Repetitions and Variations: Dana vs. a T-Rex

Dana vs. a T-Rex. Model: Petra Brewitz

In a previous blog post, I published Dragonslayer, a quick-and-dirty, but fairly nice looking, picture of a woman facing off with a dragon. I promised to write a bit more about the picture, and how I made it. I also promised to publish a few variations on the theme.

The finished version above, Dana vs. a T-Rex, features Dana, one of the main characters in the A Rift in Time photo comic. Dana was played by Petra Brewitz in the comic, and she also modeled for the pictures in this article.

We did not start out doing a Dana picture. Petra and I had been discussing doing something with a medieval theme. That takes a lot of preparation, and quite a few props, so we decided to make something simpler, just to try things out.

Technical details: The picture above was created by applying the Painted 2 + Border filter in Comic Life 3. This filter creates a painted comic book look that works very well for many illustrations.

The original inspiration for my picture came from an illustration by the Fantasy artist Joe Jusko. 

If you compare Jusko's image with mine, you will see that there are a lot of differences: Mine is, how shall I put it, more modest, his is in portrait format, mine is in landscape format, his has a medieval fantasy setting while mine is urban Science-Fiction, and so on...

My picture started out being more like Jusko's. I planned to use a dragon, and I planned to shoot vertical. As I worked through several iterations, my picture diverged more and more from Jusko's. A good thing, because those differences are what separates being inspired by, from plain old copying.

Let's look at how I built the basic composition. The picture above is built from three photos.

I photographed Petra in a parking lot. She, Julia Reinhardt, and I took a photo walk after a planning meeting (I'll tell you about it in a future blog post), and since I just happened to have a toy gun in my backpack, we took the opportunity to shoot the picture when we found a fairly clean background.

I used a single hotshoe flash placed under my camera to light Petra and eliminate unwanted shadows.

I shot several photos of Petra, with both portrait and landscape orientation, and with different lighting.

The reason I switched from portrait to landscape is that it allowed Petra to take a wider stance. A wider stance leaves more space to show the monster.

I shot the background after shooting Petra. This is usually a bad idea, because it is difficult to get the angles right.

In this case, I had measured the distance between the ground and the camera when I shot Petra (1 hotshoe flash height + 3 fingers), so it was easy to replicate the angle.

I used a 35 mm lens, and f/14. I wanted to keep everything in the picture, from Petra to the portal, reasonably sharp.

The woman sitting on the bench? I cloned her out. Quite easy to do.

Oh, perhaps I should mention: Originally, I intended to use a different, more dragon friendly environment, and something much more like Joe Jusko's original.

I had shots from a pond that I had shot for another different picture. (You may remember the brachiosaur picture I published awhile back.) I thought I would be able to use one of them.

As it turned out, all of them were shot with the camera too far from the ground. I could have gone back to the pond to reshoot, but a combination of impatience and laziness made me change my mind. Instead, I shot something close at hand, which turned out to be the brick building.

Oh, the dragon... The wings look fairly good, but the rest... I just had to try anyway.

Sometimes you got to try, even though you know it won't work.

As you can see, the dragon is truly awful. The only part that works reasonably well, is the tip of the wing in the window to the left of Petra.

How do you save a picture like this? I could put in a lot of effort in an attempt to make the dragon look more organic. An easier way is to reduce detail in the entire picture. that way, the viewers expectations change, and something can suddenly be perceived as better.

Dragonslayer

I added a quick and dirty paint effect with Prisma's Mononoke filter. The filter removes a lot of details, and hides what is wrong with the dragon.

I wasn't happy though. I wanted something a bit more realistic. There was a model I had wanted to try out for awhile, a snake, made by the Schleich toy manufacturer.

The snake version looked quite good. Technically, it is the best version of them all. I did sharpen the teeth a bit in post, and I ought to have replaced, or fixed, the tongue. Nevertheless, the picture works, except for one thing!

The story! What is the story? Why is there a giant snake in something that looks like a factory? (The dragon had the same problem, but the model was so ugly I never had to worry about the story.)

In this version, the protagonist is aware it is weird that a giant snake appears in a doorway. She expected a T-Rex, so there is a bit of a twist left for the viewer to wrap herself around.

Here is a useful storytelling trick:

When there is a completely illogical gap in your story, make your protagonist aware of it!

In the version above, the protagonist didn't expect to be face-to-face with a giant snake. She expected a T-Rex, so the viewer may still not quite get what is going on, which is intentional.

Viewers familiar with A Rift in Time will be in on the secret: It's a time-travelling T-Rex! They might also guess that the person facing off with the T-Rex is an RRC operative, and they might even recognize Dana.

Just in case you were wondering, this is what the Schleich snake model looks like. It is less than five centimeters high (about two inches).

Once I got this far, it was natural to simplify the story a bit. What would it look like if Dana encounters the T-Rex she expected?

Dana vs. T-Rex, photo version

In the version above, the T-Rex looks pretty good, but it is not photo realistic. I have solved that problem before, by adding organic textures, but I decided to go the easier route, and make a comic panel.

The T-Rex

The final version

And here we are again, with the final version...or maybe not. There are still plenty of variations I could explore.

Big!

 Big! is my latest composite. I've had this image in my head for quite some time.

I created the composite in Pixelmator, and toned it with the Vintage Iris effect.

While I was at it, I made a comic version using the Paintoscope filter in Comic Life 3. I like the Paintoscope filter a lot, and am considering using it for a comic project.

I made the composite from three different photos.

The elephants feet are from a photo I took in the Museum of Natural History in Gothenburg.

When I took this shot, I had the finished picture in mind. I did not know exactly what it would look like, but the general idea was clear.

I did a bit of cut and paste to take the foreground and extend it into a background plain.

 The man and the shadow, well, that is a shot I took for another composite some time ago.

It is a selfie. I put my camera in a tree, and used the 10 second timer to delay the shot.

Unfortunately, part of my shadow is blocked from view by a car, so I did a little bit of repair work on the shadow for the final picture.

The third photo is an old environmental shot I took ages ago. I used the mountains and the bleached out sky.

Something wicked - Comic pre-production agony

Horror from Above – Petra Brewitz looks up, and something wicked looks back.

When I wrote the manuscript to A Rift in Time, the time-travel action adventure comic, I planted a few seeds for new stories.

Petra Brewitz, Petri Olderhvit, Julia Reinhart and I have started kicking ideas around for a sequel. That means we are in the oh so agonizing pre-production stage, the pre-idea stage really, when we try to come up with new ideas, and connect them to each other, and with some old ideas, without making a total mess of it.

Comic version of Horror from Above. We want a look similar to the first Rift adventure, but with a slightly more realistic look.

A project like this starts out pretty messy, and that is perfectly okay. Actually, it is a prerequisite for making something really good. The trick is to have the right kind of mess, and to narrow it down to a logical structure in the end.

Something Wicked.

What you will see in the final comic may, or may not, resemble what you see in these prestudy sketches.

When we will be done? I have no idea. We are doing this for fun, in our spare time, so it will have to take a back seat to just about anything that pays the bills.

In addition, we are deliberately planning to make things difficult for us again, setting goals way beyond what is reasonable. Creates headaches, but also makes for a wonderful learning experience.

Gateway!

Gateway! (Model: Malin Wennlund, Photographer: Henrik Mårtensson)

The picture above is a composite made of three different photos.

The first picture is the photo of the model Malin Wennlund. Malin is a Steampunk enthusiast, and made the dress herself.

It was easy to mask Malin out in Pixelmator.

The background is a sunset shot from Partille, just outside Gothenburg.

I shot the wall and gate in Halmstad. As you can see, the shot is very bright. I did take a couple of photos at different exposures, but in the end, this was the best to use. 

It looks pretty horrible, but it was pretty easy to darken the whole thing. The initial step was to just reduce the exposure. Then I copied the image, and changed the blend mode of the top image to Hard Light. That gave me the late afternoon, saturated look I wanted.

Sword, Rose, and Hexagram – A Quick Deconstruction

Model: Anita Pecaver, Photographer: Henrik Mårtensson

I shot the model in the picture above, Anita Pecaver, some time ago during a photo meetup in Photo Meetup in Gothenburg. I had arranged an Angels & Demons themed photo & coffee meetup.

There is a distinct shortage of castle ruins and scorched plains in the Gothenburg area, so I had to do a composite. I'll walk you through the parts.

The model: Anita, with a sword and rose

Anita Pecaver

I shot Anita in a café, during a photography event with about 30 people, and chaos everywhere.

These events are fun, but also cramped and chaotic, so the shots are rarely studio quality. The idea is to have fun, meet people, and learn things, not to take perfect photos.

However, we often manage to create quite interesting pictures during these events. The chaos forces everyone to be creative, and to use a minimum of resources in new and unexpected ways.

It was Anita herself, and another model, Peter Markusson, who asked me to take a shot of Anita with a rose and a sword.

Note the angel wings. I removed them from the final picture, because they did not quite fit. I considered replacing them with a much larger set of wings in post, but I'll save that for another day, and another photo.

The Ground: Scorched earth, and a hexagram

The lawn in the photo above is the basic ground in the picture. I masked out the buildings and the sky, and removed the trees and other things.

The ground looked a bit boring. I wanted to make both the color and the texture more interesting, so I added...

A photo of one of my notebooks. I like the color, and also the fake leathery texture.

I removed the pattern, except for the hexagram in the middle. When I composited the images, I changed the perspective, and used various blending techniques to bring out the color and texture.

The Castle: A Ruin Most Sinister

I didn't have a real castle handy, so I went out and bought one! To save a bit of petty cash, I made do with a model. I bought it in a pet shop.

The Mountains of Madness: Hellboy Would Feel Right at Home

I shot the mountains from the third floor of an apartment building in Partille. This shot looks utterly uninspiring, but I did not shoot what it actually looks like. I shot the picture I had in my mind.

Actually, the picture in my mind wasn't exactly crystal clear at this time, but I knew I wanted something in the background, to help me transition from the flat plain, to the sky.

The Sky: Now You See It, but Mostly You don't!

The sky sucks where I live! Most of the time, it is a uniform, grey, 100% cloud cover. It is like living inside a giant softbox! Not only does the sky look boring, it also kills all shadows, because the clouds spread the light. It also mutes the light.

A couple of years ago, when I bought my DSLR, I thought it was broken at first, because the light was so bad. Now, I have learned to live with it, and to always, always, bring a couple of flashes with me.

On the rare occasions when there is a break in the cloud cover, I shoot anything even remotely interesting, just in case I will need it later.

Compositing: Just Do It!

When I had the pieces, I composited them with Pixelmator while sitting in a cafeteria at a local Laserdome. My son was invited to a birthday party, and I decided to bring my own fun.

I finished the picture later the same evening.

One useful little trick:

I match the light in the composite photos by adding a white layer on top of everything, and setting the blend mode to Saturation. This turns the picture black and white.

I can then change the light in each individual part, to roughly match the other parts.

Then, I match colors in a separate step, and add shadows where necessary.

Angel

This photo is practice for an angels and demons themed photo meetup I am hosting on the 13th of February in Gothenburg.

The model is Therese Ekblad.

I shot feathers and down, and put the wings together in Pixelmator. I plan to create at least two more wing designs for the photo shoot.

Skull Mountain

Just an idea I had in my head... It is winter, and the landscape in Partille, Sweden, looks quite otherworldly at times.

Not quite this otherworldly though. I made the mountain a bit higher, and added the skull. The skull is really an aquarium prop I bought awhile ago. It is nearly full size, and looks quite realistic.

Adding snow, trees, and ice to the skull was easy in Pixelmator.

Savage Heroes: Warzone! – How to Create a Superhero Picture

Recently, I did something I have wanted to do for a very long time: I created a full-scale superhero team slugfest picture!

The idea was to create a picture that could work as the centerfold in a Marvel or DC Comics superhero comic book adventure from the 80´s or 90´s: A messy, complicated fight, strong colors, and  heroes and villains that really let loose with their powers.

I wasn't alone. We were 12 people who worked together to create the picture. Here, in comic book format of course, is how we did it.

Photo Caricatures

Julia Reinhart

During a recent photo shoot I decided to make a few caricature shots of my friends. Of course, I could not ask them to pose for caricature photos without doing it myself, so I asked Julia Reinhart to take a photo of me.

Henrik Mårtensson (Photographer: Julia Reinhart)

Making photos like this is quite easy. I have used the various liquify tools in Pixelmator. Photoshop, The gimp, and other apps have similar tools.

Petri Olderhvit

My main tool was Warp, but I also used Bump, Pinch, and Twirl to good effect.

It is best to avoid stretching or otherwise enlarging parts of a face too much. The face will stretch, but will also loose texture.

A caricature works best when you exaggerate what is already there. Ask your subjects to make the weirdest facial expressions they can come up with, and work from there.

I had a lot of fun making these, and they certainly will not be my last caricature photos.

Droste effect with Pixelmator

I usually do droste effects with special software, but this time I decided to do it with Pixelmator.

The droste effect is interesting, and actually quite simple to do. You take part of a photo, and repeat it, over and over, giving the appearance of infinite repetition.

Here is the original photo. I asked my son, Tim, to hold a piece of colored cardboard, and took the shot.

I used Pixelmator's Paint Selection Tool and Magic Wand Tool to select the cardboard, and then used Edit->Refine Selection... to expand the selection by 1 pixel, and feather it slightly.

Then, I used the Eraser Tool to erase the cardboard, leaving a transparent hole in the photo.

I duplicated the photo, and then shrank and rotated the bottom layer, so it fit into the hole in the top layer.

I merged the two layers, which left me with a new picture with my first recursion, which of course had a smaller hole in it.

Then, I just repeated the process a couple of times: Duplicate, shrink, rotate, merge...

I exported the resulting photo, imported it into Aperture, and gave it a final touch, increasing definition, brightening it, and increasing the saturation just a touch.

Easy to do, and fun.

Victorious: How to turn toys terrifying with Pixelmator

I played with my son yesterday, and this gave me inspiration for an impromptu photo session. I recently hosted a Low Key photography themed Photo & Coffee meeting for people in my photography network, Fototräff i Göteborg (Photography meetup in Gothenburg). Low Key photography was still on my mind.

To take the shot above, used a DSLR and one remote controlled flash. The shot was taken in a living room. I did the following:

1. Set the camera on manual, and the ISO to the lowest possible setting.
2. Set the flash to manual, and reduced the strength to its minimum setting.
3. I put a speed grid on the flash to eliminate light spill. You can use a snoot, or an empty Pringles tube.
4. I put the action figure on the edge of a table.
5. I took the shot with the flash above the figure, and angled downwards. The camera was angled slightly up. This creates dramatic shadows, and makes the figure look quite large.

At this point, the photo looked like this:

Fairly good for an improvised shot of a toy, but the look is too shiny and plastic.

Enter Pixelmator, my favorite image editor.

At first, I thought I'd just do a quickie, and add some rain, so I created a new black layer and used Pixelmator's rain generator. I then selected the rain, created a mask that left only the raindrops visible, and changed the blend mode to screen.

I wasn't happy with Venom's tongue. In the original photo it looks very plastic, and I wanted a more organic look. I decided to add some texture by using an old photo of catfish skin. (Yes, I got stuff like that lying around from other projects.)

The catfish skin looked pretty good on the tongue, but even better on the armor, so I decided to keep it. I used a mask to erase it from the Iron Man helmet though.

Next, I selected all the brightest parts of the image, copied them to a new layer, added a tiny bit of Gaussian Blur, did something I don't quite remember (sorry about that), and changed the blend mode to Luminosity. This turned the highlights into gaping black holes. Perfect battle damage.

I used a soft brush with about 10-20% opacity to touch up the picture, mostly by painting on the various masks to hide or display parts of the original photo.

I created a layer for the blood, selected a deep red color, and used two spatter brushes from Pixelmator's Abstract brush set to paint blood around the gashes on the helmet and armor. I changed the blood layer blend mode to Darken. The best blend mode to use for blood can be different on different photos.

The blood looked a bit thin on the helmet, so I copied the blood layer, and erased all blood except the blood on the helmet on the copy. That gave me a bit stronger coloring on the helmet.

The armor looked a bit dry, so I copied it to a new layer, changed the blend mode to Overlay, and reduced the opacity to about 56%.

That gave me a pretty cool look.

Best of all, my son liked it!

The Lost World: George Makes a Split

This is as gruesome as we are going to get in the Lost World project. Grisly enough, I think. We have shot most of the material, but still have a lot of post processing to do.

Right now, I am very glad we decided to do the project in a comic book style. Photorealism would have been going just one step to far...

You might wonder just how we create an image like this. We are eight people in the project, and no one can draw worth a damn (unless they are keeping it a secret).

The process started in Comic Life 3, where I wrote a first draft of the script, and made a dummy layout with empty panels.

This makes it easy for the entire team to see what we are working on, and how it fits with the bits we have done, and all the stuff we haven't done yet.

The script and dummy layout is also a great help when the team discusses story ideas and improvements.

We always have a printed copy of the dummy layout when we are out shooting.

When we have done a shoot, we add photos to key panels as quickly as possible. This helps us track what we have done. It also gives us a sense of the look and feel of the whole thing.

We do most of the compositing in Pixelmator. As you can see, the composites are not photo realistic. They are not supposed to be either, since this is just an intermediary stage, before we import the photos into Comic Life 3 and apply the final drawing conversion there.

Working this way is a great timesaver. Photorealism takes time. Using a comic book style allows us to work much faster, and still create very exciting and interesting images.

Also, when we get to the goriest parts, like this photo of George and the T-Rexes, turning the photo into a drawing reduces the emotional impact a bit. We want to tell an exciting action story, not revel in blood and gore.

See you!