THE STORY OF "STARCOLLAGE 2002"
THE STORY OF "STARCOLLAGE 2002"
The above artwork, titled "StarCollage 2002" was a project in Photoshop 7 that I finally finished in October, 2002. It took 4 months in my spare time and consisted about 44 layers. I took my inspiration and images from both APOD and from the late, great www-to-scorpio.com, which was a truly beautiful place for online stargazers.
I created Starcollage 2002 because I'd never seen a star collage done the way I'd like to see it done. So having some Photoshop skills, I decided to take on a project like this. After it was done, several people said: "You should send that to NASA!"
What? NASA? Errr... well... yikes! Well, I GUESS I could send it to NASA.. specifically their Astronomy Picture Of The Day site.
I felt very shy about sharing my artwork. I didn't feel like the kind of bigshot designer who should be sending stuff to wow-amazing NASA. That's for - I didn't know - some sort of amazing, up-there, hi-falutin' person doing amazing, bigshot, up-there, fancy things. I'm just a graphics geek from Portland, Oregon, normally an outgoing person but very shy and a bit doubtful about any artwork I do.
Then I figured, they must get TONS of email submissions per day. They'd probably never notice my nice little starcollage... I can do it then...
Well, if you are reading this, you KNOW what happened!
f you go to google.com and type in "Apod Elana" YOU'LL REALLY KNOW WHAT HAPPENED NEXT!
The NASA APOD folks used the StarCollage for their anniversary page.
Then the avalanche started. About 500-1000 happy emails all at once. How do you answer 500+ emails all at once??!! Folks wanted hi-rez versions. Folks wanted t-shirts. They wanted posters. They wanted permission to use it as demos for various devices. They wanted StarCollage stuff, and they wanted it FAST! YIKES!
Well, I never had any lessons in how to handle instant fame. I started answering a few of them. Then I fell into a HUGE fit of shyness: I felt overwhelmed, archived all the emails, and then I went into hiding. Like I said, I have always had a very bad case of shyness about my own artwork. I have no idea what to do when someone tells me they love my stuff. I felt like I was supposed to become an instant business person, making fast profit off of the opportunity - and that was waaaaay over my head. I learned at least to say "thank you" when someone said they liked my work, but anything beyond that, I turned into a deer in the headlights.
Well, it's a few years later now, and it's time I have become just a BIT more confident in my own work. I don't HAVE to become a fancy business person, but I know how to make T-shirts.
So wish me luck as I now become brave - and I hereby ask you:
If you have given up on the "Where's Waldo" game of finding ex-Tangerine Dream member Christopher Franke's face in the picture, He's somewhere in the upper right corner. :-)