For this visual assignment, I chose to give the world a Graphic Gift (three and a half stars). This prompt was about taking a vintage advertisement and extracting the product to create an old-school kind of clip art. I really enjoyed the concept and aesthetic of this assignment, so I decided I would give it a shot.

Here was the original ad:

For this project, I used Photoshop. First, I cropped the canvas so that it was only focused on the Jim Beam bottle. Next, I bumped up the resolution of the selection so that it would come out at an even higher quality (being relatively small in size within the ad). Finally, I used the quick selection tool and selected the bottle. After some cleaning up, I had it extracted from the image. I exported it as a .png, to preserve the transparency, and I ended up with this:

Here is a picture of a vintage microwave that a cleaned up. (I think its from the 80’s!) This would make great clip art.

For this assignment, you are supposed to find an old advertisement or graphic, and cut out an element of that as a transparent png as a resource. Now, considering we were supposed to link one of these assignments to our western character, I deviated slightly from the assignment. I wanted a transparent image of the weapon I imagine my character using, which is a Winchester Model 1886. I did find some advertisements for this gun, but they were incredibly small and low quality, so instead I went with a photograph of one for sale, which you can see below.

For the process itself, I used Photoshop, and mainly the pen tool. I see the pen tool as the superior method to cutting out anything from any photograph, maybe except frizzy hair, and used it almost exclusively in my Graphic Arts classes. I like it because you’re given more precise control over what you’re trying to select, and can capture curves pretty effortlessly. This is what the actual selection looks like, with the squares along the lines being the anchor points that the lines cling to.

And once you have your selection, it’s as simple as inverting it, and then deleting the picture around it. The end result is below.

Well, Groom inspired me to tackle this particular ds106 assignment: Graphic Gift, added to the Assignment Bank by the inimitable Michael Branson-Smith. A summary:

Find or scan an old advertisement (high resolution) and create a piece of cool clip art by extracting and cleaning up a particular element. Be sure to use a PNG file type to preserve transparencies, and try to make a high and medium resolution version. Inspired by Phil A Go’s awesome Toyota Corona Graphic Gift.

Groom got fancy and deposited a whole animated Jack Nicholson in the back pocket of his graphic gift. I went for a simpler idea, and I’ll admit I caved and used Photoshop. I fully endorse Groom’s advice to experiment with the free and full-featured open-source image editing tool, GIMP, but I don’t have it installed on this particular computer.

I knew that what I wanted to work with was a standard icon of our noir exploration, and a quick Google search found me a page from the 1956-1957 Fall/Winter Sears Roebuck catalog.

I pulled this into Photoshop, and quickly used the magic lasso tool to outline that gorgeous hat.

Once I had the whole thing selected, I copied it, created a new layer, and pasted it n.

I turned off visibility of that original layer, and used the Transform tool to add a jaunty angle.

And now I can offer everyone in #noir106 this fedora icon, angled perfectly for you to use in all your visual assignments.

I wish I had found a higher resolution version of the page, so that I could offer a larger version.

I will say that I found tons of amazing hats in old Sears Roebuck catalogs, so I think I’m going to keep doing this until I have a huge collection of vintage hats tosshare.

Note: The top version will work well on a light background. The bottom will look okay on a dark background, but I’m still playing around with getting the matte correct. 

I finished up my second visual assignment of the week last night, but things got too crazy for me to post it earlier. Michael Branson Smith‘s “Graphic Gift” assignment is one I really appreciated because it forced me to dig in a bit on my image editing skills.

Find or scan an old advertisement (high resolution) and create a piece of cool clip art by extracting and cleaning up a particular element. Be sure to use a PNG file type to preserve transparencies, and try to make a high and medium resolution version. Inspired by Phil A Go’s awesome Toyota Corona Graphic Gift.

Smith writes about the value of assignment on his own blog, and I think he’s right on:

This exercise would be a great ds106 assignment for a couple reasons. One it’s a great for working on digital imaging skills. A good graphic gift would require a student to work with selections, the eraser tool, image touch ups (via contrast, sharpening, and possibly the clone stamp to remove scratches), and image resizing to create different versions. Also to maintain transparency and post to the web the image should likely be a PNG file.

Given we’ll be doing some more image editing intensive work during the design week of noir106 soon enough, I figured this would be a good assignment to help me shake off some of the dust. I’m a total hack when it comes to GIMP, but as a result of teaching this class for five years my skills are almost passable….almost.

On a related note, I refuse to use Photoshop for ds106 assignments on principle. First, it’s costly, and while you can get a free trial, why use something that you won’t be willing or able to afford long term? Second, and more importantly, ds106 is not about a specific tool, but about wrapping your head around certain elements crucial to digital media editing, such as layering, scaling, cloning. recombining, distorting, etc. If you want to use Photoshop, you can. Although providing free, open source options that teach you these basic image editing concepts, such as GIMP, helps level the playing field and lighten the financial burden. That said, we never tell students what tool they should use, that’s not ds106—we teach freedom!

Anyway, I started looking for catalogue products to make a graphic gift, and I consulted the Flickr WishBook account, which has scans of the old school Sears Christmas Wishbooks. I chose a mid-1980s catalog thinking I would grab a toy, but it didn’t work out that way. I got stuck on this image of Roebucks men’s jeans.

I don’t think I have ever seen such beautifully starched jeans. I got inspired to not only cut out the jeans, but also one of the back pockets. I needed to employ all the tools Smith suggested, selections (lasso and magic wand), the eraser, clone, blur, and more. It was a workout, and my final product is far from perfect.

My idea was to have a new background image, and then something animated in the back pocket for fun. Then, like a diamond through my forehead, I remembered a dream I had long ago wherein a pair of bodiless, well-starched jeans were standing on a desert road with Jack Nicholson’s character from The Shining animated in the back pocket. I then knew this is what I had to do. Think of it as therapy.

I found the following image of Jack Nicholson animated:

And this image of a desert road on Wikipedia:

I spent some time combining these layers, pushing some to the front, and others to the back. The transparency of my graphic gift—which I accomplished thanks to the eraser— made these other elements of my Dali-esque dream possible.

I don’t know how I feel about the actual creation, but I do feel better that I finally got this monstrosity out of my psyche for the low, low cost of 3 stars. That’s 6 down, and 4 more to go.