Photoshop skills development 2 - The Simpsons Poster Task

With all of us media students being new to the course this year at college, my lecturer decided we needed to spend a majority of our time before Christmas on practise sessions to allow us to develop and gain the valuable skills needed to create a mainstream looking product for our brief. In our secondary photoshop task we were instructed to make a theatrical poster to advertise 'The Simpsons Movie', with compulsory instructions to collect images of Homer Simpson, The Simpsons movie logo and the date of its release which had to be included no matter what, whilst also offered the option of adding any other Simpson related pictures I found necessary to the appearance of my piece. 

This is my finished piece of work I created using the Adobe photoshop software. I began by copying an image of Springfield town I obtained via the use of the Internet and pasted it into the photo editing document I had loaded, I proceeded to adjust the size by pressing command T, this offered me a small tool box surrounding the photo which would allow me to alter it as I desired (in this instance I wanted the image to fill the page entirely so as to mimic an authentic theatrical release poster) Once I had completed that I browsed for another image - this time of Homer Simpson jumping- and followed the same copying,pasting and sizing method until I was happy with the result. I used the magic wand tool to edit out the white background of the Homer picture to give it a more realistic impression that he is part of the poster and had not been naively added in. I clicked on the areas of white background that I didn't think were necessary which were permantley removed by pressing delete, this method is much more time efficient then using the eraser tool as I needed this piece of work to be completed in a fairly short space of time as we were under time constraints. I used the curser tool to move Homer to the top right hand of the poster to give the impression he was leaping from a building at whatever is trying to steal his giant donut.

For the next stage of construction, I went back to Google images and copied and pasted an image of Bart Simpson, for this I specifically searched for the character holding a weapon as I wanted to portray the idea he was defending the giant donut from his father. Once I had pasted the image into photoshop I proceeded to use the magic wand tool again to eliminate the white background Bart was placed upon, then the eraser tool to finish to smooth out the details and remove any further staggered edges I did not want to appear on the final picture. To conclude I selected the curser tool to move Bart on the Lard Lad donut boy as if he was taking a military stand. To gain access to the final photograph that would be used on my poster, I went back onto Google and repeated the same copying and pasting method to select the Simpsons Movie logo - this was to provide the essential evidence to the audience members that this poster was detailing information revolving around an upcoming move and not another premiere of a new 'The Simpsons' TV series which it could easily be mistaken for. Once it was in the document, I removed the white background with the magic wand and eraser tools and positioned the movie title in the bottom right hand corner of my poster, so it was of clear view to the viewers, but was out of the way in case it conflicted with the scene I had unfolding between the Simpsons men. For my last touch I added the date to it, by using the text tool located on the tool bar. I changed the colour of the text by highlighting it then selecting what colour i desired the colour palette tool. I made sure the colour I chose did not conflict with the others on the poster (in this instance I chose black as it is dark and bold which perfectly stands out and did not shroud or mask any of the additional conventions present on the product). To finish I saved and converted the image to a JPEG then uploaded it to my Blogger page.

To improve this poster I could have added more additional characters, as the 'Simpsons' features more popular cast members and the image itself looks quite empty as though the town is deserted which is not the look I was aiming for. I ultimately wanted the viewers to identify that this movie includes all of their favourite characters from the TV show who would be present on the big screen, this would potentially appeal to more audience members as the film would be focusing on all aspects of the programme and not just specific areas, as not everyone would be interested in particular characters, therefore by displaying the majority of them it would have created the underlying impression the movie generated a story revolving around them all which could appeal to a larger array of the public. In addition it would have been more beneficial to me if I had spent more time perfecting the date text, with a more more professional looking font then the simple 'Times New Roman'  - this could have made it dramatically bolder, eye catching and interesting to the audience, which furthermore will have grasped their point of interest more effectively.I believe the poster has a naive nature to through this which could potentially make it more easily overlooked as their is no significant emphatic sigma present on it. It may have been improved finally if I had added a slogan, as most retailed theatrical posters include these.

Although my brief is aiming for me to create a certain style of product (i.e a music magazine), I still have obtained a thorough amount of experience from creating this poster as similar styles of conventions apply to each (such as choice of text, positioning and colour schemes) which would allow the production to be overly appealing to the audience. I will deffinitely be using the knowledge I gained here to create a more improved product when the time dawns on the construction of my main music tasks, to ensure a safety net in the idea I will have a very professional and slick appearing task.