May
22
>Sarah Palin WIP ~ Sneak Peek at My Work Process
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I started this caricature of Sarah Palin this afternoon and I’m about at the halfway point. I just wanted to make a quick post and give you an idea of my work process. This is a flattened image of the PSD I’m working on right now which is in a very rough state. I always start right on top of my source image and work up from there. The three images are there for a reason. I first do a very quick 2 minute liquify sketch just to get an idea of the direction I want to head in and I put a small version on the left of my canvas for reference. I also place a small image of the source picture on the right side of the canvas and of course the working caricature is in the middle. I do this so I can see my sketch so I know what I’m exaggerating and at the same time I can see the source image so I don’t lose likeness. This is about 40-50% complete. I have not even done anything in Liquify at this point. Everything has been manipulated with the warp tool. I’m just getting features in the correct place right now. I will take it into liquify from here to tweak some things and do some reshaping. After that I will do the detail work, textures, hair, levels, saturation, background, repairs, over-painting, etc. Well, that the main process I use to do my work. I will have this finished and posted this evening.
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May
22
>Clean Compact New Web Site at "about.me"
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Click the image to vist my site
Tonight I launched a new web site at about.me. It’s a great little site and provides everything you need to introduce yourself to the reader on just one page. First impressions are everything so this is a neat little package. Mine didn’t quite all fit without scrolling, but that’s because I have a ridiculous number of links. I tried to narrow it down to the important ones. The site is free to join with no strings attached and it only takes a few minutes to fill out the profile and fully customize your site. Here is a Site.Gallery to get an idea of how diverse yet simplistic it is. The horizontal buttons display a box, which shows your feeds from the sites all on the same page, unless you choose to visit the site and it will open in a new window. The vertical links are direct links and also open in a new window, so it looks like they thought of everything. I’m using it for my email tag now. It’s great for that first impression and gives a good general overview of what you do and where you can be found. Lots of other cool features. Check it out!
I’m still working on my movie. It’s taking an enormous amount of time but I hope it’s worth it. I will put it aside for a while to get some caricatures done this week though.
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May
20
>General Funkwood ~ The Real Story
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This is a manipulated caricature created for a Freak Show Photoshop contest entry at FreakingNews featuring a friend and fine artist who goes by the name “Funkwood”. He also has a Facebook page but I’m not sure if he wants his name released. This has kind of become a tradition at FN, “chopping” other “choppers”. Funkwood was a big inspiration to me in my early days at FN and a good friend, often critiquing my work and helping me when I was just getting started. He is one of many friends I’ve made along the way and contributors to getting me jumpstarted. He helped me turn many average manipulations into gold winners in FN Photoshop contests. Funkwood is ranked number 3 at FN along with the king of FN, AZRainman who is ranked number 1 and will never be caught…NEVER! This one is dedicated to FreakingNews.com, “Newsy”, “Funkwood”, “AZRainman” and all the other great artists who make up FN and whose beginnings came from that great organization, thanks to Vlad, AKA Newsy. Long live the Clan of FN Choppers!
My chop, “General Funkwood” was payback for Funkwood’s own chop of me posted below:
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May
18
>Random Dude Gone Goth
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The other day I was practicing doing some quick Liquify sketches of random people. I literally just Googled the word face and practiced on the images that popped up. The sketch of this kid was kind of interesting, so I decided to finish it tonight. He sort of had that Goth look, so I played on that with my exaggeration, the pasty white skin and jewelry. I could have taken it farther but I sometimes end up overworking an image if I try to put too much into it. I’ve posted the “Random Dude” original source image below.
Random Dude:
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May
17
>Glenn Beck ~ Cry Baby
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This was a photo-manipulted caricature illustration created for a Freak Show entry at FreakingNews.com featuring Glenn Beck. I kind of went nuts with this one but it was a lot of fun. I just couldn’t resist that face. It took gold in the contest. I’m going to try and do more complete manipulated caricature illustrations like this in the future. I’m getting close to finishing up on my video so it should be up in a few days. I hope it’s worth the time I’m spending on it.
Check out some other faces of Glenn Beck below:
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May
16
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Tonight I’m posting a straightforward photo-manipulation, no caricature this time. I did this manipulation to illustrate how I feel about Facebook’s censorship of images and censorship in general. I think this is a serious subject and I just wanted to express my feelings about unfair and thoughtless . It’s not just people doing the censoring, in fact that’s the problem, algorithmic censorship is controlling what we see or don’t see on the web, not people. I’ll let Eli explain the algorithm bit below. I can understand protecting young children from graphic images, but to mutilate a work of art, even a Master’s work is wrong. There must be another way. Take DeviantArt.com for instance. They actually have adult content on their site and to protect minors from such content, they have taken measures to mask and password block any nudity or violence so only responsible adults can see it, and it gives the viewer a choice with a warning of the content. Facebook deletes any image flagged by anyone and refuses to give a reason why it was deleted or even bother to notify you. It’s just wrong. Dali is going to turn over in his grave after seeing what I did to his painting of his dear wife, but it was for a cause and I think he would agree about the mindless censorship going on. I myself have had two Dali paintings deleted from my Facebook album among several other works. Just thought I would put my two cents in. Listen to what Eli has to say about it. Crazy stuff!
I’m no expert on algorithmic censorship but I do know this; you can’t program an algorithm to have common sense.
Thanks for stopping by. Have a great day and be inspired!
