My zoomorphic Self

STEP #1 - 30 minutes

I knew that if I was to be an animal,  I wanted to be  one of the most viscous and feared animals that ever lived. That being said, I found two images of barking dogs from Google Images that I wanted to use at some point in the Photoshop process to merge with my own face. Both images were close-ups of ferocious canine in a barking pose.

The first thing I did before starting my work on Photoshop was to obtain photos of myself (using a digital camera) in a primitive canine-like pose as if I were breathing fire. Right from the start I had decided that there was no real animal that I would like to morph into but rather some kind of demonic ,make-belief creature and immediately, a two (or three) headed dog came to mind, I would have morphed myself into a two-headed dragon but I couldn't merge myself with a dragon since dragons aren't real but dogs are.

I then uploaded both images of myself onto Photoshop using a USB connector and soon began my work on creating my zoomorphic self, When I first started to use Photoshop  Elements, I used the clone/stamp tool to merge my face with the faces of the German Sheppard and the vicious brown dog (right). I had encountered a couple of problems when trying to match the dogs' faces with my pose due to my positioning; on the right the dog's nose and open jaw are facing a different direction than my eyes thus giving the illusion that my glasses are crooked. On the left, a problem I faced was that the dog's mouth was too long to be photoshopped onto my face without looking unnatural  and awkward on my face, to solve this problem I only merged the dog's nose and part of it's mouth onto my face.

STEP #2 - 10 minutes

I obtained an picture of a pitbull from Google Images in a regular pose, I immediately erased the head of the pitbull by cloning and stamping the background to cover up the dog's head. In order to properly fit my two heads onto the body of the pitbull, I needed to greatly diminish the sizes of my two poses since images from a digital camera usually have more pixels than those from the internet. To resize an image, you select the following; "image - resize - resample image", then choose how many pixels you want the picture to be made of (length and width). Using the clone/stamp tool, I had then made an attempt at merging my two heads (resized) onto the body of the pitbull. However, I was never satisfied fully with the result of my work since my heads looked too small and relatively disproportionate to the rest of my new body. The two dog heads also look of varying size; the head on the right looks quite smaller than the other head. The other problem with the photo is that the color is not uniform since the dog's head on the left is light brown and black since it is a German Shepperd, the other dog head is dark brown and the pitbull's body is white and dark grey.

STEP #3 - 15 minutes

I now tried to make the color of the dog uniform (grey) by cloning sections of fur from the front leg (on the left) and stamping the sections onto the dog's left face, the right dog's face already looked grayish so I left it alone. I wanted to clone/stamp some of the dog's white fur onto the faces to look more genuine but it would take too much time and I didn't know where to start. The other part of the photo that I was not currently satisfied with was the ears of the dog; one of the ears was light pink colored and the other was dark brown causing inconsistency in .color

STEP #4 - 6 minutes

Although seemingly unimportant, I had the idea that I would make myself a domesticated dog (The one you take for a walk and feed), so I decided to derive two images of dogs wearing collars from Google Images (one of the images is on the right, I can't find the other), resize both images and photoshop the two dog collars onto both of my necks using the clone/stamp tool. The task was a very short and simple one.

STEP #5 - 25 minutes

For the finale, I had uploaded a photo of a girl and her granddaddy taking the family dog fro a walk on a warm, brisk, summer morning (Google Images). I knew that they were in need of a much feistier and cooler dog so I photoshopped myself where the previous dog was walking. The process was a difficult one since I had to greatly diminish the size of the previous picture (my zoomorphic self) so it could fit realistically into the new image; the end result may look slightly unrealistic since I had to simultaneously resize my body and still make myself the focal point of attention. As well, I had to stamp the image of myself with a low pixel number (clone/stamp tool) and with extreme precision so that I only photoshopped myself and not any of the grass or surroundings  into the new image. When I finally finished photoshopping myself into the new scene, I thought the picture was still a little dull and needed one thing to be completed...fire. I then found and saved an image of a massive flamethrower flame from google images and used the clone/stamp tool to give the illusion that I could breathe fire from the mouth. All in all, aside from the slight variation of color in my fur and ears, as well as the slight size variation of my two heads and the overall slight fakeness of the image, I'd say I'm generally pleased with the overall result of my efforts.