Artists Statement

 

Originally I had intended this to be a sci-fi design for children encouraging them to reach for the stars. This has changed slightly. It is still geared towards children, but my boys helped me to change the direction of this project slightly. I added more space-stations to this design to help create more of a story. The story is the sun has grown large, red and there is no more Earth. Now, humans live in space stations instead of on planets because all of the planets are too hot. The main planet is Pluto and the body at the top is the enlarged Sun.

 

The biggest challenge in this design was mixing vector images with photographs, three dimensional renderings and drawings. I played around with filters, perspective, lighting and gradients to create a unified design. I chose the warm color scheme to go with because it seemed to be the best colors for the elements in this composition. I have included several different sized phoenixes and space-stations to show diminishing size and add depth. I could scale down all of the elements to create a vaster composition.

 

I find this to be a very successful design because not only was I able to unify and balance all of the elements I wanted to include, both of my sons want me to have a copy printed for them to hang in their rooms.

 

Works Cited

 

3-D View of Mars. 01/01/1999. Photograph. Goddard Space Flight Center. Great Images in NASA. Grin. Web. 23 July 2013. <http://grin.hq.nasa.gov/ABSTRACTS/GPN-2000-000456.html>.

 

NASA. internationalspacestation.jpg. Dec 2002. Pics4Learning. 23 Jul 2013 <http://pics.tech4learning.com>

 

Powers, Tim. lunareclipse0940pm.jpg. 11/8/03 0940pm. Pics4Learning. 23 Jul 2013 http://pics.tech4learning.com

 

I used mainly images I took. The only exceptions are the one I am in was taken by my husband and the one with the helicopters was taken from Image Quest. I started with the inside of my house looking out with the door open. I took the grass from my backyard, which I used perspective and gradients on to give it more depth. The trees came from a nearby bayou. I used a Gaussian blur with the smart filters on the backgrounds. I put my zombie hunter in front to add extra depth. It was a lower resolution image so I had to try to sharpen it. I used contract by 2 pixels then feather by 2 pixels to get each of my selections to work into the collage well.

 

Can you spot which zombie is me?

 

Works Cited

 

Helicopters. Photographer. Encyclopædia Britannica Image Quest. Web. 19 Jul 2013. http://quest.eb.com/images/115_2818256