

I wanted to create sadder looking eyes for my poster idea as a few people had suggested this and I wanted to see if I could create something more realistic with makeup and photography that what I had created on Photoshop.

One thing, which I hadn’t anticipated, was trying to create the same effect of the bright white against my face making my mouth ‘disappear’. It took a long time trying to get this exact effect again using my MacBook, and I eventually discovered that it must have been darker the pervious time as when I was surrounded my more darkness, the brighter an effect I would achieve. I then had to try and create fake tears and smudged makeup which was quite difficult as it was fairly hard to create realistic looking tears. In the end the photos turned out fairly well, but I still feel that perhaps the original version with the Photoshop effects on, may work better. Also, in some cases, the photos from today look more ‘scary’ than ‘sad’ and this won’t give out the right message. They also look more like they’d be used in an abuse campaign as the smudged makeup may look like bruises.

Today, I also made mini versions of the possible, initial, final poster ideas. I think that these actually look quite effective and would work well as A2 sized final posters. When I held them up to my laptop screen to view the cut out section, this looked really effective and made me think about perhaps displaying my posters with a blue-ish bright light behind them to make them more unique and eye-catching. However, this may not be possible or work as well as I am imagining and so I should make sure that the designs I do create would also look effective without a light behind them. I think making these mini versions was a really useful process and I can use these to show to people when asking for their opinions on my ideas so far. Another thing, which I have noticed, is that (although I did want it to be subtle), perhaps the word 'ugly' is hidden too much. Perhaps I could either have an outline so that when the 3D type is added, there is an outline of colour to help the word to stand out; or I could cut out an outline and have a transparent sheet behind it so that if I do use light, this will shine through helping it to stand out.

Target for today: Take photos to show smudged makeup and ‘sadder’ eyes, etc, and create mini version of poster ideas.

Target for tomorrow: Create and print lino prints (for ‘calling me ugly won’t make you beautiful’) to maybe use for possible poster idea.