photoshop workshop- evaluation

this is and evaluation of my final image for fantasy landscape and sequential work.

sequential images: for this i have done a sequence of three images showing the movement of a waving hand. my work is of still frames that are meant to represent movement when displayed together. to develop my work i change the order of the sequence, firstly i took many pictures of the hand in different positions and selected the best that fitted the sequence. for techniques i did, cropping the images, adding borders and presented the three images on one plain page. the photographer muybride,who did sequences on horses and people. he influenced me the most, i liked how simple but dramatic his sequences where. i am happy with the final sequence. but i feel i could have done better with a different theme and more time. but thats what you always say, when your not very pleased with things. :)     

fantasy landscape: for my fantasy landscape i have photoshopped and alpaca crossing the motor-way, with the bikers from the ride to the wall, going through his legs. this is my final piece and is also my personal response to the artist john goto, who uses photo manipulation to add objects i.e buildings to landscapes, to create realistic, unusual landscapes. i first started an image using water, however i am not confutable using photoshop when trying to manipulate water image. so i changed my image to this final image. i also had difficulty with this image, as the original image of the alpaca does not include a shadow. the techniques i used for this image, were magnet lasso tool, cut and paste, paint, and paint brush, quick mass mode and blur tool. i used these to layer both images together, blur the edges of the alpaca to give the non paste look and finally the brush tool to paint in the alpaca shadow. the way i fixed the shadow problem for the alpaca was to lasso the alpaca, paste it to the final image, paint it grey, change for normal to overlay then change the opacity. after this i rotated the image and reflected it, then lined it to the other alpaca image to make sure it fitted, after this i used transform to slant the shadow to give the impression that it was formed from the sun shinning on the alpaca from the right. i am very pleased with my final piece, as it is fun, personal and fits the brief. however if i were to redo this image. i would fix the problem with the white lines on the roads as the shadow doesn't seem to have work over them.