Learning Some Photoshop

Hi all,

So for those of you who haven't heard, the Midnight City girls are putting together a calendar, and I was honoured to be asked to participate. So the general format is every avatar gets a month to strut their stuff, and I thought this would be a good time to try out Neph's l33t photoshopzorzing teckniquez.

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Anyways, I came up with two very different shots - one of avatar in a forest of falling leaves, and another in a more industrial setting.

We decided to go with the falling leaves shot for the calendar, which left me with a picture I didn't quite know what to do with. Since a lot of work went into building each picture (constructing a set, making the poses, thinking about picture composition etc) I decided to see if I could re-shoot it into a more PG picture that I could actually show people.

Attached is the result - I decided to try and turn it into and ad I'm pretty happy with the results.

I tried to warp the text in the back so that it would seem like it was actually written onto the wall a bit - next time though, if I think things through I'll remember to put it there first.

Looks great! I didn't notice anything off about the type on the wall.

must say nice work, where was that pic taken ?

Cute and deadly!

Fran, you already know my thoughts + feelings on this, but here it goes again: I like this very much, and what you touch becomes as solid as fictional-but-should-be-true adamantium. A touch of gore, a bigger splash of elegance. And I smiled bigtime when I read that you said you are "honored". ^_^

Ah, creative people like you, who grab new tools and initially wield them like simple chimps but soon brandish them with the fierce precision of a kendo swordsman possessing much in the way of zanshin... I have much admiration for.

Put a smoking hippo carcass lying at your feet and I think you'll have a winner.

LOL Zanshin I like that. That's not how I feel when I'm in photoshop, though. I'm more like a fish out of the water just flopping around. *mumbles and goes back to scripting*

Splat - I don't remember where I was when pic was taken. I probably just rezzed the set wherever I happened to be. It's basically two prims - the wall and the floor. The floor (and bullet hole/blood) textures were done by Neil Protagonist and the wall texture was from Spider Mandala who helped me come up with the idea for the shot

Just for fun this is the full-rez version. (Watch out, it's big!)

http://www.wetikon.com/seburo/Flamebringer-ad-final.png

Great image Fran

As for the text, it isn't quite the right perspective, if you look at the height of the lower letters compared to the line running below, the furthest letter (F) is the same in height as the distance from the line beneath. The closest letter (R) is more than it's own height above.

But that is just me being picky, overall it's a great image

I think it looks really good. I didnt notice the perspective but I did feel that the text looked a little hard. If you made the text slightly transparent, I think it would appear more as if it was actually painted on the wall. Good job still, Im just offering a "picky" opinion.

Thanks Damien - now I'll never be able to look at that picture against without seeing that mistake. But that's a sharp eye you have

MJ - I actually did try the transparency idea. For some reason, it looks a little "off" to me, I can't really explain why. If you look at the Chinese text on the left, it's been warped in the same manner, with transparency. It looks kinda funny to me, like it doesn't quite blend in with the wall.

Not sure why. It could be psychological for me, because I know it's a whole separate layer in photoshop.

The Flamebringer text itself, I decided not to go with the alpha blending, because it kinda "emphasizes" the text. (This is an ad afterall

told you it was a good shot

It's a very nice photo, Francis. Good pose choice. Definitely offsets the brains on the wall and the gigantic flamethrower.

it seems kinda weird to have bullet holes and blood splatters in an ad for a flame thrower but you look utterly bad to the ass Francis. where did you get those pants?

Overall it looks awesome Francis. The thing with the text I think, as was said before, is it is little hard, and does stand out a bit more than it really should. Perhaps use a little bit more grayish words (not too gray, just enough so it more blends in) and maybe texture it up a little bit so it blends into the wall. I think then it would have the effect you wanted, including the nit picking issue Damien found .

Hehe that blood on the sign is the blood you put down in my combat sim =) LOVE IT!