I haven’t really been updating this recently.  But I just finished a project in school that I would like to share.

The assignment was to create an abstract music video of at least 10 seconds using After Effects.  After looking at a bunch of songs I decided that there was no good way to make the video just 10 seconds.  So my video is 24 seconds.  Anyway I hope you like it.  The song is “Magic” by Ladyhawke

About a week ago I finished my latest frame design.  What I did was I took my orange P1 which I talk about in this post, and I took the paint off and put a new coat of black down.  But this time around I took more time in the beginning.

For this frame I really wanted to improve on all the aspects that I felt didn’t do well on on the first two design. For a couple days I was sketching out ideas and concepts for this frame. My main goal was to have a consistant style. In the end I decided to focus on the idea of cells splitting and moving in between each other. I spent a little bit of time actually researching this concept and if there were any cool things I could implement.

Another thought at the beginning of this project was the conposition.  In the past I haven’t really spent time thinking about that.  But this time I didn’t just want to cover the entire frame.  In my mind I always feel overwhelmed by designs that use the entire frame.  For this design I really wanted to create just a couple of focal points for your eyes to bounce around to.

In the end I feel like it is a pretty cool design. The colors work and the design isn’t something you see a lot of. If you would like to buy this frame I will post a link below. Note that I’m selling this one pretty cheap because the base frame isn’t all that special.

http://www.pinkbike.com/buysell/899208/

Hey guys,

I thought I would share a project that I just finished up for class.  The assignment was the typical “intro to photoshop” one where you take two images and merge them.  Now I’ve had a lot of experience with photoshop and was thinking about doing something crazy but I decided to just keep it simple and make as real as possible.  I wanted the concept to hint at it being photoshopped… not the quality.

My idea was to get a photo of someone dirt jumping and basically make it look like they were shrunk and jumping cardboard sized stuff.  After looking through I bunch of photo’s on pinkbike.com, I came up with this.  It is Brandon Semenuk pulling a very nice tuck no hander a couple years ago.  Photo was taken by Justin Brantley.  Be sure to go check out his pinkbike profile after reading this!  http://j-brantley.pinkbike.com/

So the first step was to cut it out.  Now I don’t want to sound like I’m one of those “I do everything old school” people, but I cut this out by hand with my tablet.  It just seemed easier to make it exactly how I wanted it.

I use pink as the background so that I can clearly see the edge all the way around.

Next I needed to take the background image.  This was sort of difficult for a number of reasons.  The objects I chose for the jump needed to show that it was actually very small.  The other aspect that made this hard was that in the original photo there is no reference of where the jump is.  So I needed to sketch out my composition and make sure I shot it from the correct angle.

At this point I placed the cut out of Brandon and just stepped back to look at it as a whole.  I needed to indentify was were the key things I needed to add inorder to make this look as real as possible.  The first thing the photo needed was a shadow of Brandon on the wall… in the same perspective as the shadow of the landing.  After that I looked at the landing and realized it would be cool if I added so tire marks.  But the biggest/hardest change to make was that the light shining on Brandon wasn’t working.  The original photo was taking outside and my background was taking inside with only a couple lights.  So I basically needed to go in and just repaint every shadow and highlight.  After about 2 hours here is what I came up with.

It isn't perfect but its so small in the final version that it didn't matter.

After doing all of that, the image was done.  I had a lot of fun doing this but I doubt I will be doing any others.  If anyone decides to do there own photo manipulation feel free to send it my way.  I would love to see what other people do.  Also don’t hesitate to ask me any questions in the comments.  Anyway, here is the final image.

Click to view larger.

Be sure to comment and +fav on pinkbike.com!

Thanks for reading!

Scott