Tuesday, July 24, 2007

Facial...



Thank God I'm feeling inspired again.
I was in a slump for a while there, and probably will be again, but I sculpted something the other night for the first time in 5-6 years and was happy with it.
Got some new supplies, so hopefully the artistic stretch goes further hehe.
This is Jarlaxle. Yup, he's smiling... kinda.

Sunday, July 8, 2007

HOW MY GARDEN GROWS...





Another weekend and another photoshop.
Hopefully I can keep this streak going. Probably not, but whatever. It's fun when it happens.

I've had this clump of ginger on top of my fridge for a few months now.
I went to throw it away a week ago and noticed that not only was it not dead, it had sprouted a bright green, scallion like appendage.
The creepy part was, a gaping hole that looked eerily like a mouth ala "The scream" had appeared on one end. Not only that, but the area where the hole appeared was very much head-shaped, and some of the natural wrinkles and contours of the ginger's skin formed what looked remarkably close to mummified facial features.
The energy it used to form the bright green appendage must have shriveled the end, causing the hole.

I figured it was ideal for photoshopping because it really looked like a little mutated humanoid on it's own, so i took lots of pictures yesterday when the sun was accessible.
I also took several face pics in the same session.
Then today, I took several pics of my hands in various poses, trying to keep a similiar lightsource.
It was pretty damned hard because i would have to get the distance and lighting right so it would be in focus, then hit the timer and hurry up and get in whatever pose.

After i had all the source pics i needed, I cut out a face I liked, blended it and made sure it fit over the existing natural face, changed the hue a bit to match the green spire, and edited here and there to let the background come thru to make it more "natural" looking heh.

Then, I selected a few hands and made them match the face's new growth coloring.
This project took about 5 hours total and Im still not sure I'm done with it.
I tried to make it look as natural as possible, but there are many different pieces and light sources... also, it's completely UNNATURAL.
I mean, its a goddamned Ginger-man.
I'm not sure if i like the color, or black and white version yet. I'll post them both.

Saturday, July 7, 2007

FUNGUS AMONG US



MYCOSAPIENS
Imagine a race of intelligent creatures descended from spores and fungi.
Perhaps possible after a nuclear winter type situation from either nuclear holocaust or impact from a massive comet or asteroid.
Fungus doesnt need sunlight to exist, only the tissue of dead things.
Ascendant fungus based organisms feeding on a greater population of drone-class fungi, perhaps slime molds with little consciousness, but providing vast amounts of fungi grown only to supplement the greater organisms as a renewable resource.

Rapidly growing, aggressive tissue that can feed and spread unchecked in a world of suddenly dead things.

Sunday, July 1, 2007

How I feel on occasion...






A fairly typical Sunday actually...

This is a photoshop I did today out of boredom and gasp! a smidge of inspiration. A
rarity these days.

Anyhow, I used a tripod and my canon digital rebel xti, set up a chair in the ole backyard, and took a bunch of photos with props and my head leaning to both sides.
First pic is one of the right leaning originals.

Then i added a chunk of left torso and head from another photo.
The piece i added had a lame head, not crazy enough, so i took a head with a wackier expression from a third photo and pieced it in.

I had to be a bit resourceful masking some bits that had an arm in them.
I took bits of greenery from another pic that had higher detail and fit then in between the crook of my arm and the chair, and also between the chair's arm and the body of the chair.

Next, I had to alter the shirt and it's image to look like it was actually made to be worn by a two headed individual.

After everything was in place, i used warp on individual bits to get them where i wanted them, normalized lots of the color and lighting differences, and edite the image's color, shadow/highlight and contrast to make it more dynamic.

All in all it took me about three hours, used bits from 5 different photos.
This webres version posted here doesnt really show the detail and realism I was going for, but it turned out pretty sweet.