Thomas Allen Work

This page is all of my work based upon 'Thomas Allen'

My own work

I started my work by first setting up a diorama in the style of Thomas Allen.

These are the photos that I took of the diorama, each with a different angle and lighting.

From the photos I had chosen the first image as it was the simplest angle and it showed all of the cutouts rather than just parts.

First Image (cropped)

Since the photo has more to work with I had more possibilities of what I could do with the photo.

Here is the first piece I made:

In Thomas Allens work, I found that he had edited the images to add blurs to the various layers to create the illusion of depth, for example blurred foreground and backgrounds. The first thing I did to the piece was edit the background by using the clone tool. I took part of the smoky sky background and started cloning and layering it behind the people. I found that this was good as it started to capture the idea of force in the sense of destruction as it is a violent looking background with fire, which is also an element, which relates to force. The next thing I did was start to add depth by adding blurs to parts of the image. I started by blurring the background to make it seem distant compared to the rest of photo. I then blurred the man in the front so that it seemed that he was much closer than the rest. I found that this piece did well at capturing the idea of force and did well at working with Thomas Allens style.

Here was the second piece I made:

In this version I used a blur known as "Tilt-Shift". It allows to the user to make blurs in certain areas and keep one area in clear. I don't think that this image came out as well as I hoped. I found that the blurs didn't work well and that it just looked bad in general. I liked the idea of the tilt-shift tool however I feel that there are many improvements I could make to it.

Final Piece

This is the last piece I made following Thomas Allens style. I decided that it would be best to make it really follow all of Allens techniques.

Firstly I removed the previous pieces tilt-shift blur. I then realised that Thomas Allens work had a much more dynamic use of colours. I started by playing with the levels to make some colours stand out as a bit more vibrant. This made the fires in the background look much better. I then decided to add a new tilt-shift blur, with the man in the mid-ground as the centre. The rest of the area was left blurred however I really like how this piece turned out.

My opinion towards his work has changed while making the pieces. I still find his work interesting however I now see that his work has a lot more depth to it than it first appears.

Personally although I like his style, it's not one that I will likely continue to use as it doesn't really appeal to my personal tastes.