I find the most powerful thing about computer graphics is the ability to merge many things and make it still seem realistic, so I decided to merge lot's of complicated parts and challenge myself. Computers have many interesting parts and are evolving everyday, so I chose to merge a bunch of microprocessor chips to make a modern contraption. Once settling with that, I knew I wanted to merge the contraption with something from nature to create somewhat ironically humorous juxtaposition. My original plan was to merge it with a tree or plant and throw in an outlet as a mock green power ad, but after a quick google search I realized how overdone that idea already was. I was surprised to find the idea wasn't done with animals much before, so I went with the idea of merging a modern technological contraption with a cat. I spent a while finding the perfect cat, I ended up going with a humble orange tabby cat to make it even more ironic. I ended up taking out it's collar with Photoshop too to increase the 'wow' factor of a natural animal being ripped open and full of mechanical and computerized parts.
Almost all the pictures were taken by me, with the exception of the cat because I don't actually have one. I used my Nikon D5000 for all the shots. I took a total of 47 pictures, most of which included old parts from things I didn't use any more and places in my house that I thought would make a good background. This part of the project was really fun, I got to take apart my old computer, a bunch of old guitar processors, some old routers, and a keyboard and tinker around. After getting them uploaded onto my computer I cut out most of them because I wanted to keep it highly with contrasting parts, not just 20 green mother boards beside each other. The most time consuming part was probably extracting the parts from their backgrounds and retouching everything to make sure the lighting matched and shadows made sense, it took about 6 hours over a few days. Once I had all the computer parts and the background chosen, it was time to do some work on the cat. I'm really happy with my results, I used almost every adjustment, blending type, tool and filter Photoshop had to offer to make the cat look a lot deeper and less washed out. Here is a before and after of the cat.
The most challenging part was making the hole in the cat for the parts to go in, I think I really pushed the boundaries with this. I had to get a bunch of gore and autopsy pictures and merge them to make the hole in the cat, my classmates were pretty grossed out by me doing that in class, except Graeme, he was happy to help. This was really hard, I'm glad I didn't have to get organs and bones to paste in because the computer parts would be covering it, but I still ended up using about 10 pictures to make the skin peeling up and the gore in the hole. I scrapped the hole and started over about three times due to low image quality. After all this was done, the only thing left to do was merge and mask all the pictures. This part was pretty easy, I just resized the microchips and organized them in the hole, I also made colored wires connecting them. I used layer masks to only show the part in the hole. The end result was a total of 14 layers, this project was a great learning experience because, I hate to admit it, but I almost never name or group my layers. So when working with so many layers I had no choice but to organize things. I grouped the chips and interlinked layer masks, I'm glad I learned to do this and got in the habit of it.
I'm quite pleased with my final product. This project was a great learning experience and challenge. It really pushed me to far lengths and tested my photography and digital editing skills. It was also really fun conceptually, I've always loved surrealism. I learned lot's, had fun, got to use great new tools and ended up with a very satisfying result. If I could redo the project, the one thing I would do differently is take more time to find higher quality source images and take more myself.
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