Daly Road Graphics Christmas Card 2016

Jade thought we might take the opportunity to express an opinion about this year's election. It was tempting, but this is the season of Joy to the World, so we decided to fashion a greeting card that would make folks smile. There will be plenty of time for opinions later. We hope.

We commenced by looking for famous artworks to parody, and settled on one of Michelangelo's on the Sistine Chapel, the one in which God and Adam touch fingers. Famous enough, but there were other problems. Duplicating Michelangelo's style, for one. And, Adam isn't wearing any clothes. Finally, there are no prominent images of women in the frame.

While perusing famous posters, we came across famous movie posters, among them the one you see above. More searching provided an image of sufficient resolution. Then Jade and I photographed each other in a variety of poses, and I assembled the images into a pallet, to better evaluate which would fit into the original poster.

The rest was a familiar routine of sizing and rotating, then cutting and pasting. Each face's color balance was matched to its background. I discovered a Photoshop button labeled posterize. Guess what it does? The star's names had to be replaced as well, which meant another search for similar fonts. My middle name is James. If I ever make the big time, I may keep it. Hudson is Jade's maiden name. If you've been following this effort, you will remember that Mister and Stitch are our two cats.

Finally, the edges of the additions had to be meticulously blended with their backgrounds, and the entire card was put onto a yellow background. The completed huge image had to be reduced to webmail and printer sizes. Two cards would fit on a page. Brightness levels are different for the web and a printer, and those were determined by trial and error.

A trip to the store gave us two out of three printer ink cartridges, and of course the one we couldn't find was the first to go dry. We had envelopes left from last year, but we'll probably have to go back to the post office for more stamps. This happens every year...

I think I look pretty good in a trench coat, and I may ask Santa for one. On the other hand, this is southern California and a trench coat would probably hang from the hook unneeded and abandoned, like my Indiana Jones hat.