Little Green Men (lesson 10)

Lesson 10—Surrealism

            What could be more surreal than little green men (and woman) invading the Earth, sneaking through the forests of Yosemite? Well, this may not be as odd as Dali, but it might conjure up thoughts of the old SciFi movies of the 50’s. In order to create this image I’ve used as a background a photo that I took in the early morning mists of Yosemite Valley and then I started adding little green men with the help of the custom shape tool. Using the technique of cloning to a different size, I then shrank them, placed them, flipped them, and hid them behind trees. I even skewed one to make it look like he’s turning. I then put all the green men layers and masks into a group called Men. That was lots of fun. In the interests of fairness, I made the leader a female figure, again with the help of the custom shape tool. I then used the same tool to create the speech balloon and lowered its opacity way, way down. I used the text tool to type in her command to the people of Earth and then used a new shortcut (CTRL + H) in order to hide the text selection and be able to preview the text in its true color and chose that hideous purple/maroon color. That’s a really handy shortcut and a really ugly color. I also linked the balloon layer with the text layer so I was able to move them around and resize them at will. I grouped the word balloon and text into a group called Words. Then, since she was talking, I figured she needed a mouth. Her stylish lips were provided by the completed exercise in lesson 5. Her eyes and nose were made with the help of the custom shape tool and were sized and placed with the use of snap-to guide lines. The mouth, eyes, nose, and female figure were placed together in a group named Woman. By placing the elements of this little vignette into three groups I was able to make some sense out of all the layers I’d ended up making.

            I must say that I had fun completing this assignment.

Richard Hallett