Backyards and Birdhouses

Digital Graphics/Animation Lesson

by James Ditmore

Brief Summary of Task to be performed:  For this Digital Graphics/Animation Lesson, students will take a Digital Photograph of their own backyard.  Then, accessing the internet, find birdhouses to insert into their backyard photo (Using Adobe Photoshop) wherever they think will be the best location for a bird to build a nest in.  Digital image will then be saved for the web as a jpeg medium file to be inserted onto a web page.  Extra credit will be given for Digitally Animating a bird or birds flying in or around the birdhouse or the backyard (Using Adobe Livemotion) and also bird song sounds added to the web page using a .wav file.

For Step by Step Instructions click here or for adobe acrobat reader format click the following: stepbystep.pdf

Step 1:  Students will take a Digital Photograph of their backyard.  Analyze photo's foreground, middle distance and background attributes while taking the photo, being sure to take into consideration the elements and principles of design.

Step 2:  Then, accessing the internet, find bird houses to insert into their backyard photograph (Using Adobe Photoshop) wherever they think will be the best location for a bird to build a nest in.

Step 3:  Using Adobe Photoshop's tools: Extracting the background so that only the bird house is layered onto the original backyard photo, Rotate birdhouse to correct angle for pasting onto Photo, Image size to make sure the image is the correct size for the location in the backyard, save for web using the resolution for jpeg medium file.

Step 4:  Adjust the brightness and contrast to help the color of the backyard become not so bright. 

Step 5:  Using Filter tool, select Artistic and then Poster Edges, then save for web as jpeg medium.  This give the Photo an Artistic effect while not taking away from the original elements of the original Photo.

Sources cited:  The Original photograph was taken by James Ditmore.