UnknownSouljer
[H]F Junkie
- Joined
- Sep 24, 2001
- Messages
- 9,041
Dude, the photoChop forum is << that way. But seriously that is really cool - makes me want to get some fun projects like this going again.
If you don't mind a bit of critique: I like several of the components of this, but honestly they’re not meshing all that well in this version here, and the composition isn't doing much for me. I think playing with the proportions and placement-balance might help; I’d also like to see some other angles, but guessing that’s not an option at this point (you might try some overlapping to indicate more dynamic perspective). Try making the model larger/smaller in proportion, and try giving them more breathing room (sky) to get her more vertically centered and/or closer to the 1/3 mark in the image.
The biggest issue though is that the quality of the 3D render doesn't look photographic like all the other elements, and the lighting doesn't match, so it seems really out of place. It mostly looks like a roughed-in comp for a more advanced render later. If you can get the textures and lighting of the render more photographic and more in-line with the lighting of the model, I think that'd go a long way toward making this a more cohesive image. The other option would be to paint over the entire image in PS to at least give the same stylized look and texturing to both the model and the 3d-render, but of course that'd be many hours’ worth of work to complete.
My favorite part of this is actually the fire-ball. I’m very curious to know if you took the photo of that, or if it was part of the 3D generated part. I think it’d be pretty awesome to see a version of this where the primary light of the whole scene is an orange glow emanating from the fire.
I could give a long response, but the super short version is: there isn't any rendering done here.... Not entirely certain why you think there is.
That's a real 30 foot tall snake made by a metal sculptor in the Anza-Borrego Desert.
This was all done in camera with a single image. The only alterations were a background swap and adding the fireball, which like I mentioned earlier, I almost didn't do. I almost didn't comp the background either. The lighting literally does have to match, because... well it was reality. If that bakes your brain, I'm not sure what to tell you.
Lastly, the model’s outfit seems really out of place with the fantasy theme of the dragon. If you do end up doing a full-blown PS painting out of this I assume you’ll paint her in a more interesting outfit.
Leslie is a ballet dancer. So she's wearing a white leotard, a common dance element. Every image in this set is hopefully usable by her and of course by myself. I wanted to have her doing something that wasn't typical ballet. She already has a bunch of shots of her doing Grande Jette's and things of that nature, so I wanted to give her something different. Kicking a massive serpent in the face seemed different enough. It isn't supposed to be fantasy per se. It is supposed to be simple. It's about her and who she is and facing fear and challenges. The serpent is a 'physical manifestation' of fear. But that's art, you have your interpretation.
Oh, and yeah, it really needs some ground or something under/above the model to indicate how she got up there – suspension of disbelief and all that. She just looks a bit cut-&-pasted there at the moment.
Height and positioning of Leslie is intentional. She's the underdog in this fight, jumping up. Yeah, I did fool around with even having her come from above, but every extreme thing I did played against my sensibilities. She has been moved up slightly, but nothing 'extreme'. As I mentioned earlier, I did a huge amount of revisions. I ended up where I did intentionally, if for no other reason but because of the massive iterative process. Not everything is for everyone. I'm happy with how the work ended up on this one.
Well, as you'll note by looking below at the original, it was shot intentionally with the ground out of frame. That was by design. I didn't want the viewer to have the ground as that wrecks the illusion. I guess I could have added that in post... but in case you haven't figured it out from my earlier responses, it was by design.
Every part of the image was planned. Heck, I did the same shot earlier when I did preproduction two weeks before the shoot, just so that I would know for sure what I wanted was possible. (The below image has been edited slightly, as I removed the support beam from under the chin of the Serpent, you'll note I did the same in my final image. It helped me to see what kind of retouching was possible before the shoot. Robin was not moved up in the frame at all, and of course only minimal white balancing and slight color grading was applied).
Great work as usual overall – can’t wait to see the final product on this!
This is the final. I have no intention of making any other alterations.
Original:
And the final again:
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