Sunday, May 31, 2009

Little Princess


I made these images for my niece. She's three years old now. She loves playing dress-up as a princess. My cousin asked me to compile her photos and create a fantasy-like collage. I didn't know what people consider as fantasy, so I gave my best shot.

The first image was easy. I just piled a photo of some clouds on top of my niece's larger photo, and changed the opacity of the top layer until I was happy with the result, and then I merged both layers. I shrunk the other eight pictures of her and add some layer masks and painted some black on the edges with an airbrush. Done.

With the second image, I used more care to create the apples. Here, I compiled four photos. One was still in the actual size, the other three I shrunk. Same basic layer masks addition to soften the edges. After all the photo layers were merged, I pasted the apple image I made in another window to a new layer. Adjusted the size, then copy-pasted it until I had my border consisted of apples. Done.

The third image only used one photo and three pumpkin carriages. I erased the background of the photo and placed it in the middle of the canvas. I added some background color with gradient fill. I already made the pumpkin carriage picture and only changed the size and color for this collage.

The steps were simple for a professional graphic designer. Not for me. I spent days working on these. But it's all for my niece. Now she can happily show off her charm on her father's YM.

Saturday, May 30, 2009

First Sketch with Digital Paint

I made this image just yesterday. It's based on my first sketch from the previous post. I kind of skipped the tracing step, and went straight to painting. Alright, the painting was basically only filling the blanks with paint bucket tool. I'm still not brave enough to erase the outline.

The result is so very flat. I don't really have the ability to shade and highlight images, but will try, though. Will try the hardest. Hopefully it can be better. More 3D-ish. I'm a bit happy with red color on the heart. Very simple to make, too. I only use gaussian blur for the shade and highlight. No idea what to do about the wings. How do you make some wispy effect? Wispy is good for wings. Maybe airbrush from the brush preset with additional spatters can do the trick. This is the time to experiment ....

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Digital Image: Rose


At first I only wanted to make a simple line art image from Beast's rose. But the result was not really satisfying. It was plain. Granted, the first one was a white-on-black.

I loaded the image selection, did an inversion of said selection, and filled it with red. I ended up having a red ink blot with gaps all over the place. But from my point of view, the current result has more character. I kind of like this one better. I added some white and a bit of maroon to give it a more three-dimensional look. The background was the easiest. It started with a depressing gray, then with a pinch of filter (noise and lightening effect), it turned out not so depressing after all. The sparkles, I shamelessly ripped them off from Beauty and the Beast.

Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Kiddies Sketch

I made this drawing for my niece last valentine. I never really thought about what I drew. Only now I realize, the sketch might imply inter species love relationship and an Easter bunny without the eggs. And the girl has a fox dolly. And they all live happily over the rainbow. Talk about psychosis of the craziest order.

The sketch was drawn on an A4 paper, using pencil and black ink. Ballpoint, not drawing pen. I can't think of the color scheme. Pink is definitely a must and the bear should be brown. Other than that, I haven't got a clue.