The Milky Way

So, I recently decided to do a remake of a realistic looking galaxy and I think it actually came out very well. As for researching I just looked up photos of galaxy's and all sorts of different things in space and just tried to make it resemble these things just as much. When I showed it to my some friends and family, there only advice was to put some 'dust' in there, which I found to be quite easy. All I had to do was choose a brush and just put some scattering in there with it and walla, I had some 'space dust'. The galaxy looks very complex, but its really just using very few, simple tools, and making the right angles, so it basically just takes a lot of mediocre things and puts them together to make something epic. This really changed my mentality towards graphic design so much different. There were times when I would see a project someone did in photoshop that looked amazing and just think to myself "Well I shouldn't even try this, there's no way mine would look anywhere near as good," or "There's no way I could ever make something look so good." I'm now very willing to try all sorts of projects no matter what the difficulty because I can tell two things:
One - It's not as hard as it looks.
Two - If I really try, it can be done.
P.S.- If you want the photo is 1920x1080 so you can make it your desktop background.

My next project kind of contradicts what photoshop is supposed to be used for in my opinion, I'm going to do a de-touchup on a famous star(s). I'm going to try to find a star that is kind of a household name, right now I'm looking at using Seth Green or Seth Rogen. This project will probably end up just being a compilation of tutorials and probably a few things I know/will figure out to do on my own. I think the most challenging part of this will be morphing other things onto his face so it doesn't look so out of place and instead just flows with the picture. Wish me luck!

If Ninjas Ruled

So I was on a website called www.Worth1000.com which is a website that basically gives you graphic design project ideas and then you submit them and then three virtual trophy's are give out. So the title of this contest is "If Ninja's Ruled" and you do just that. Basically, you take a photo of a ninja and incorporate him into something you would see on a normal basis, except with ninja's instead. I plan on doing maybe a magazine cover with ninjas hidden all over it or a school ruled by ninjas.

Website

I have recently been working on several projects for a website I'm making in Web Design. Currently I am finishing up the basic code on the website and am going to decorate it later. Some of the things I've been working on are some smiley faces, a menu bar and an actual website template. For the smiley faced I just went and looked at the classic Yahoo smiley and based it off that. Right now it looks like I may not use the menu bar because the website I'm making has one. I plan on making the website more geared towards kids that like video games because that's the topic I picked. It did not take much research to figure out the basic design of the website. I basically just went to some websites I visit frequently such as yahoo, google, facebook, lockerz, gamebattles and found a few gaming forums just to see what all the others were doing. I really want to incorporate what all the 'big time' websites are doing because all of them are known for being very easy to navigate and want my website to be the same way. I plan on incorporating many more of these websites aspects further down the road. For example Yahoo has a little widget with pictures that shows you all the latest newsworthy topics around the world, lockerz has a 'hallway' where they keep you up to date with everything going on with the website. I want to make this website really user friendly so it appeals to more people and it does not annoy you like some of the big websites out there. This might turn into a full year project as the website will get done over the year. I have also worked on a few projects I just felt like doing for fun such as two movie posters one for 'Avatar' and one for 'Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen'.                                                                                                  

Getting Back in the Hang of it.

So since school started I have just been doing a few small projects in order to get back in the hang of photoshop and re-familiarizing myself with the tools. The two small projects I have done involved morphing and just taking out certain colors. The main thing I was working on was making a custom snowboard just for me which turned out to be really fun and successful. I started out with a snowboard template and then just went from there, I got the image from a render pack that I found on the internet that included about another eight images. It took about five classes to get it the way I wanted and this was the project that familiarized with many of the tools I had forgotten about. A few were some of the texture effects and getting in the hang of using some of the basic tools like drop shadows, overlays, textures and lens flares. I already knew how to use them, this was just refreshing my memory so I'd be more comfortable with these tools. The hardest part was probably messing with the lighting and getting the right opacity for the image. I think the final board came out great and would love getting a board like this made. In the future I plan of just making a collage board, so it would just be filled with things that define me. Please comment and give some tips that could maybe make this board even better than it already is.

Reflections of Summer

This summer was one of my best summers yet, I went on two amazing vacations. One of my vacations was to Lake George where I went camping for the first time in my life. I went camping there for a total of three days and the experience was amazing and I really want to do it again next summer. The second one of my vacations was to Long Beach Island at the place I have been staying for the past five years. The reason I always stay at the same place in Long Beach Island is because a family friend of ours have a boat at the marina we stay at. The other parts of my summer mainly included hanging out with my friends and going to the pool I am a member at.