Magic is an attempt to understand, experience and influence the world using rituals, symbols and language in a manner similar to religion.
———————Wikipedia
The theme of my Text/Image Project is magic. I believe most of you would easily associate the word magic with the story of J.K.Rowling’s fantasy novels—Harry Potter. In that series, she gave us an unbelievable world where everything in daily life would have magic power. I love the story very much so I chose this topic.
Many elements of my images came from the Harry Potter movies . In my visual concept image, I used the dining room of Hogwarts magic school as the background. Harry Potter is flying across it, along with several magic items, such as the Marauder’s Map, the Time Turner, the Sorting hat and the Philosopher’s Stone. The idea I want to express here is flying, which is always the first thing we think of when we hear the word magic. I tried a 3D effect to make it look more like Harry is flying.
An image of the castle in Hogwarts was necessary so I included it in the background of my word cloud image. The word cloud filled the shape of the castle. To make it more conspicuous, I added some magic effects on the words “Harry” and “Potter” and added a picture of Harry and a picture of Dumbledore holding their wands.
For my text-on-a-path image, Voldemort, who represents the evil side, became the focus. The words “This is my world, everything is mine!” coming from his wand shows us his ambition.
As for the masked text image, I used the picture of the Marauder’s Map as the background. We can only see a small part of the map through the mask so that makes the map more mysterious.
I learned much through this project:
- Photoshop is not as easy as I thought. Sometimes I feel the tool is easy to handle but when I try it, it takes lots of time.
- Expressing a concept using an image is not easy, especially an abstract concept, even if you are super familiar with it.
- Showing relevant items is a good way to say something about an abstract concept, instead of using words.
- Feedback is powerful. Sometimes I feel I have used up all of my creativity, but I can always get improvement from other’s suggestions.
Cheng Wu 