Digital Image Editing

I don't know what I was looking for when I ran across the Apex High School Art blog. But I really enjoyed it. It was earlier this semester, when I had just started teaching a new semester course, Digital Image Editing. It is basically the same content as a course some other schools call "Photoshop," but we use the free, open-source equivalent, GIMP. I didn't want to put "GIMP" as the course title, because most of the kids didn't know what GIMP was; and I felt like calling it "Photoshop" when we couldn't afford Photoshop was too much of a bait-and-switch. Plus, it's cool to abbreviate Digital Image Editing as DIE.

Anyhow, the students had mastered most of the basic functions: layers, text, layer masks, transformations, etc. I was looking for some more creative assignments to give them so they could practice their skills and have a little fun. So when I ran across Mr. Sand's blog post Interactive Self Portrait with a Cartoon, I was thrilled. What a great idea! I immediately left a comment on his blog post letting him know that I am now officially stalking him, and that I hoped he wouldn't mind that I was stealing his idea. He did put it out there on the Internet for all the world to see.

Anyhow, my students seemed to really enjoy the project (especially compared to the identical tutorials that they had done previously). Check out some of the results!