Overview:
This week, we were learning about various photo bashing techniques, along with colour matching and blending. I decided to create a manticore, as it seemed a pretty good test to photo bash considering it is a mixture of various different animal characteristics.
I had technical difficulties at the end that meant the latter half of my work on the manticore and the entire lot of work on the landscape were erased as I was prevented from saving by the scratch disk being full, and when I was able to save and also export to be safe, I closed as the save was successful but the photoshop files and png files refused to open.
Process:
At first I found my images of a lion for the main body and head, a scorpion for its tail, and a ram for its horns.
I used a combination of magic wand and manual lasso tool to remove each of these animals from their backgrounds and separate the desired parts.
I found the blending between the different parts to be particularly difficult as lions don’t tend to have arachnid exoskeletons or ram horns so the materials seemed quite contrasting, however after playing around with the blur tool, the mixing brush and other colour correction and matching techniques, it got to a stage where it looked relatively cohesive as a creature.
For the landscape, I decided to choose a desert rock structure thing as it seemed like a good cross section between the lion’s savannah and the scorpion’s desert habitats. Also it looked like a cool place to have a powerful mythical beast wondering around.
For the background, I chose the aurora, which seemed to enhance the dramatic feeling by making the sky glow with a green colour. I then set both the manticore and the landscape against the sky in colour match tool to give them both a fitting nighttime glow and lighting rather than both looking like they were in the middle of the sun.
Improvements:
I think especially on the manticore itself, the blending between the different body parts like the chitin of the scorpion and the fur of the lion could have seen some improvement, but I feel in the finished product it blends in well enough to not be glaringly obvious when part of the whole scene.
Conclusion:
Overall, I was happy with my finished product and how it looked with the mountain and aurora giving it a cool and dramatic style of landscape and lighting. However for whatever reason, neither the photoshop save files or .png exports worked, meaning that about 4 total hours of work were essentially erased. I will eventually remake the scene to prove that I learnt the necessary techniques but for now I am going to carry on because I feel that I have explored this area enough to be satisfied with my progress.
