"Mia" Poster

[Reece Money]

hello all!...just wanted to get some comments/crits on a design i recently done for someone....please lemme know what you all think....thanks!!!

:sen:

[Templarian]

Reece, not going to lie, but each time you show your designs they always look like you are just messing with photoshop.

Really need a clear design goal instead of just seaming a bunch of pictures together.

[Reece Money]

Temp, Admire your honesty...basically...I am messing with photoshop sorta...im self teaching this....people as of late asked me for a "collage" like style design ive made and i thought i delivered that....but my online crowd tells me different....im learning as im going along...i have books and im in forums learning from the best of you to become better myself....so lemme ask you...how would have you approach this piece differently?...the person i designed this for loves it...(even tho thats the person that matters who likes it since it involves money...lol)

I appreciate you commenting on my work....im eager to learn from all of you and willing to apply myself to become an established artist out here

[Templarian]

Step1:
Find a few colours (http://colorlovers.com/) that you can design around. This means maybe modifying some photos to better fit the colour requirements (do not tint, take your time, if the background of a photo doesn't fit with the overall goal remove it for instance).

Step2:
For a collage you will need to layer your items on top of one another. So what you want to do is try and place the photos in a way that a viewer would read/view. Anticipate their eye movement across the many photos.

Step3:
Find an interesting way to put them together in the collage. Drop shadows will usually not cut it. Maybe take a larger theme (like Disney) and fit it together (this is probably going to take a while and some careful photo editing).

Step4:
Refine it make sure all the details are looked at and make sure once again that when the person views it it conveys what you want them to see.

[Reece Money]

1. thanks for the site...i really needed that

2. thats the main thing that confuses me is i thought i did just that...i mean...everything is on its own layer..and even tho the clients eyes navigated through everything as you had mentioned...the main thing that i wanted to stand out and "pop" was the pic of the girl, the dogs and the name to make them see what i saw as you mentioned in step 4 as the theme of this design was based off of dog and the hound movie....only thing i wanted to be a background were the layers with the lower opacity on them....any techniques i should better learn about that other than what im currently reading about now?....blending or something to better integrate my pics better?

[saxx]

Hey bro, stop doing the full stop thing.


just that...i mean...everything is on its own layer..
yeah that.

[shane-c]

^ saxx, if you're going to be a ****, at least make it constructive... Bro.

Reece, temp had some good advice for sure. You also may want to think about going through a real thought process of design, and solidifying your goals and plans on paper before just jumping into Photoshop. It helps a ton to just take it slow, and really get a clear idea of what you want the work to accomplish. Then, put it down on paper, and start just arranging things in sketch form to see what works best. If you just hop right into designing without planning, things have a tendency to get jumbled. Good luck man :beer:

[Reece Money]

Thanks for the info Shane.....It's not so much the planning aspect of my designs because i do alot of planning and sketching (even though i cant draw..lol)...its the actual placing of the ideas i have on paper and making that transition to reflect the plan i mapped out on screen.

I will definately work on the tips temp provided and work on producing something a whole lot better next time