Digital Surrealism

This is my culminating project for year one cyberArts. I wanted my main message to be about the crazy idea of beauty that the media has implanted in our minds and how it affects people. The photo of the girl on the bottom of the page I wanted to represent the affect the media has on young girls. I made it look like she was crying to communicate the amount of stress everyone has to go through to match the idea of beauty the media has given us. I wanted the photos of the girl on top to communicate the pictures that are in the media. I photoshopped her a lot, I wanted her to look like a barbie doll. I brought in her waist until it was at an unhealthy size, thinned her legs and I got rid of any blemish on her face including dimples and so on. I chose a gradient background because it helped create the sad feeling to piece.
I first started the process of making the final piece with rough sketches. I only came up with one idea for the project and I really liked it so I didn't bother coming up with any other ideas. The next step was getting the photos, I asked my 2 models to bring cloths and makeup for the day of the shoot. And spent 2 classes getting the shots. Once I had all the photos I uploaded them to the computer and started editing the girl on the top to look like the models you see in adds. I spent 2 days editing her and then I started putting it all together on the final piece. I cut each picture and pasted it on the final piece and blended it to make it look like they were supposed to be there. I then liquefied her legs to make it look like they were melting into the sad girls head. Then as a finale step I added the gradient background.
I learned a lot about how to work Photoshop. I spent a lot of time during this project just experimenting with all the different tools in Photoshop. I am not 100% satisfied with the end result, it didn't really turn out the way I wanted it to. But sadly I ran out of time and I didn't have the skill level to get it to where I wanted it to be. But over all I think I did pretty good.