My Evaluation For the Advanced Porfolio

Technologies Used

These are some of the technologies which I had used in my media production:

Photoshop- I used Photoshop a lot throughout the creating and editing stages of my work. Photoshop helped me to edit the pictures and to create my digipak and it helped me to edit the pictures that went on my website. Photoshop helps to alternate pictures and gives them a more professorial look.

Prezi allows people to create more personal presentations which can be shared online. Prezi is a more modern way to present presentations as its features run in a smooth way. I used Prezi to create my evaluation for my portfolio and it was great, I had a beautiful image/template and it was quick and simple to use. Also, it automatically save your work for you when you have written something new which is an advantage as it prevents you from losing work.

Picmonkey was one of my favorite technologies to use as this was much more simpler and easy to use than Photoshop. It still gave my work a professorial look as well. I used this to edit all of my images for the ancillary tasks and on my website.

I used YouTube to do a lot of my research. It was a good site to use as you just type it any music video that you would like to watch and it is on there for you. It not only allowed me to watch artist's music video's, but it allowed me to watch video's that people have made themselves. I uploaded my music video which I had created on there which helped me to receive feedback.

Blogger allows me to present all of my work on one site. It is good way to present work, as you can see all the events and things people have done in order. You can also follow your friends so you can compare and check how much work they have done and share ideas.

Wix is a great way to create websites as it provides you with templates of different layouts so that you can choose which one suits you best. It also has categories to make it easier for people to choose which layout they would like depending on the type of music they are presenting. It is a good idea that they provide you with layouts as this will ensure that the website actually looks like a music page.

The completed Version of the Digipak

This is the front cover

This is the back cover 

This is the disk 

Creativity

When I was looking at other famous artist's inside page of their CD cover I established that it usually just has a picture of the artist. It can be the same image as the front or back cover. So this is where I thought I could have some fun and try out some of my editing skills. I wanted to show that I could use a range of picture editing skills throughout my Cd cover.
 I decided to use 3 images instead of one as I thought it would be more interesting to look at and many images in the inside page only have 1 so I thought that this would make my cover a bit different.

I didn't want the image on the inside cover to look exactly the same as the image on the back cover as it may have looked like I spent hardly any time doing it or that I was lazy to change it. So in inserted a heart in the artists hand as the heart is associated with the title of his album.

I used the eraser tool on Picmonkey to carefully erase some of the heart shape where his hand was to make it look like he was actually holding the heart.After that, I then faded the shape slightly to give a more realistic look.

The Template

I used this template of a digipak to help me place my front, back, Cd disk and inside cover into. It was quite useful as it showed me what the layout of the digipak should be like and where the images should go.

Creating the disk of the digipak

I had to do a lot of thinking before actually making the disk for the digipak because I had used Picmonkey for the background, so I needed to use it again in order to have the same background. The problem was for me to get cut the disk in the round shape without losing the background colour.

I saved a blank document from Photoshop, then uploaded it onto Picmonkey and applied the background. The i went onto paint to draw the circle shape. I could not draw the circle shape on Photoshop because it had cut out the image and made the disk cover white. Then I transferred the disk with the circle shape back onto Photoshop and used the magnetic lasso tool to cut out the circle which worked perfectly fine.

I changed my mind...

I had a look at my friends digipak who was working with me and I noticed  that her digipak all had the same colour scheme which made it look like a real CD cover. I then looked at other examples of CD covers and noticed that they normally have the same scheme throughout the cover. My front and back cover were two completely different designs so it made them look more like pictures. This is why I decided to change it and have a similar background to the one on my front page as it would all match and have the same scheme.

Creating the back cover for digipak

I have chosen to use this image of my artist for the back cover as it is a full length picture, and whilst researching into other CD back covers, I noticed that medium close up shots and full length pictures are often used. Also, I think that having a body length picture will allow the audience to gather an idea of what type of artist/person he is through his clothing.

I realized that if I wanted to use this image, that I couldn't have the background in it so I used the magnetic lasso tool on Photoshop to cut around this image.

Because I had used Picmonkey to choose a background for my front cover, I had to use the website again to choose a background for the front cover. I wanted a background similar to my front page, one that would still give the cover a professorial and sophisticated look.