Final Art Project: Cyber Bullying

This is my sketch of my project. Scanned into my laptop

I started off by coloring my puppets.

I used the magnetic lasso tool to "circle" the areas that I want to color. 

This is used through out the whole process of coloring.

I used darker shades of purple to indicates shadows on the purple hoodie. 

Smudge is also used to show a little bit of a different texture to the hoodie.

The different clothes of the puppets represent the people from different countries, different backgrounds, different cultures using the same social networks to bully people.

This is how it looks like with all the puppets colored. 

Different layers are used for the different parts of the puppets to avoid confusion.

The victim in the sketch is then colored with different shades of grey and white. 

Smudge is used to give the murky, swerving feel.

The grey is in a way representing that darkness and depression that cyber bullying victims may feel.

Different layers of words are used to "decorate" the victim.

It is to show that how some words stick with the victim and it stays with them. 

I made a copy of the original sketch so that I can see where the shadows can be colored at.

The puppets' shadow has one layer while the hands shadow is another layer.

The opacity of the layers are often to adjusted to ensure that the places colored are right.

With the shadows and puppet done, I went ahead with the background.

I wanted the whole thing to be isolated, like the whole is away from the rest of the world 

because cyber bullying is somehow like that.

I chose to paint a brick wall to represent that isolation.

I used different colors of brown and brownish-red.

I changed the opacity and the hardness when I was coloring it.

There are different layers for the wall. Each layer has a different color but 

I didn't put them out as different layers.

It is just colored in layers on the same layer.

Finally, a whirlpool is drawn to show the despair and depression that the victim is sinking in. 

Black, used with different opacity, is drawn underneath the victim.

I drew a big half oval shape as the top part of the whirlpool.

Then, the size of the half oval decreases as it does down, like an inverted pyramid.

Then, I used smudge to "lengthen the sides"

With final touches of the strings and final layering decisions done, 

this is the result.

Bullying happens everywhere. It's in school, at your workplace and sometimes, it also happens at home. It has become a very serious issue because if no action is taken to stop it, it will affect the victim in the long run. Some fall into deep depression, some commit suicide. It affects the victims on so many different levels, even on the ones that we don’t understand. The luckier ones, like Demi Lovato, are able to be homeschooled and make something amazing out of their life.

 Now with internet, bullying is now in cyberspace, making even more people, even celebrities, victims. Mean messages, IMs, hurtful words, are all cyber bullying. They say, sticks and stones may break my bones, but words don’t hurt me. This is not true. Words hurt and it cuts deeper than a knife. Cyber bullying is worse because people can do it anonymously and most don't know how severe the effects of this are.

In my design project, I am trying to, in a way, explain how the bullies online use the social networks to “beat” people up and hurl them in a whirlpool of misery.