Direction for Second Computer Art Project

The second project for my Computer Art 2 course is a portrait project. I had figured this out before getting the project officially assigned, so right when the project was assigned nearly a week ago had the first bit of project direction worked out. By now, much more of that is done, and I’ve begun work on images already. Here is what my project will be.

This academic year I’ve ended up one of just 4 seniors that make up the entirety of the SJU Office of Sustainability. We’re to do a minimum of 5 portraits for this project, so I have chosen to use the sustainability office as the subject matter. 4 of the images will be significant modifications to the images of ourselves we have on the staff listing page of the sustainability website, and the last image will be a portrait of the sustainability office itself, likely using our leaf logo as a centerpiece.

I’ve decided to further some of the digitally drawn style I dabbled in with my final project from the first class. The parts of each image that are the main subjects, us 4 and the leaf, will for sure be done in this sort of style. I’ve spent a few hours getting this far on images already, so have no intention of turning to a different path at this point. I may later add more texture and shadowing to the portrait parts of these images, but for now they are solid colors that draw out the shapes of their subject. I still have to draw in eyes, but am toying with perhaps letting the eyes be simply the background of the image, whatever that becomes, or even worked-in images of our real eyes, copied out of photos of us.

In each of the images of the staff I want to around them represent one aspect of sustainability (you know, things like environmental, economic, etc.) or specific thing that folks can do to be sustainable (recycle, local foods, be mindful of energy use, etc.). I may do some of this further in the drawn style, but may just as easily find and/or take images that will represent such things. My bigger question for contemplation here is if these representations should either fill the entire background such that we’re in the area representing these aspects, or if I should instead have the representations as floating objects and further represent them by using carefully calculated colors and/or patterns as the background.

For the leaf portrait I will potentially just color in the leaf using the color it is in the real logo. In the four quadrants around I probably will simply put the background color or pattern used in each of the other portraits. Or, at any rate, make those quadrants allude to the other 4 portrait images.

Suggestions regarding this direction for my second project are always welcome. In the next week I will post the first iterations of the in-process images. I basically want one of the human portraits totally completed, regarding elements to add (not fully in final form) before I work further on the other portraits and before I post image drafts here.