Results 1 to 9 of 9

Thread: Digital Photo art: Transformers Bluestreak

  1. Digital Photo art: Transformers Bluestreak

    So... I did this for a photo/Photoshop contest. Specifically, a Transformers battle scene photo/Photoshop contest. Right up my alley.

    For those of you who aren't familliar with the material, this is the Bluestreak toy I photographed:



    It's an old toy designed in the late 70's that isn't terribly dynamic in robot form, but a really cool design none-the-less.

    Well, I decided to give the old fella' a little action. I took dozens of photos of the toy from various angles. I ended up using 11 (or 12? ah, doesn't matter) of the different-angle shots composited together into an action shot. In addition to the different angles used, I applied a liberal amount of warping to each part to get the more "cartoon-like" proportions of the final image.

    Then I got lucky and it rained like hell outside my house, giving me the perfect background image.

    Fire, explosions, rain effects, and lasers were all scratch-drawn in Photoshop.



    What'd'ya think?










    And just for fun here's what Bluestreak ended up looking like before being plopped into the action:

    Last edited by Cheebs; 01 Sep 2006 at 11:38 AM.

  2. I'd very much like to know how you did those effects, if you don't mind giving away secrets.

  3. #3
    Killer!

    That looks awesome.

  4. Quote Originally Posted by ChaoofNee View Post
    I'd very much like to know how you did those effects, if you don't mind giving away secrets.
    It would be much easier for me to just upload my PSD files with the individual layers and let you see....But I can't get to them until probably Tuesday.


    In general, for the explosion near bluestreak's shoulder I drew a blurry cloud of red, yellow, and white against a black background. Then I did a layer on top of that of the Photoshop filter render clouds in black and white. I set the render clouds layer to "color burn". Then I took another layer of a composite of the whole thing and applied that "crack" texture filter. I kinda' forget a few steps....but the cracks were darkened, hit with the "splatter" sketch filter, blurred, spherical distored where needed to puff them out, and then I scrolled through blend modes to get the appropriate "chunks of soot" effect. Much of that layer was selected with a highly feathered lasso and cut out. Again, I'm not exactly sure since I did an ass-load of trial-and-error. The PSD file should clear it up.

    The laser was easy. Mask out a line with the lasso tool. Give it an inner glow. Copy the layer to a new layer underneath, scale it up a *tiny* bit, and then use the smudge tool to get the energy seeping off the edges effect. I also used the ocean ripple effect on the background photo near the edges of the laser.

    The laser reflection in the water is nothing more than a line gone over with the smudge tool.

    The water drops on the robot himself was all layer effects. I can't remember them off the top of my head. Again, I'll upload the PSD and you can check out the layer settings. Every water drop was just painted with pure black and then smudged.

    The giant water splash... Man, that was just a ton of hand painting along with motion blurring. Some layer effects too.


    I'll upload as soon as I can.


  5. Also if you have the original background that'd be nice to see as well.

  6. OK guys. Here's the PSDs. I didn't want to shrink the image size, because then my layer settings would be useless. I also didn't want to delete invisible layers, because in every case they are an "in-between" step of the visible layers. The result is a PSD that's over 100 megs. Please don't pass this link around to everybody and kill my bandwidth.

    Unfortunatly, many intermediate steps got killed in layer mergings. In many cases I don't remember what I even did. In all cases where something is blurred, it was either motion blur or Gausian blur.

    Have fun. Hope you can make sense out of any of it. Post any specific questions and I'll answer the best I can.

    Main composite image:
    http://www.fluffypotato.com/Photosho...rain test2.psd

    Explosion behind Bluestreak
    http://www.fluffypotato.com/PhotoshopDemo/Explosion.psd

    Explosion in front of Bluestreak
    http://www.fluffypotato.com/Photosho...Explosion2.psd

    Bluestreak Himself: The PSDs follow his evolution in order. Each one represents a new "Flattening" to keep the number of layers under control.

    http://www.fluffypotato.com/Photosho...Bluestreak.psd
    http://www.fluffypotato.com/Photosho...luestreak2.psd
    http://www.fluffypotato.com/Photosho...luestreak3.psd


    These can't be up here forever due to server space, so let me know when you've gotten 'em!

    Oh, and Thief Silver, the original BG is included in the main composite PSD... But if you don't want to download the whole 100 meg monster the BG is here: http://www.fluffypotato.com/Photosho...Background.jpg
    The background was rotated and perspective-adjusted a bit for the final image, but this is it right off the camera.
    Last edited by Cheebs; 05 Sep 2006 at 05:10 PM.

  7. Got 'em. This'll really help me understand the program a little better.
    Thanks, man.

  8. wow, man. thats pretty amazing. when i first saw the finished pic, i thought you did it with 3ds max or something.
    Quote Originally Posted by Pineapple View Post
    my cat fucked my sister.

Bookmarks

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •  
Games.com logo