I had a think about what I wanted to first explore in this project and I thought it will be interesting to start with a theme that has an original creative direction. And that is; an artistwic twist to approaching life beings.
This links back to my political connotations. In the mid 20th century, the world was struck by images of American scientists testing on aliens that they supposedly found in Roswell, New Mexico. They were reported to have been taken to an American military base (the infamous Area 51) that is a remote detachment of Edwards Air Force Base.
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| A scientist examining the supposed Alien body |
I think that the Aliens at Area 51 are a really interesting topic to explore because it is a conspiracy theory that crossed all boundaries and involves so many underlying secrets that could possibly be damaging to our modern society.
As a response to the content of the examination itself I decided to create my own aliens out of modern day photos. The reason behind it is to show raise questions about our existence and our mortality amongst the civilizations. Are we really the only ones in the universe? If not, what do 'the others' look like?
I took to my handy photoshop and used the warp tool, burn, dodge, healing brush and clone tool to create my own alien.
This is a photo of Tyra Banks. I chose to use her as my prototype for the Alien project because she has a very contoured face and high cheek bones. Also, her hair is swept back so it makes it easier to work with.
This is my photoshop modification of it. I used tools such as:
- The burn tool to darken areas.
- The dodge tool to highlight features and create depth.
- The healing brush tool to duplicate body parts and remove eyes, and eyebrows.
- The marquee tool to select and mirror the left side of her body to create the right side.
This is the second figure that I photoshopped to make an alien being. I wanted this one to look a million times better than the previous alien so I chose not to use the cloning tool to repeat anything and instead concentrated on the healing brush and the burning tool.
And this is the outcome. I think that it is much more effective than the first alien and appears more gloomy and dark, in theory, than the previous alien.
Did the alien project work? Well, in my opinion I think that concentrating on the aliens helped me to understand my 'want' and 'need' to work with the 'unknown' more. By this, I mean that I wantted to work with conspiracy and corruption. The aliens from