AE - Project Evaluation

This is my project evaluation for my Alter-Ego project.

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For this project we were asked to create 2 alter-ego's for ourselves. I decided to chose 'Emo' and 'Chav'. I chose these because I felt it communicated a great contrast between how two people of the same age can differ in personality and appearance. Once we had chosen these alter-ego's, we had to dress ourselves up as these and take pictures. We then were given the opportunity to enhance these in photoshop to make them suit their purpose more.

Through the 2 alter-ego's which I chose I wanted to communicate how much 2 people the same age or of similar age can differ so much no only by look but also personality. 'Chav's' are more commonly known to be more violent and have a more, out-going personality. Whereas 'Emo's' are more associated with being more quiet and withdrawn and are quite emotional people and they show this through the personality and how they wear themselves. 'Chav's' wear trackies and more sports wear and are definitely associated with fake burberry. 'Emo's' however are associated with making themselves 'blend in' and have completely different hair styles to how chav's have theirs. I feel this message need's to be communicated because neither of the 2 categories of people I have chosen to represent, understand one another. My intended audience is my college peers and my tutor, so I felt my images had to suit how people my age would perceive the 2 alter-ego's that I had chosen.

When it came to taking the actual photo's for my different ego's, I experimented with a lot of different things and different scenes to have my photos taken. In all I ended up with over 50+ photo's for each alter-ego. For each of the two personas I went to different places to take my photo's. Eventually I felt like a park car park was best for 'Chav', and a forest like area was best for 'Emo'. I feel these place's and definitely relate to the 2 different alter-ego's I chose. When I had chosen the best ones out of all of the images, I played around with a few of them in photoshop and had a few different versions of each of the alter-ego's. I then decided to ask many people for their opinions on which one out of all of the versions were more 'Emo' for the 'Emo' ones and which one was more 'Chav' out of the 'Chav' ones. I did a lot of things which I didn't like on the images and some of the 'posing' I did in the photograph's I didn't like in the end either. I feel some of the final designs I created were quite bad and just look overly rushed because of the brushes and textures and effects that I used on them. I also feel like I rushed a few of the designs, so they didn't turn out quite as I'd hoped they would.

In my final design for my 'Emo' alter ego, I used a range of image adjustments such as 'Black & White' amongst others. I also used a filter to make the image look more smooth rather than having smart edges. I also changed the brightness and contrast and added a textures and did various other things to the image like adding text and lighting effects. For my final 'Chav' design I used textures and fonts which included different layer styles to make them look more 'chavvy'. I also used a lightening effect to enhance the image. The texture which I added to the 'Emo' image I feel is quite an 'Emo' image as it includes quite pale random colours which i feel are often associated with 'Emo's'. I also feel that the the texture I used for the 'Chav' image, (which was a kind of fake burberry image) suits it's purpose indefinitely.

When it came to managing my time for this project. I feel as though I managed it quite well as I have got most things done when I wanted them to be done for. However, I feel I spent too much time on the 'Emo' one rather than managing my time out so I spent an equal amount on each of the alter-ego images. I feel my strength during this project was either having the photographs taken or editing them in photoshop. This is because I felt like I tried hard when trying to be the character's I had chosen for the photo's and got over looking 'silly' in the places which I took them. When it came to editing the images in photoshop, I feel I did this quite well as photoshop is something which I enjoy, so I took a lot of pleasure in editing the images, even if they were of myself. If I had to re-do the project, I would have chosen completely different alter-ego's as I was never 100% happy with the ones I chose. I would also spend an equal amount of time on each of the images that I had to produce. To ensure I improve of the next project in which I undertake, I will make sure I do enough research and I wouldn't focus all my attention on my final designs. I would focus more attention on the annotation of work and do a lot more 'book work' as it's known. I feel that the project as a whole, went quite well. I was quite pleased with the finished results of my images.

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