THESE FORUMS NOW CLOSED (read only)
Fun Stuff => MAKE => Topic started by: Switchblade on 29 Jan 2007, 19:04
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Okay, so, as a player of Pen and paper RPGs in my spare time, I often wind up wanting to create representations of my characters, but more often than not find my digital painting skills aren't up to the challenge.
So, when I joined an RP based on "The Matrix" a couple of weeks ago, I decided to take a different angle and try editing a photo of a real person instead.
The backstory behind the character is that he was Awakened following a horrific car crash inside the matrix. This left him blind in his left eye, but caused him to realise the Truth about the matrix and the real world - a fair trade in his opinion.
He's a big guy (7'2") who used to work as a historical re-enactor whose specialty was in swords and other medieval weapons. he used to hand-craft them for sale and for demonstration at various renaissance faires around the country. As a result of doing actual forge work, he's pretty strong as well.
After a bit of searching on the net, I found this picture, which almost precisely matched the image I had in my head for the character's appearance. Namely this:
(http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y31/SwitchbladeUK/8-bouncer-001.jpg)
the two problems I faced involved 1: creating a convincing scar for his face, and 2: lightening the image.
The first step was to convert the image to greyscale
(http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y31/SwitchbladeUK/seb-realworld.jpg)
I then used the Burn and Dodge tools, shaped using "feathered" brush shapes such as this one: (http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y31/SwitchbladeUK/brush75.jpg) to "paint" on light and dark changes to the greyscale version of the face. I also used a pale shade of grey to fill in the left eye, and then the Burn tool to darken the area around the iris and pupil slightly again.
(http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y31/SwitchbladeUK/seb-scars.jpg)
Finally, to restore colour to the face, I blended in the original image as a mask over the greyscale version.
(http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y31/SwitchbladeUK/seb-scars-colour.jpg)
All done using a WACOM graphire. What do you think?
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ha, dude thats nice. im really not into actually useing Photoshop to edit photos, i make those forum siggy things, my photobucket has got pages of pages of that stuff. i'd show it but i doubt that people would wanna see it. :-D
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hell, I do those. I have a little library of them related to my corporation and alliance in EVE Online:
(http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y31/SwitchbladeUK/Stitcherbanner2.jpg)
(http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y31/SwitchbladeUK/Stitcherbanner5.jpg)
(http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y31/SwitchbladeUK/Stitcherbanner6.jpg)
(http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y31/SwitchbladeUK/stitcherbannergalaxyquest.jpg)
They're basic, but they suit my purposes.
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Haha, that's enough to make you think twice about putting a picture up anywhere online these days. If it's not gonna be photoshopped onto porn, then it'll be turned into someone's RPG alias, hehe.
All in all, I'd say you did a pretty nice job with it, especially the scar. The eye itself, though, looks a little too photoshopped. I understand he's blind in that eye, so it's going to stand out and look gray, but maybe you could mix different shades of gray among the pupil and the white areas or something. It just looks too uniform. But other than that, pretty cool.
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Haha, that's enough to make you think twice about putting a picture up anywhere online these days. If it's not gonna be photoshopped onto porn, then it'll be turned into someone's RPG alias, hehe.
All in all, I'd say you did a pretty nice job with it, especially the scar. The eye itself, though, looks a little too photoshopped. I understand he's blind in that eye, so it's going to stand out and look gray, but maybe you could mix different shades of gray among the pupil and the white areas or something. It just looks too uniform. But other than that, pretty cool.
Yeah, they eye's still the sticking point on the picture. I've been experimenting, but that kind of whited out "dead eye" look is extremely difficult to get right it seems. I'll tweak it over time and see if I can't improve it some more.
rule 34: if it exists, there's porn of it
rule 37: if they're a person, somebody can make an RP character based off them.
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yeah, I keep thinking it would be cool to see Cuba Gooding Jr. play harvey Dent in the new Batman so I did this with photoshop this afternoon.
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v646/silly_bob/cubatwoface.jpg)