Final Image

(click to see full-size)

This started with a render. Well, first it started with an idea about a girl who gives up her world of colors for the novelty of black and white. And then came the render. This took me about 2-3 hours to set up in Studio, and then probably another 2 hours or so to render out at 3600×3600. (Naturally I did this overnight, so I don’t know the exact render time)

This was the result of that.

I'm just a girl in the world...

I wanted something beautiful and magical in feeling, but I didn’t want the distraction of focusing on the girl’s looks rather than her actions, so I thought a full-back shot would be best. I lost the companion butterfly pretty quickly, as it just didn’t work in the final image, but otherwise this render needed very little post.

Next I chose a background, I wanted a large flat plain with a little bit of background interest, so I found this stock photo that reminded me a little bit of Dutch countryside.

I chopped it in half so I could use different effects with the grass and the background trees, and I added this sky for the cloud interest.

I added this tree for midground interest, with some gaussian blur to place it correctly in the distance.

After that I played quite a bit with the layers, merging everything together in a way that made sense to me visually. For the foreground, to give some weight and interest to the area where the girl was supposed to be living, I found this great stock tree -roots image, which actually appears on both sides of the image, just flipped and repositioned and otherwise fiddled with.

After that I added the flowers on the ground and around the roots from some photos I took in my Mom’s backyard, which I wanted to look like creeping phlox, even though they were actually pretty ordinary petunias. (if my Mom’s flowers can ever be considered ordinary.)

After that is was just fiddling, erasing, shadowing, playing with the black and white effect, more fiddling, walking away, coming back, fiddling again, etc. I had many more and different flowers added in at various points, but they all felt too distracting. All told I worked on this image for about four days on and off, and I was pretty happy with the result. (Work done in PSCS3, and the final image is 5200×3600 and about 630MB with all its layers.)

This was perhaps more colorful in the foreground in my mind’s eye, but when I attempted that in reality it lost its cohesion, so I left the colors more muted. Hopefully it still makes the point of the transition from color to non-color. I also struggled with having the girl lit from behind and having sunlight in the far distance, but in the end I decided that despite the incongruity, her world gives off its own light, and might compete with the light of the world she was walking into. It’s a fantasy image – dual light sources are at my discretion, right?

I have a companion piece to this in mind, now it’s just finding the time. Here are some alternative renders of the girl, just for the heck of it.

Click to embiggen

You can also see this larger at my gallery at Renderosity, if you hang there.

This is just how I’ve been feeling lately, which, if you read my stuff here you already know. Overexposed with too many people needing too many things. all at one time .

The work was done in a mixture of DAZ|Studio (girl, hands) and Photoshop (mostly everything else) with a little bit of Illustrator (for the dress pattern) thrown in. Originally I had envisioned this going much grungier and layered, espescially in the spray area, but once I started working on it I just kept reducing and reducing until it was a graphical as it needed to be. Anyway, I hope you enjoy  – I kind of want to make a t-shirt out of this.

Burroughs Prom Invite Pushes Envelope.

So those wacky over-privileged kids at Burrough’s created this over-the-top invite to an after-prom party.

With a theme of either “Lust” or “Sin” (I really can’t tell – maybe the theme is just “debauchery” or “we have no sense”) it features “satanic” imagery (a pentagram) and invites all “sinners” to come enjoy the fun. There was a minor brouhaha over the invite, and I think any reasonable observer would say that it really was not appropriate for a high-school audience, no matter the school in question.(I do love the defenders who say it’s more OK for Burroughs’ kids to do this, since they’re so smart and special and elite and need to blow off steam, darnit.)

But what really caught my eye was this cover image, which I recognized immediately as belonging to Marta Dahlig. Marta is a prolific Polish digital artist who contributes digital painting training materials & tutorials to many of the art magazines I read. This image belongs to a series of “Seven Deadly Sins” that she completed a few years ago, and I actually own a print of her image Vanity.

Marta’s popularity has skyrocketed in the last few years, and so I doubt that these kids could have afforded to license her work for use on this invitation (of course, they’re Burroughs’ kids, so who knows?)

If they didn’t license the work then they’ve stolen it. Is art thievery all part of the “sinners” theme of their prom? Perhaps there could be a few lessons learned here  – one on using discretion in party-planning and in thinking things through before we go to print with them, and one on respect for copyright and other people’s artwork.

I’ve emailed a link to the PD story to Marta, and am interested to hear back from her whether the work is, in fact, licensed.

The Clearing

Originally uploaded by Erin_T

I adore this type of work. Any kind of landscape built in miniature and photographed to look life-size makes me feel like I am about three years old, and that all my daydreams are possible.

Any kind of forced-perspective, playing with scale and DOF work totally draws me in. I could look at this for an hour. Imaginary worlds – infinitely preferable to my own.

Go have a look at all of her work, some of the snowy scenes really remind me of creepy snowglobes.

Click to embiggen, it's totally worth it.

Anyway, normally I don’t geek out over limited edition things, but this is Gaiman and I absolutely love not only the poem but also the illustrations by Jouni Koponen. Then add the fact that there are only 750 of them in the world…

Originally Neil had posted about it on his blog. I saw it, thought (in a moment of fiscal responsibility) that I probably didn’t technically need such a thing. Waited a month and still was thinking about it, so that (plus the fact that 20% of the proceeds are donated to the CBLDF) finally forced my hand. Had to have. I am actually thinking about redesigning my bedroom around this poster, since my bedroom is stupid looking and I have felt uninspired to change it. I think color blocks like this might be really cool.

Now I just have to go about finding a 10″x28″ frame. Hints and suggestions?

THE DAY THE SAUCERS CAME

Obamicon.Me – DREW by superbadgirl. Obamacise (Shephardize?) your own uploaded images courtesy of Paste magazine.

Saw this Worth1000 Photoshop contest via Boing Boing, loved this image in particular. (Note: this isn’t mine, just thought it was cool. Can’t give attribution b/c the artist chose not to reveal their name on the site.)

Equal parts cool and creepy

Full size at Rendo, for those who partake.

Love you! Mean it! – S

This girl has got a smile that can make me cry.

She flies outside this cage
Singing girl-mad words
I keep her dark thoughts deep inside
As black as stone
And mad as birds

This is based on the main character of my second NaNo novel, and the photography I did last week in Benton Park.

Had to do a little day-to-night action on the BG photo, but I am very pleased with it. Click here for full size (it’s worth it, much better at 1200px wide)

Also at Rendo for those who hang there.