Sentinel - Final Advert

 As I was attempting to make my final piece, I continued my search for a woman in armour that I had in mind, depressingly all the images (and there are thousands) are sexy, pretty women in armour, many AI-generated.  I do feel feminism is going backwards and this idea of generating the perfect woman is rather disturbing.  Tomorrow Woman states that as a woman; 'The mainstream pressures of ‘looking the part’ and living up to unrealistic standards has been taken into a completely new realm with AI. We’re no longer dealing with the likes of Photoshop – instead, we’re battling hyper-intelligent algorithms that have no grounding in reality whatsoever.' (TW Diary, 2024) Deepfake porn and AI girlfriends are further evidence of this disturbing new world in which we all now live. I want to create an advert about women's safety and I am confronted by unrealistic images of women as content.  Obviously, if I was to create this in the real world I would have shot the images myself  and ensured I had exactly what I wanted.  After a frustrating search, I finally found a real woman that I thought would work in the advert.  All the images I used in the end were from Freepik with no AI generation!

To start the process I opened Photoshop clicked on New and then on Print, I chose A3, Landscape 300ppi (high resolution for print output) and chose a grey background as I intended to keep this as a frame.

I then used the same image in the background as my mock-up and changed it to black and white simply by clicking in the top menu on the image, adjustments and then black and white. I then clicked on 'select' in the top menu and then 'select all', I went to 'edit' and 'copy' 

I returned to the canvas clicked on 'edit' and 'paste' and used the transform controls to adjust size and position of the background image.

I opened the image of the woman I would use and again changed her to black and white using 'edit' and 'adjustments', I then clicked on the selection tool in the left hand menu and right-clicked to access the object selection.  I clicked on the women and selected her as the object and then copied her and pasted her into the canvas. 

I then used the same method to add the man in the background.  I added text by clicking on the Text tool in the left-hand menu and then clicking into the canvas to add a text layer.  I used High Tower Text at 44pts for the main tagline. I changed the colour to a very light grey and positioned using transform controls.

I then added the QR code I created in the previous post and added further text to strengthen my message.  The QR code works and goes to a guide to women for staying safe.

I liked the logo but thought I could do better so I created this again in Photoshop using bolder text (Gils Sans Ultra Bold) and a stronger image with a tagline as I felt this again strengthened the message.

I added the logo by just selecting and copying and pasting this into the canvas. 

I then cropped the frame and just quality-checked the final advert. I saved the final advert as a PSD and jpeg file.

This is my final advert ...

I was much happier with this than my mock-up - the woman was closer to my vision and was far more like the Joan of Arc character I had in mind. The logo is far improved and much stronger with the tagline and I like it that I have made this big so it is clear what the advert is for.  I think the tagline works. I also really like the working QR ode with real information available to women travelling alone. Obviously, if I had shot the images myself I would have had wider options and it would be far better than this but this gives a good idea of the concept and in the time given this is a fairly good outcome.

References

TW Diary (2024). Pixel Perfect: The Rise of AI-Generated Women and Its Impact on Society. [online] Tomorrowwoman.com.au. Available at: https://www.tomorrowwoman.com.au/blog-posts/pixel-perfect-the-rise-of-ai-women [Accessed 12 Oct. 2024].