The final project will be a webpage using Ft. Stanwix (Rome, NY) as the focus during the timeframe of the American Revolution. The unique design of the fort (the four diamond shaped corners) will be locations to click on to see a menu for either the American Colony of NY, the British, the purpose of the fort's location and the contribution of the Iroquois Confederacy (Oneida Nation). Within each menu will be a submenu offering more information about each group.

The idea of the website design is to make the page look like an 18th century map, so for the main page I will try to make it look "old". I hope to find a suitable text script that resembles handwriting of a turkey quill tipped pen and ink used during the time period.

At the center of the page will be an aerial view of the fort that hopefully will show the topography of the land on which the fort was built, as this is the reason the fort was constructed by the British during the French and Indian War and later used by the American Army during the American Revolution. Today, this site is considered a National Historic Monument and is under the care of the National Park Service, the reconstructed fort is not original. However, the location of the fort does sit is on the exact footprint of the original for built in 1758.

Here is my latest attempt using a few more advanced tools in Photoshop. This is my avatar on an Oneida Warrior wearing a brocade black velvet jacket with gold embroidery. "Olite" (meaning "Always returns home") has bear claw applied war paint on his face, traditional practice of cut ear lobes (status symbol), quahog shell ear rings, tattooed face and forehead and maple leaf "sparkles" (the white skin treatment) to his blued avatar skin. His eyes and nose were enlarged, longer eye lashes added

I initially was going to add strawberry leaf detail for texture, but getting this much detail was very time consuming, but it was pretty darned interesting that I didn't even realize I spent my whole Sunday sitting at my desk working on the project! And finally, Olite's background is layered with a woodland forest and Fort Stanwix National Monument (Rome, NY), which was originally built in 1758 during the French and Indian War by the British and was also rebuilt and occupied by the Americans in 1776, during the American Revolution.

I am using a high resolution picture taken of me by a professional photographer from when I involved with an 18th century Living History enactment group for my avatar. I'm thinking of using the color and texture of a strawberry leaf for the skin texture of my avatar. The background for the avatar with either be in a woodland tree setting with white pine trees predominant, similar to the movie, Avatar with the mother tree. An option for another background setting is to use Ft. Stanwix National Monument.

Since I already had this image at hand, it made sense to use the image to jot down possible goals for the transformation of the image into my avatar for the project, vs. sketching from scratch on paper. I'm curious to see where this goes!

Book Jacket V2.0

 

 

Upon the recommendation, I went back in and started to find a way to tone down the original version of my book jacket (the harsh orange and yellow background) and made the book title easier to read (previous version was arched to the radius of the earth and instruments). I actually like the green color better because it is more comforting to the eye than in the original jacket cover.

This is my book jacket design for a group called The World Saxophone Quartet. I first discovered this group when I started listening to NPR radio several years ago and since I have an affinity to the saxophone from high school when I played both in concert and stage band, it was like trying to deny a moth to a flame.

There must be some 22 layers in total and many of them have various edited effects using as many Photoshop tools as I could. Anything from transparency adjustments, changing orientation of images, text, gradient background and 3D text. I could have added more, but the real estate for the book cover was getting thin.

Here is a link to video of the group if your interested in hearing the type of jazz music they play.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccRGordsKec

M4 Sketch A & B: World Saxophone Quartet

I chose to produce a book cover for a favorite saxophone group of mine, as named. I can't make up my mind as to what color scheme to use for the cover, but in my head I hear the music clearly and I keep tapping my foot the upbeat notes in the tune. That could be a good thing for inspiration, but that will be proved in the finished project.

Here is a link to one of their signature pieces of music, in case your are interested. "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TyaPO87woGE"

Upon advice, final edit of my Alternative Energy poster...