Thaumatrope

A thaumatrope of a dog and birds

The layout of Laura Hayes and John Howard Wileman Exhibit of Optical Toys's site is a little boring, there's nothing really interesting about it, it's a plain white and black, with a center alignment, it's not very intriguing. The actual content of this site is quite thorough and well written, they have a lot of information on the actual toys, along with pictures, videos and how to make the actual toy (if possible).

My favorite toy from the site would have to be the the Thamuatrope.  It's a small disk that has two holes on either side and have string strung on them, two images are drawn on both sides, both made to complete each other in a full picture. To get the toy to work, you have to hold one string and turn the disk, then you hold the disks and gently pull, causing it to wind and unwind, the faster you can get it to spin, the better the full image appears.

Photoshop Test

'Stand In The Rain'

This is an image I made in photoshop, it's of a lone figure, standing in the rain next to a tree, all pictures were acquired off of the internet. To create a picture similar to this, you would first need to find a field or barren land that has a clear skyline, then, using the warp tool, warp so it has a dip in it's right side. Afterwards find a picture of a mountain, then put it on a new layer over the field, from there align it with the dip so the mountains match up with the dip, but make it stretch so it reaches both sides. After aligning it, you warp it so it matches the dip you have on the field, then use the the masking tool to erase everything but the mountains and to have it blend with the field.

Now, find a cloudy sky and put that on a new layer, from there, mask it so it only covers the mountains and the sky, after that, change the opacity to 65%. Pulling up a new layer, get a picture of a tree and using the color range tool, select the sky so you can keep only the tree, you then use the hue and color balance tools, change it to an eerie blue color, shrink it down and mask it so it blends better with the picture, then change layer type to darken. Copy and paste your tree onto another layer - so you have two trees - and horizontal flip it, matching it up with the other tree, change the perspective and the size so it looks like a shadow of the tree. Then change the layer type to hard light and 46% opacity.

Using another new layer, using a scatter paintbrush, use a light blue and paint your image so it has multiple dots on it, then change the opacity to 72%.

'Falling Through the Cracks'

Chess Piece Drawing

Once again, I've made a chess piece drawing, this chess piece had the criteria of; making the chess piece realistic, using value and creating movement, rhythm and pattern, with the background.

I feel that the chess piece looks very realistic, though small, you are able to recognize it as a bishop and it looks quite real. The shading of the chess worked with the rest of the background, which had different values and was shaded properly. I created movement with the drawing by have a large, lightly shaded swirl that circled inwards, bringing your eye to the chess piece. Underneath that  swirl I had smaller, darker swirls, that go outward.

This piece is called 'Balancing' because I felt as if the chess piece was balancing on the two swirls, and was about to fall off. I'm quite pleased with the look of this drawing and realism of the chess piece.