The assignment - choose a photo of an historical hero as well as a villain to replace your face with theirs.
This assignment made me laugh because I have a co-worker that Photoshops faces on to bodies that are not their own as a gag. I have done this as well (usually for my co-worker) but she is way better at PhotoShop than I am. When I told her about the assignment she was intrigued and wondered what G. would come up with.
G. has a bit of PhotoShop experience under her belt from her Magazine cover project (that turned in to our family Christmas card) in the fall.
But this new assignment was much more challenging for G.
She started off with a couple of photos of herself behind a solid color background.
Then she found three pictures she liked as possibilities to PhotoShop her face on to that she found on the web.
Then came the hard work of figuring out the software. How to cut, blend, texture and make her face look like it belonged in the photo. Historical pictures have funky coloring and texture that's not all that easy to work with so I knew this would be a hard thing to do.
I have always had a knack for learning new software but I am in no way fluent with the powerful PhotoShop program and the effects G. was going to need to use. I helped G. get rolling but she had to figure out which effects would get her the end result she was looking for.
And I have to say she has taught me a thing or two (or three) about the tools in this program.
Our conversations recently have included an eclectic mix of thoughts about how to figure out some of the PhotoShop effect issues. Anyone listening in to our conversations would likely have been amused.
For instance, we discussed many times that Marie Antoinette has the highest forehead ever. Because G. did not have a high forehead, nor the same shaped face to place on that image, this was a difficult issue to overcome.
Her first attempt created an odd flat effect she didn't care for and went with a different approach. Neither was quite right but she learned about creating a texture effect on an image that was originally painted. It's a very different ball of wax from a modern day digital photo you want to doctor.
Then she moved on to Mata Hari. There were some uncomfortable questions asked about that one's "profession" (explaining exotic dancing and prostitution isn't the easiest dinner conversation to navigate for a mom but I did manage to get some WW1 history in to the mix). But G. was more interested in the details of her actual project and G.'s thankfulness that Mata Hari's forehead was smaller (and all discussion about the tassels forgotten). G. also discovered black and white images allowed for some additional wiggle room to make a doctored image look more believable.
The middle image didn't quite measure up with the forehead shading with the hat. G. later found a tool that shaded by perspective (above or below light) to make it look more natural for her final presentation.
Medusa was by far G.'s favorite. The green face was a bit tricky to match as well as working out the issue of the red eyes. But G. figured it out and commented several times how happy she was to have made the snakes work around her face. When she finished this image she proudly showed her teacher. He liked G.'s work but wanted to challenge her to see if she could make Medusa's eyes "glow." G. spent another couple of days trying to find the right effect in PhotoShop.
She believes she fell short on the glowing eyes (and was partial to the straight creepy red anyhow) and is doing a bit more research to find out how to get a glowing effect in the software.
Sometimes homework can be a real drag (for the teen AND the parent) when faced with a challenging, work-intensive project. But this assignment, although hard and time-consuming for G. because of the learning curve of PhotoShop, was very entertaining for our family.
I wish all homework inspired this much learning and interesting discussions at home.
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