Brr, it sure is cold here!! Visiting Neptune has truly been a once in a lifetime experience. @eng304cripps @ds106dc #tdc2694 pic.twitter.com/3oHq2aoWTi

— Katherine Smith (@Katheri85988147) May 28, 2019

Visiting Another Planet
I was a huge space geek when I was younger, so when I saw the daily create for today, my mind had a million ideas at once on what I should do. I ended up narrowing down my ideas to those related to gas planets, specifically Neptune, since that was where some of my more creative ideas were. I debated using dark humor for my entry, given how dangerous the gas planets would be to visit in reality, but I figured it wouldn’t be as fun as suspending disbelief.

First, I looked for a backdrop that looked similar to the color of Neptune. This was hard because most of the blue stuff I had was either too dark, more teal-like, or too small. I eventually came across a Snuggie that ended up being the right color and size for the photo. Since Neptune is very cold (around -214 degrees celsius!), I wore a coat and my UNE hat. My next challenge was conveying the fact that Neptune is a gas planet. I looked online for a PNG (Portable Network Graphic) of smoke and came up with a couple of good images. I used Gimp to crop the original photo and to add the smoke effect on. I discovered the duplicate layer tool, which made it helpful to have smoke around me while not covering my face. I also tinted the layers to have the smoke look more blue.

This was definitely a very fun create!

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