Editing Albert

I had a session on Photoshop and focused on editing 'Albert the Autistic Teddy Bear.' As you can see, he's been portrayed in five different colours which are yellow, blue, purple, green & red. Before making Albert, I had this idea of making a collection of 'emotion teddy bears.' It all started when I got inspired by Disney's Inside Out. The movie talks about what's really going on in somebody's head and the five personified emotions - Joy, Sadness, Fear, Disgust & Anger basically control the mind of how someone feels inside and out. Because I know Autistics can struggle with identifying their emotions, but are visual learners, the movie just gave me the greatest idea ever. So that's when the whole 'emotion teddy bears' idea came up. In similarity, it's a bit like Care Bears. Unfortunately, I couldn't make all 5 teddy bears because I didn't have the time to do them all in one project. However after finishing Albert, I had a Photoshop session where I could edit my final pieces or sketchbooks into how I want to present them. That's when I knew there was an opportunity to bring the 'emotions teddy bears' back in to reality. 

The simple steps were to:

1. Open up a picture of Albert on Photoshop.
2. Go to 'Image' on the menu bar (which is at the top of the screen).
3. Go to 'Adjustments.'
4. Follow the drop down menu, then go onto 'Hue/Saturation.'
5. Play around with the tool, by changing the colours of the original picture
6. Once you're satisfied with the picture. Save it in location where you want to save.

I followed these step five times to get five edited images of Albert, and so far they look amazing. The part of Albert that I wanted to change colour was the shorts, but I didn't get further guidance on how to do it. That includes changing his smiley face into different emotional faces. Although, it would be alright for Albert to have different coloured-shorts in five different coloured pictures of him.

And there you have it. Now I have a vision of what my five collectible 'emotion teddy bears,' would of looked like to the world. They are named:

• Happy Albert (Yellow)
• Sad Albert (Blue)
• Scared Albert (Purple)
• Disgusted Albert (Green)
• Angry Albert (Red)

I couldn't have done this without Photoshop.

So this alternative idea would have happened and came to life if I had all the time in the world to make these teddy bears. Plus the colourful felt (emotions) lollipops idea wouldn't of existed. The lollipops were just a back up plan to keep hold onto the idea of Autistics getting to know their emotions, in a visual and colourful way.

Here were some other Photoshop techniques I experimented with. As you can see on the 1st picture, I used the 'Colour Balance' tool to make Albert look like he's in the spotlight. I had an idea to visualize Albert in a child's bedroom, in the night. The lights are all out, and he's there gazing at the night sky on the windowsill or bed. 

For the 3 pictures below, I used the 'Levels' tool to make Albert look like he is a logo design. This was good practice to see if Albert was going to be sold in a toy box packaging in a Toy Shop, with the logo on it.