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Creativity & Design Blog Post #42/23/2018 This week, I wanted to try something new. I don't remember how, but I had the urge to try my hand at vaporwave art. Problem Type This problem is largely unfamiliar. It's vaguely familiar in the sense that I'm proficient with photomanipulation and Photoshop. I've never really thought about vaporwave art before, though I'm aware of the aesthetic and have seen many images around the internet. It's a style I hadn't analyzed before. Creative Strategies Honestly, my creative strategy was "just go for it". I didn't sit down and plan at all, I searched for a bunch of images on Google and went headfirst into Photoshop just messing around. I did do some research beforehand, though, to more acquaint myself with what exactly vaporwave art is. My Creative Process Firstly, I did some research. What I found out contradicted my base knowledge of what "vaporwave" is. Before, I thought it was this extremely stylized form of imagery made with roman busts and neon colors. Upon just googling "what is vaporwave," I discovered that it's not visual art at all. Vaporwave is actually a genre of music, characterized by appropriating 80's and 90's elevator music. Once I found a resource referring specifically to the meme of vaporwave did I find out how it is linked to the imagery. Vaporwave music was often heard alongside something called "a e s t h e t i c," all spaces included. It was really a e s t h e t i c art that is what I thought was vaporwave art. This kind of art was supposed to make fun of what people consider "aesthetic," to make fun of a hipster notion of what looks good and doesn't, supposedly. But, since a e s t h e t i c art became so closely associated with vaporwave music, the term "vaporwave" now technically refers to both the music and a e s t h e t i c art. Since I wanted to focus more on the art part of vaporwave, I amended my search from "how to make vaporwave" to "how to make vaporwave art" and stumbled upon this video. Here, I got the basic low-down on vaporwave art aesthetic. Also, my vaporwave name would be Luxury 消費者. The Japanese means "consumer." While this video is satirical, it's actually accurate and useful. I used this as a basis of my vaporwave art adventure. Here are all the images I downloaded for this endeavor (though I didn't use every one of them): This project was incredibly experimental, since I had never done this before, and I didn't have a clear idea of what my finished product would be. I followed the advice in the video above. I used gradients, chose bright blues and pinks, and followed many of the motifs usually found in vaporwave art such as the Windows 8 logo and a Roman bust. As seen in the video below, I decided not to use the checkerboard, the Roman arch, the Arizona Tea can, nor the sun or moon. No matter how I put these elements, it didn't look right to me. Ultimately, it's all about messing with it until it looks right, whatever "right" is. Here is my process video: For this project, I used Photoshop Elements 11 and Firealpaca. Since I don't own a full version of Photoshop, I used my drawing program to supplement some features that Elements doesn't have. Below is my final product: Reflection
Ultimately, I love how my final image came out!! This was such a fun project and I think I did very well considering this is the first time I've ever done vaporwave art. I had to go back and forth from Photoshop to the Google Image search just to make sure I was getting the "look" right. I made the dimensions 1920 x 1080 so it could be potentially used as a screensaver or background on a computer. Sometimes I had trouble figuring out where elements were to go, mainly on the right side of the image. The only thing I want to change in my final product is the Windows 8 logo. Over the course of this project, I struggled with what I would do with it. I figured I could make it like a window to a body of water, but my main obstacle was finding an image of water that I could manipulate and make it what I had in mind. In the end, I used a wavy image, but I actually don't like it. I would much rather it just be the mountain image that's behind the waves without the waves and I think that will be sufficient. Overall, this project was quite fun and though while I probably wouldn't do it again, I'm glad I did. I'm really proud of the outcome, as I feel like it could really be seen around the internet accompanying a vaporwave song.
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April 2018
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