"Make Incongruous Images: with human parts" Assignment

Mr. Michael Delahunt

Graphic Design 1 & 2
The 1st
"Make Incongruous Images" Assignment:
With Human Parts

Incongruity (in-con-GREW-i-tee) is

"a state of two or more things lacking harmony,
being incompatible,
inconsistent,
absurdly combined."

Such things are called "incongruous."

What makes anything funny or tragic is incongruity.

Incongruous images are often used in advertisements and in movies -- think special effects -- attention-getting and amusing.

Examples of incongruous images:

A guy you know puts on a mask that gives him the face of a monster, or of Adam Sandler, or of President Bush. (Not what you expect to see!)

Helping to shop for groceries, you pick up a head of lettuce and notice that this head has facial features. (Startling!)

The body of a movie character who nibbles on a magic doughnut gradually becomes that of an elephant. (Not the image a viewer expects to see!)

A car going past you doesn't have wheels. It has the legs of an elephant instead. (Not what anyone would expect to see!)

Your assignment is to find images that you can take parts from and put them together to form new images:

Find images on the Internet and save them as files in your folder on the student server, and / or find photos you scan and save in your folder.
Use PhotoShop Deluxe or PhotoShop Elements to create new documents - also called "photomontages" -- in which you combine incongruous portions of these found images.
Alter the edges of every part you relocate so they look like they belong where you place them. If you put a new head on a body you must choose and position the head so that it looks like it could have grown from that body. Its size, color, texture, and placement must look compatible with the body. One might see the neck coming through the collar of the shirt on the body, for instance. That edge is most important, but the edges of the hair cannot display a reminder of the wallpaper that was once behind it when the body is in front of a snowy hillside.

Produce on at least one page an image that combines a portion of a human figure with something else -- a portion of a different human, an animal, or one or more objects.

Deadline: end of class Tuesday, January 15. Print this new picture, along with images of the original pictures from which you took the portions that you combined, and cite on each the URL where found. Label these with your full name and class period on the front of each sheet, and hand them in by the end of class Monday, January 14. One fifth of the points you can earn are for turning an assignment in by its deadline.

Special recognition
will be awarded for:

Most believable image.
Funniest image
Saddest or most tragic image.
Strangest image.

Deadline: end of class January 15.

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I have taught art at three elementary schools in the Paradise Valley Unified School district (northeastern Phoenix and north Scottsdale) from 1986-. I began publishing information about my classes on the Web in 1995. I taught at Pinnacle High School during the 2001-2002 school year, and posted these lessons that year. I will maintain them as time permits.

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