If I Go Crazy, Will You still Call Me Superman?

Sooooooo we had another project for Computer Graphics finished awhile ago.
I would have posted it way long ago, but I kept forgetting it to resize it to make Imageshack happy.
(Again. If you REALLY want to submit yourself to the image, click it.)

Higher Res Here

Background information on the prompt! There are these two art competitions going around, so we got to choose which one (or both!) to participate in. One was Reflections, which the contest theme was "WOW". Reflections is a competition that children are encouraged to participate in all schooling years, usually getting the most participation from Elementary School kids because it's HIGHLY SUGGESTED to participate. This is honestly the first year I've been involved in it. Reflections always requires an artist statement, which are fun for me anyway. :)

The second art competition presented the challenge of modernizing a masterpiece. I don't remember much at all about who's presenting this part of the deal, but they didn't require anything but a modernized masterpiece....examples would be (these are some done in our class) Leonardo da Vinci's "The Last Supper" with McDonalds food on the table, Vincent van Gough's "Starry Night" with Chicago, Piet Mondrian's "Composition with Red, Yellow, and Blue" with iPods...the list is endless. Origianlly, I was going to do Cassius Coolidge's "Bold Bluff" with Dungeons and Dragons...which I soon realized I knew NOTHING about and thus wouldn't work...but option two, playing the Wii, would require me to pretty much redraw the entire thing, which I didn't have time for...and playing Monopoly grew to be irritating and really stupid looking, not to mention the modernization elements were tiny details that just looked...well...stupid.

So, I somehow figured I should do Emanuel Leutze's "Washington Crossing the Delaware" and the Justice League. Honestly, the thing I'm MOST proud of with this project is the alterations I did on the painting itself, getting rid of that GARISH color and moving oars and whatnot around.

I spent days and days looking for images of all the heroes in suitable poses, (Poor Vixen is a combination of three different Vixens...she's probably the coolest hero on that boat after Superman and Batman, and she has the most depressing limit of images!) and had WAY not enough time to work on the elements of blending them into the image.

They look SO SHOPPED. It makes me cry a little. The only ones who look sucessfully integrated are Black Lighting, Hawkgirl (who looks like a creeper staring at the viewer, doing NOTHING to help the struggling crew), and Black Canary, who looks all emo with the discoloration underpainting gave her.

UNDERPAINTING OH GOSH. If I could redo this project, I would in a heart beat, starting after I found all those images and cut out the heroes. I wouldn't waste my time finding them all again, but I made the mistake of underpainting them all individually RIGHT AFTER I put the picture in its place on the boat, instead of doing it all at once. Thus, when I saved, it sealed in the horrible curse I laid upon my heroes. WHAT IS THIS UNDERPAINTING BUISINESS, you may ask. "Underpainting" is a photoshop filter that takes the image and applies an effect to mimick a canvas. Thus, it was supposed to blend the heroes into the true canvas they're on, but I was on way too high a resolution (who would have thought such a thing was possible?) and so the canvassing pixels were way off base and did naught but blur the images.

WHAT IS WITH THESE EMO DARK HUES, you may ask. Well, it was all part of the process in blending the image into the canvas, which was dark and blue from me transforming it away from that ew yellow color. But it did nothing for me, again, but make everything emo. Except for Superman, who I kept saturated for effect but ended up just looking sloppy.

OH GOSH ALAINA, IS THERE ANYTHING YOU LIKE, you may ask. Yeah, actually. I'm quite pleased with The Thing, The Hulk, and Spiderman I stuck in the background in place of horses. :) I also really like my artist statement (did you forget from above already? We had to have one for Reflections). Gehl decided to make the statement required for all students, as to not make anyone choose the Modernize Masterpiece one over the "Wow" one on the pretense of "cool no artist statement". So I wrote mine just on the piece, and then realized I should probably merge it into "Wow"-acceptable so that it could be double-entered.

Do I think this peice is gonna win me anything? PSH no. The artist statement, however, I'm pretty dang fond of. :)

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Centuries ago, Emanuel Leutze immortalized Washington’s crossing of the Delaware River during the American Revolution with his oil painting, Washington Crossing the Delaware. To those of the still young country, this painting represented the finest of American heroes. They exemplified the American spirit of bravery, of resisting oppression, and of patriotism. Additionally with the awe-inspiring men, the events of crossing the frozen Delaware river in the middle of the night to bring to pass a crucial step towards Independence for America, the painting and all its subjects were all worthy of a wow.

In our modern times, though we still honor and revere President Washington and his fine men, the idea of what is worthy of a wow has changed. Superpowers, saving the world, and flashy costumes now gain the attention of the mesmerized peoples. Likewise, the idea of bravery, resistance against oppression, and patriotism has often skewed to these modern American heroes of less historical accuracy.

I feel I have been successful in capturing this drift in the American view of heroism and “the wow factor” by placing “The Justice League of America” in the place of the original American heroes. These new reincarnations of heroism still hold fast to these same traits of hard work, resistance against oppression, bravery, and even patriotism, and are as much ideals of these positive traits to Americans of today as President Washington was to the Americans of the 1850’s. The view of a hero has changed in a way that when observed brings one a “wow factor”. And these American heroes alone, whether they be historical or fantastical, uphold the values of bravery, resistance against oppression, and patriotism and deserve for themselves a resounding wow.

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For your information, after this project I really, really get why people like comic books so much. I had to read about the characters in search of images and WOW are they ever interesting. This project has freelz changed my look on super heroes...I'm seeing them all over the school a lot more than I used to. On T-shirts, backpacks, notebooks (why yes, I AM in High School), and the craziest part? I can name them all now.

"Kryptonite" can be found by 3 Doors Down.