free for all

hey everyone,
so here is the base image that I edited heavily to come up with my previous post. have at it...if someone wants the full psd file in order to turn off layers, then just let me know and I will burn it to a disk for you.

QC2-east

okay, I worked on this one and edited like crazy. I also pushed for a bit more open landscape and abstraction (if you can call it that). the image has more room to breathe now and (I think) if feels more stable.

QC2_WEST

I worked with the perspective that was available and included some urban artwork. TADA.

QC2_WEST

I took the literal people and symbols of LOS ANGELES and included them into the composition.

QueenCity2TeamEagle.

Hello Charlotte

I wanted to create a little depth and leave room for the other members of team eagle to get down. There is an aeronautical theme going on in this rendition, a nod to NC (first in flight).

Clinton Asada

QC2_WEST - JAGUAR

This post is for John Huey.

Last-Swap Meeting

Hey, just a reminder that we're meeting this Friday (10/26) at 11:00 in the computer lab to look at our last swaps and see which ones we want to rework for the big prints. See y'all then!

some new progress

hi folks
here is my first pass after our meeting this morning. I am working this image by simplifying a bit and by trying to pull forward a few things and to merge the idea of a charlotte skylight with an LA map. After that, just plain ole' painterly composition issues are kicking in.....two versions going at the moment

Ramon, these also respond a bit to our recent Chicano abstraction comments.

5th one

I just mesed with the sky a little......mostly the sky and the writing and some trees. I simplified it a little and added a little. I didn't want to mess with it too much because, in my opinion, it is really close to finish.

can we meet?

hi Charlotte crew
can we meet this friday morning....say around 11am? I think that we should have a quick discussion about the state of the various murals we are working on and begin planning to finalize and translate these things to a larger scale. Heather, are you available friday morning?

OK, so right now it looks like a bit of a mess, but I am not too familiar with how to fade things in a bit. I added an image of La Rua, which is Charlotte's "Latino Rock group" and I added the image of a stereotypical city skyline made of La Rua's CD cover title. I did this to express how on the surface Charlotte is aiming to be the typical city, nothing different, and it is only within the image of the stereotypical city that we find the true depth of what it means to be in Charlotte. So... yeah, that's it for now.

Had some technical difficulties...but we're back!

Reflections from a shattered image of Los Angeles. Each shard of glass begins to reflect a different perceived image of LA.

So this is what I came up with after chris's post. I added some of my photography, like the people racing up the stairs into the light. I also made the freeway a little bit more transparent, so the piramid shows through it. And I put a bit more contrast and color to bring it to life.

dialect show

okay folks
I went to the gallery show at Dialect's on Noda and I spoke with one of the folks that runs the office--a former CoA student, now architect--and they may be interested in hosting the work and a reception/discussion of our murals. So, we are on the way to needing multiple copies in various sizes of the work for our increasing potential popularity! at the very least, another venue for the work..and a chance to drink wine in public and call it work.

gallery opportunities

okay everyone
so, we are penciled in for a show here in the college of architecture for the first few weeks of the spring term. Ramon has us penciled in for a show at Woodbury (Burbank, CA) for April. And, I have a scheduled telephone chat with Galeria de la Raza in San Francisco on Tues to talk about submitting the work to their digital mural project. They have a running gallery in their storefront in which they take digital murals and print them out and display them for some set timeframe in SF (so the projects are visible from the public street outside their space). They seem very interested in what we are doing so I think that one of our "murals" has a good shot of getting shown there (I will send them files of each of the completed projects later and let them chose--who knows, maybe more than one will get picked). It looks like we have a chance to get a bi-coastal set of showings for the work......now, we just have to produced high level work deserving of such visibility!

Stephanie, I am not sure if you are traveling or not, but I have the file for you. I always forget which desk is yours so the cd will be on my desk until either you find me or I find you!

thanks~m

Version 4

Okay, Meghan gave me an cool image to work with, so I didn't change this much; just cleaned up some stuff. The text still needs work/feels sloppy, but I'll let that be Ronna's problem. ;)

Technical stuff

Hey folks, some technical advice to keep your files small.

1) When you get a file, do a "Save as:" and change the name. You'll get a dialogue box asking if you want to "maximize efficiency". ALWAYS UNCHECK! This is a weird vestigial feature of photoshop whose soul purpase is to make your file bigger than in needs to be.

2) Go to Image>Mode> and make sure "RGB" is checked. If CMYK is checked, change it to RGB. It'll ask if you want to flatten the layers and say "Don't flatten". Save immediately after this step. Your prints on a laser printer might look a little "truer" when set to CMYK, but most printers translate RGB best since RGB is the native color of the screen. We'll be printing these on an inkjet plotter that basically has 6 or 8 different colors rather than CMYKs 4!! So trust the printer, and leave it in RGB.

3) Use multiple layermodes at 100% opacity of the same image rather than 1 layer at 40%, etc. For some reason, changing the opacity of a layer makes that layer take of WAY more memory. Also, it tends to make an image look "washed out" and low in contrast. Don't be shy of being assertive!

This Friday!!!!

alternate version

hi folks
here is an alternate version of my previous draft...this time borrowing from chris's idea of sampling one of the paintings from the woodbury experiment last spring. let me know if this direction is worth pursuing.

heather, can we swap files tomorrow?

QC2WEST_EAGLE

QC2 West - A First Stab

Hello Charlotte.

This is a collage I put together relating to LA culture. Please comment...

Chris P
Architecture Student
Woodbury University
Burbank, CA

pin-up?

can we print out our 11x17's in about 10 days for a little review of the work to date and for a discussion about how we might refine them? I suggest we do so one evening with some refreshments the week after next.

Jose's newest

hi folks
I cannot meet this friday (were we going to meet this friday?) so here is my contribution to stephanie's version. I also sent heather a disk with this file on it today via intercampus mail so she will have the file for someone to pick up probably thursday.

the images are looking good. I think we should swap more more round and then meet to discuss refining a few and to discuss the next step in getting up to full scale.

Ronna-->Heather v.3

I got stuck kinda early with this one.... ha, somebody else's problem now!

Keeping files for posterity and printing

Hey everybody, José and I have been emailing about just keeping everything going at this small scale and printing some/most/all of them large at the end. Yeah, why the heck not. I was also thinking that the evolution of the smaller prints is pretty interesting and we could print each swap phase out at the 11x17 scale. If you can put your file from the last swap on a CD and put it in my mailbox in Rowe 253, that would rock. Or you can also save it as a JPEG (still at 11x17 and 300dpi) at the highest quality and e-mail it to me. It'll probably be a pretty ginormous file for e-mail (like 6 to14 MB or so), but that would work awesome too! My e-mail is hdfreema@uncc.edu.
Heather