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Posted on 23/11/07 6:40:54 PM |
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DanielCoffey
* Posts: 19 Reply  |
Reworked POLTERGEIST movie poster
This image is the first I have completed after switching from Photoshop Elements 5.0 to Photoshop CS3. The comparison in features of the two tools is like night and day! Firstly a very necessary explanation... I play Everquest2 and the main character in the poster is my Ratonga (Rat-man) character. In the original, there was a teddy-bear lying flat on the carpet. I have replaced it with the Everquest2 equivalent, a ragdoll called Billy. Every Everquest2 player both hates and loves Billy. In addition, I should point out that the Ratonga (certainly on the Roleplaying Servers) have a strong accent or speech trait. They pronounce You as Yus and scatter plenty of extra s'es all over the place. Anything goes as long as you are consistent. I should also mention that Vermin is the name of my (almost all Ratonga) Guild or group in Everquest2. They are sneaky, dirty, low-down rats to a man... er, rat. Here to delight you is a Tribute Image to that wonderful 1982 horror classic - POLTERGEIST - I hope Heather O'Rourke would be proud to be a Ratonga! Click the links below for larger versions of the image. |
Posted on 24/11/07 01:19:41 AM |
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vicho
Ingenious Inca Posts: 248 Reply  |
Re: Reworked POLTERGEIST movie poster
it`s a very impressive picture! |
Posted on 27/11/07 8:10:30 PM |
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Progenic
** Posts: 104 Reply  |
Re: Reworked POLTERGEIST movie poster
Hi Daniel I must admit i dont knows very much about role playing games or indeed vermin, but nice image of the very classic scene. did you create it from scratch or have you 'shopped' the original ? |
Posted on 28/11/07 09:42:27 AM |
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DanielCoffey
* Posts: 19 Reply |
Re: Reworked POLTERGEIST movie poster
Thanks for the kind comments, folks - I had great fun setting up the picture. The first trick was posing the figure. Everquest2 allows certain "emotes" that your character can carry out (typing "/bow" makes your character stand straight then execute a bow then return to a straight position). You can't pause the animation and you cannot pose the figure yourself, so you have to be handy with the screenshot command. I had to stitch four poses together to get the figure in this position. Firstly a /sit got him to sit on his heels and put his hands on his lap, the first /wave got his right arm and sleeve in the correct position but obscured his hand with his head and ears so a second /wave was used just to get a shot of the hand. A /bye got him to wave goodbye enthusiastically with both hands so a whole pile of screenshots were used until I got one of his left arm and sleeve and hand in the correct pose. Then I had a ton of selecting and cutting out and rotating to do. After I had the figure posed properly I had to repair the clothing a lot - the game stretches textures badly when figures move. Under the arms and shoulders had to be reworked. I then took the original movie poster, chopped off the text, cloned out the girl and original teddy-bear and seperated the screen and carpet. I resized them up to fit the proportions of the figure. This gave a composition problem because Heather O'Rourke was a young girl but this figure is an adult (though the Ratonga are the third smallest race in Everquest2). I did a lot of repair work on the television - it was a very low-res scan so I had to smooth off a lot of the panels and totally heal the screen. I used a jittery brush to reapply the static. Once the figure was posed, I added the new toy figure. Billy, the name of the toy is an iconic monster found in a creepy castle in Everquest2 - everyone hates him and loves him at the same time. He is the object of a tragic storyline in the game so is highly recognisable to Everquest2 players. Cutting out his hair was a total pain! I then adusted the shadows cast by the television onto the carpet to fit the figures, desaturated them both and added the green cast to them. I then selectively blurred the central figure - the hands, arms and light clothes got a lot, the head got some and the heavy clothes got less. This way the figure looks like it is haloed by the light from the screen properly. Finally I checked what typefaces were used in the original and used them for the text. As I explained above, Vermin is a group of players who (mainly) play Ratonga characters. We are supposed to be sneaky, slightly evil, troublemakers, lowlifes and so on. We have quite a reputation on the Server we play on, so the theme for the poster fitted our outlook in the game very well. There... phew... that was how it was done. My first piece of CS3 work and it was fun! == Daniel. |
