Concept
To keep up my practice during the semester break, I decided to scour the internet for various projects and briefs I felt I could use to improve. One of the projects I decided to take on was this book cover graphic contest by deviantART stock photographer Cathleen Tarawhiti. The rules were pretty simple. The main photo had to be one of the stocks she provided in the post about the contest, and any other stocks used for the graphic had to allow commercial usage. My first idea for the contest was to turn the stock model into a cyborg.
Breakdown
Stocks
To start with, I needed to decide on which of her photos I would use, and hunt for any other stocks I might need along the way. I decided to use the stock photo, pictured left, as well as:
What a Mess by deviantARTist cyniknet
And several metal texture photos I took a few years back.
Colours
Once I had my photos selected, I got to work on making her a cyborg. To begin with, while the model is pretty good on her own, the lighting and coloring wasn't as dramatic as I had in my head starting out. To begin, I removed the wall from behind the model and replaced it with one of the metal textures mentioned above. I then set the base lighting on it, to have a reference for how I would colour correct the model.
With the knowledge of how I would be shading things, I proceeded to shift the colours of everything. I made her skin slightly more toned with a dark overlay, and using a lot of masks and filled layers for colour, made her hair more red than brown. The most drastic change, though, was shifting her eyes from a dark brown to bright, glowing green. I did this in much the same way that I did with Rachel Morgan from the fake magazine cover I recently did, using the brush and various layers to make them seem to almost glow. For safety's sake, I did both eyes, because I wasn't at this point sure which side I would be making robotic...
Not Quite Robotic
I decided fairly quickly that the eventual darker side of her face, once I shaded her to match the background, would give the robotics beneath her skin more drama. To start with, I replaced her eye, as it would be the less daunting task to deal with. To accomplish the effect, I positioned and scaled the Cables 06 photo until it was pretty much exactly where her real eye was. I then masked the photo so it was constrained to the area from the bridge of her nose to her hair. I also shifted the center to be a red color, and darkened everything else around it. I repeated this process for placing wires in her mouth, as well.
Once I had those done, I set to doing the most challenging part of the design, the actual metal body under her fake skin. To start, I selected the area I wanted the metal to show, and used that to mask out the skin from the photo. I then applied a metal texture to the whole thing, and applied a bevelling effect to make it seem more curved and warped. As can be seen, at this stage, it looked more like an acrylic mask than what I intended...
Shading
To get it to be closer to what I wanted, I had to work on the overall shading. To begin with, I made a layer with half the image white and the other black, and set it to overlay onto the photo. This definitely made the mask blend better, and as a bonus made the human eye more pop. I also added more texture to the mask, making it slightly darker and more metallic. This wasn't exactly what I was going for, though...
Effects
After I had my shading set, the last thing I really had to work on was making the robotic side fit what I wanted from the start. To start with, I made a number of extra shading layers on the right to make it starker, and more curved in appearance. Making it appear to be curving around behind her skull, and to being even further beneath her hair, gave the metal more a more 3D appearance. This had the added bonus of making it sleeker.
I then did much the same thing to the other side of the metal, until it felt like the skin was on top of the mask through shadow and highlights. While I was at this, I also added more of a glow to her cybernetic eye. When I was satisfied with the shading, I went on to make it more metal and less mask-like, by adding in partially hidden rivets beneath the skin, and reflecting the rivets, as well as the hair. To finish the step, I duplicated the cyborg and made her very nearly transparent against the background metal, to give the image slightly more depth.
Finalization
At this point, the design was pretty much done. To really finish it, I got in very close and proceeded to add in touches of dark and light to make the metal more polished. I also added more shading and texture around the edges of the skin, to add a touch more depth to the final image.
At this point, I was pretty happy with how the image came out. I debated whether to add in placeholder text or not. In the end, I decided that, since I had no idea what kind of writer or publisher would potentially be seeing it, it would be better to leave text out of it for the sake of the contest's judging, and handle the type at a later date if I won and it was purchased.
Results
I didn't win the poll my cover was entered in, but overall, I think this came out pretty well.
No comments:
Post a Comment