I recently launched Photoapnea.com to share various photography and photoshop resources. Over time I’m hoping to release more PS actions, compositing and lighting tutorials, etc. For my first video I put together a deconstruction of sorts for a piece from my Saints series. It talks through the process from the initial sketch to final production at a 20,000ft level. I plan on releasing more specific tutorials soon. Let me know what you think. I’m looking for all the feedback I can get.
Runtime: 46min
Software: Photoshop
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“Veneration”
Saints Series
2010
“Cerule Letter”
Saints Series
2009
IT IS COMPLETE! As of today, “Rising Tide” has found completion bringing it to the “ready for printing and framing” stage. I’m really looking forward to that part of the process as it’ll get me out from in front of the computer for a time. But before I get on with that task it’s time to write the final work in progress post. In the case you haven’t had a chance to check out the first 3 parts, I have linked to them below.
In part three I left off after adding a few shadows along with some reflections in the water. Just as one would approach a painting, it’s now time for me to start detailing the piece to further the story. This required a bit of retouch and some time “painting” in some new elements. First up was dealing with some clothing issues. The dress that was used in the ‘girl’ character was a bit large for the model in the arms thus creating some folds and wrinkles that were not jiving with what I had in mind. As I would if this were a painting, and I created a fold or wrinkle I didn’t like, I would move the paint around a bit, add a little and end up with what feels right. Same thing here (Fig.1, top).
Now that I have the core of the image in place it’s time to drop in the other players. As I mentioned in the last post there are two additional characters that must be dropped in to represent ‘child’ figures. I am using shots of the same model for each so each element will need to be clipped out from seperate shots, dropped in and have a little shadow added to make it fit within the final piece. But before I do that I want to drop a toy element into the shot (fig.1 – left). Once that is in place it’s time to add a bit of dirt around the base to give it the feel that the wheels have been buried a bit. Once that was done I then dropped in the clipped ‘male’ figure (fig.1 – right) along with a small amount of dirt around the shoes and just a touch of rough shadowing.
fig. 1 – kid and toy
The little ‘girl’ figure is up next (fig.2 – left). Same goes for this one in terms of clipping the modelout and dropping her into the image. Once my final choice on placement was made I added some rough shadowing to get an initial look at how the whole composition was working together.
In this shot, “Rising Tide” there are going to be 3 characters (each the same model). Initially I thought the pose of the model holding out her dress (as seen in my previous post) would be the one I’d go with for the final piece. However, after reflecting on all the shots a bit and the story I am telling, I felt that it would be better to use a different pose that kept standing out to me each time I reviewed the shots. This now meant I needed to remove the water that I created in the original composite, and move it to the new shot. But before I do that I need to compose the new base shot (fig.1). Below are the progress shots of this process.
fig. 1 – background plate
