5 Images Depicting An Emotion Of A Song For A Record Label - Project 13

Introduction

NOWHERE TO RUN by RITTZ

    There is never a dull moment when it comes to creating art. Art is beautiful, peaceful, serene, loud, direct, in-your-face, etc. It is whatever you want it to be, a voice full of meaning and emotion. Art is how we express ourselves.

    This week's project was to choose a song and create a set of at least 5 images to promote its emotional impact. Our client is a record label, and they are trying to get this artist out into the world.

    The song that I chose for this project was Nowhere To Run by Rittz. Rittz is signed with Strange Music Inc. which was created by CEO Travis O-Guin, and cofounder Tech N9ne.

    Nowhere To Run is a sad but motivational song. Rittz expresses that he is struggling tremendously. He has a dead-end job and cannot afford to pay his bills. He works opposite schedules from his girlfriend, and he feels like giving up on everything, including rapping.

    He has hit sort of a “rock bottom”. He raps about how his breakthrough came. A fellow friend and rapper Yelawolf kept encouraging him, and they both made a break into the music industry despite all of the trials and tribulations.

    Even though it is difficult, and you are not where you want to be, DON’T GIVE UP. You may run into many situations that are not ideal, but you just have to keep moving. Otherwise, you will find yourself in some unfortunate positions.

BELIEVE IN YOURSELF.

    I can relate to this song in many ways. Although, he is describing “how he hates his life and job” he is still pushing. My life has been similar. It has been a long road, and I know that if I keep going, my breakthrough is around the corner.

My Collage

Picture 1

Picture 1 is an abstract creation with black and white triangles and squares. The squares inside each other give you the illusion that you are looking down a long hallway. When I was listening to the song, I envisioned something similar to this. I used black and white because they are bland and normally represent sadness.

Picture 2

    Picture 2 is a photo I took of a hummingbird perched on a tree. The bird is getting ready to fly away (run away). Hummingbirds are fast, and they do not stay in one place for long. Rittz was ready to fly away. It was time for him to spread his wings. The colors are also dreary.

    I chose B&W profile 2 for this picture, and I increased the texture by 19, the clarity by 14, and the sharpness by 16. Then I added a -11 vignette.

Picture 3

    Picture 3 I took when I was walking in downtown Winter Haven. It was down an alley, and on the wall was a painting of people running up a tree, but they were the tree. A tree represents growth. This painting can be portrayed in many ways, and I felt that it represented this song well.

I removed some debris from this photo with the patch tool and the remove tool.

    I added B&W profile 5, and I increased the contrasty by 76, the texture by 39, the clarity by 21, the dehaze by 21, and the sharpness by 42. I decreased the shadows by -48, the whites by -39, the blacks by -47, and I added a -11 vignette.

Picture 4

    Picture 4 was a cool creation. I was browsing https://myPhotoshopBrushes.com/brushes, and I saw a brush for plastic wrap. I thought for a bit, and I came up with my idea. I took some paper with rap lyrics on it, and I selected headphones wrapped around a mic and layered them on top of the paper. I then thought it would be cool to use the baggies/plastic wrap brush to put on top of the paper, headphones, and mic to make it look like it was wrapped away. You couldn’t get to it right away.

Picture 5

    Picture 5 I chose to include a project from class that I had a hard time implementing. I included this piece because the emotion it gave during that moment, is the same emotion that this song gives. The picture is also another artist, Hayley Williams from the band Paramore. I put a big city inside of her silhouette depicting the “big city dreams”.

This was a double exposure.

I made a selection of Hayley. I clicked inverse. The background turned white.

I added an invert and a black-and-white adjustment layer.

Then I added a curves adjustment layer and brought the dark triangle up to the highlights to make her silhouette black.

I pressed ctrl, alt, shift, and E to merge the layers, and I added a layer mask to the merged layers.

Then I added a solid fill adjustment layer, and I brought it below the merged layers.

I brought the picture of a black and white city in, and I scaled it down to fit inside of her silhouette.

With the city layer still selected, I selected screen, held down alt, and clicked on the line between the city layer and the merged layers to create a clipping mask.

I filled the solid color with black, and when I was done, I took the brush tool selected black, and blended the city in with the black silhouette to make it look more natural.

Conclusion

    This project made me get in touch with my feelings. Music is one of my favorite hobbies in this world. It has gotten me through many situations in my life, and I throw on Nowhere To Run by Rittz when I am having a hard day. It helps me sort out these emotions so that I can keep going. I learned how to play around in Photoshop a bit more. The more you consistently practice, the better your work gets. I admit I have not messed around with different brushes until this exercise, but it is cool to be able to find different styles of brushes. I now have a couple more packs than I used to.