Sunday, November 23, 2025
Creativity Exercise: “Random-Word Fusion Method
This exercise is incredible for designers, content creators, writers, and anyone needing new ideas fast. It works by forcing completely unrelated concepts to blend together, which often leads to surprisingly original outcomes. It’s also great for breaking creative blocks when you feel stuck or uninspired. The more random the words, the better the results.
How to do the exercise:
Choose three totally random words. You can pull them from a dictionary, a word generator, or objects in your room. Then fuse those three words into a brand-new concept. You can create anything — a product, character, story idea, marketing concept, even a Photoshop design. The goal is to challenge your brain to create connections where none existed before.
My Example:
Random words: Lantern, Wolf, Satellite
Fusion idea:
You design a character called The Lantern Wolf, a mythic guardian that roams abandoned satellites floating in space. Its fur glows like lantern light, and it howls signals that travel through cosmic radio waves. When astronauts lose communication, the Lantern Wolf appears to guide them home. You could turn this into digital art, a short story, a logo symbol, or even a movie poster.
The exercise trains your brain to mix, match, and innovate in ways that feel natural after repeated practice.
Creativity Exercise: “Three-Room Brain Expansion”
This exercise helps you invent new ideas by shifting mental environments. Your mind works differently depending on the “room” or setting you imagine yourself in, so this prompt intentionally puts you in three different imaginary environments to solve the same creative task. It forces you to adapt your thinking style and explore concepts from multiple angles. This is especially helpful in art, writing, design, game creation, and even problem-solving.
How to do the exercise:
Pick a creative prompt, like “design a superhero,” “create a logo,” or “build a fictional creature.” Then imagine yourself in three totally different rooms, each with a unique atmosphere. In each room, redo the task as if the environment is influencing your creativity — meaning you’ll end up with three totally different outputs from one idea. The rooms can be calm, chaotic, futuristic, ancient — anything you want.
My Example:
Prompt: Design a creature called “The Hollow Runner.”
• Room 1: A quiet library with warm lighting and soft music
In this atmosphere, the Hollow Runner becomes a thoughtful, ghost-like deer with hollow bones and glowing eyes that whisper stories when it runs. It’s elegant, calm, and poetic.
• Room 2: A cyberpunk alley with neon lights and rain
Now the Hollow Runner becomes a robotic dog with transparent panels showing pulsing circuits. It moves silently and guards underground hackers. Much edgier, glitchy, more mechanical.
• Room 3: A forest campfire at midnight
Here the Hollow Runner becomes a dark, towering creature with tree-branch limbs and an empty chest where firelight flickers. It protects lost travelers from danger.
5/5/5
🖌️ Free Photoshop Brushes Sites
1. Brusheezy — One of the most popular collections, with thousands of high-quality free brushes.
2. CreativeBloq — Their guide to “71 free Photoshop brushes” is great for curated, high-resolution, themed sets.
3. 1stWebDesigner — Offers 10 free high-quality brush packs (watercolor, grunge, etc.).
4. Line25 / BrushKing — Directory-style site with nicely organized brush categories.
5. BlueBlots — A curated list of many brush resource sites, including 123Freebrushes and Brushesstock.
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⚙️ Free Photoshop Actions Sites
1. FixThePhoto — Over 300+ free actions for photographers (portrait, vintage, etc.).
2. InspirationFeed — 500+ free Photoshop actions.
3. PanosFX — 200+ free actions with creative and special effects (neon, torn paper, etc.).
4. PSD Stack — 21 free actions (HDR, duotone, glitch, cross-process, etc.).
5. Retouching Labs — Free retouching actions + a guide on how to install them.
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🔌 Free (or Mostly Free) Photoshop Plugins Sites
1. Retouching Labs — They list and provide free Photoshop plugins (e.g., Texture Anarchy, SuperPNG).
2. Pixstacks — A collection of free plugins & scripts (like Pexels, Unsplash, Flat Long Shadow).
3. Schenectady Photographic Society — Recommends “6 fantastic and absolutely free” Photoshop plugins and panels.
4. G’MIC — Open-source framework with 500+ filters; they offer an 8bf plugin for Photoshop (via GitHub).
5. Harry’s Filters — A classic plugin with ~69 effects (warp, color, patterns, etc.).
Creativity Exercise: “The 20-Question Object Challenge”
One of the simplest ways to expand your creative thinking is to take an ordinary household object and force your brain to see it in new ways. The 20-Question Object Challenge helps you break out of your default perspective by asking unusual, sometimes ridiculous questions about something familiar. This exercise trains flexibility, imagination, and descriptive strength — all of which are essential for creative fields like digital media, Photoshop work, design, and writing.
How to do the exercise:
Pick a normal object — a mug, dog leash, water bottle, your BJJ belt, anything. Write down 20 questions about it, but the catch is: the questions cannot be normal. They must stretch imagination. Things like “What would this object be if it could talk?” or “How would an alien describe this?” or “What superpower would this object have?” Then, answer them honestly or humorously. By the end, you’ll have reshaped how your brain thinks about everyday items.
My Example:
Object: A blue water bottle
1. If it had a personality, what type would it be? – Organized gym bro who always reminds you to hydrate.
2. If aliens found this, what would they think it’s used for? – A portable human fuel tank.
3. What superpower would this bottle have? – Instantly refill with cold water no matter where you are.
4. If you could redesign it for a wizard, what would it look like? – A glowing bottle that refills with enchanted mountain spring water.
…continue until you hit 20.
By the end, your imagination is warmed up and buzzing.
Typography & Poster Composition
This week I practiced working with text tools, including character settings, paragraph settings, and text warping. I designed poster compositions by balancing hierarchy, spacing, and readability. I also learned how to create professional-looking billing blocks using narrow fonts, line spacing adjustments, and alignment tools, which helped me make my movie poster look authentic.
Layers, Blending Modes & Adjustments
This week I focused on understanding layers, groups, and blending modes. I practiced organizing complex files and experimented with modes like Multiply, Screen, and Overlay to create more dynamic lighting. I also learned to use Adjustment Layers—such as Levels, Curves, and Hue/Saturation—to correct colors and create overall mood without permanently altering the original image.
Selection & Masking Tools
This week I learned how to use Photoshop’s selection tools, including the Quick Selection Tool, Magic Wand, and Select Subject. I practiced refining edges and creating clean cutouts using Layer Masks instead of erasing, which helped me keep my edits non-destructive. I also learned how to adjust mask density and feathering to blend images more realistically.
November Week 1 2025
While designing my postcards, I was reminded of how important visual balance is in creating an effective design. I’ve been focusing a lot on using strong lines to guide the viewer’s eye in the right direction—or at least what I feel is the right direction. This process has helped me think more intentionally about composition and how every element on the page interacts with one another. My main goal has been to create a sense of flow, where the viewer naturally follows the design without feeling overwhelmed or lost. It’s been a great reminder that even small design choices can have a big impact on how people experience the final piece.
Dr. Doom
This is the original photo I took of Trace as Dr. Doom 
The below was my fist attempt but was to busy and my attempt to make the lighting bigger made is look like a child drew it on to the poster so I deleted the lighting all together and made the magic glowing orbs bigger for the final
This is the final poster for subsmition 
Wednesday, November 19, 2025
Tuesday, November 11, 2025
In loveeee
For this assignment, I chose the mood “in love.” I’ve been completely infatuated with my partner lately, and he truly inspired the tone and emotion behind my work this week. The first piece isn’t my favorite, but it set the foundation for a theme I carried throughout — the idea of dancing as a visual expression of love and connection. As you scroll through my pieces, you’ll see how I incorporated multiple images, AI-generated elements, Photoshop brushes, and highlighting tools to bring that feeling to life. I hope you enjoy exploring my work and the emotion behind it.
Orginal Photos-
what the photos transformed into
Creativity Nov 5, 2025
This week for my creative exercise, I’ve been focusing on building a website using WordPress. The goal of this project is to explore the fundamentals of web design while creating something that feels both personal and visually engaging. Traditionally, the creativity blog features a quick five-minute exercise, but this time I wanted to challenge myself by going beyond that—testing my design abilities and developing real-world skills while helping expand my friend’s brand.
This project has been a blend of creativity, strategy, and passion. I’ve been experimenting with layout structure, color harmony, and visual storytelling to make the site feel professional yet authentic to the brand’s identity.
Wednesday, November 5, 2025
Design Nov 5, 2025
This week I learned how much lighting, color, and expression can completely change the emotion in a photo. I used to think it was mostly about posing or composition, but now I see how small details — like the way a shadow hits a face or how warm or cool the tones are — can make a photo feel happy, sad, calm, or intense. It’s wild how much control you actually have over the mood once you start paying attention to those things.
Working on the album cover theme really made me slow down and think about what feeling I wanted people to get just from looking at it. Music does that with sound, and photography can do it visually. That connection helped me realize that emotion isn’t something you just hope shows up in a photo — you have to build it intentionally.
Sunday, November 2, 2025
Post Cards Nov2, 2025
This week for class, we worked on postcards. I decided to head over to Bonnet Springs Park right here in Lakeland — bright and early at 9 a.m. (Okay, that’s my version of early. Some people had probably already finished a workout by then.)
Originally, I wanted to use photos from a car show I went to, but none of them really had the right symmetry or mood. Plus, I needed 6–10 solid shots, and after looking through them, I realized I didn’t have enough to make it work. So, after the show ended, I ran over to Bonnet Springs — a park I’ve been to probably a thousand times — because at least I knew what I wanted to photograph.
That said, I think that overconfidence was my biggest mistake. Since I thought I already knew what I wanted, I didn’t take as many photos as I should have. Once I started editing, I kept thinking, “Dang, I wish I had shot that from a different angle,” or “This would’ve been perfect if I had just backed up a bit.” Lesson learned — you can never be too overzealous when it comes to taking photos.
Another thing I noticed was how harsh the lighting was. Even after adjusting in Lightroom, the exposure was tough to manage. Next time, I might try shooting a little later in the day when the lighting is softer.
Overall, though, it was a fun project — I learned a lot about being more intentional (and also less confident) with my shots.
The Post Card
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