Final elements and touches

I wanted the other main elements within this image to match the work I had made on the clock. I already had visions of the ‘dunce’ being placed on the floor under the clock however I was still undecided on what effecst to place on her. After some experimentation I finally found hat the best images seem to have some consistency about them so I chose to use the same technique on the ‘dunce’.

Seeing that this worked I decided not to break the habit and I used the same effects on my final chosen object, the cauldron.

The final touches were to make sure that all the elements and objects complimented each other in their porportions and where they were situated within the composition.

Image 1: Final touches

The fianl touches to this images as to dirty it up a bit. The first thing was to add some tea stain looks and drips. These were faded and coloured to melt into the background and blend in.

Also one last change was to even out the musical balance. The notes etc had been mainly focused on the top left of the image and I needed something simple to create a slight balance in the bottom right. This simple element was more music from the stock pack image.

 

Image 2: The begining

For this image I wanted to use my three favourite stock pack images, the interesting part being the creation of making them all work together on the same platform. This really is going to be an image that is full of my persona favourite photoshop elements. I made some research and simplly saved all the images that I really enjoyed and thought that I could replicate. From this there was some reoccuring themes, mostly of flame and shatters. So these were the elements I wished to include the most.

The clock I felt was one of the most interesting and visually pleasing images, so I took this as a starting point. I didn’t really have a real direction for the compostition only an idea of the elements I wished to use. Knowing that I wanted to have flame I felt that the best starting background would be black, in order to bring out any reds, oranges and yellows of flames that I will later use.

So I masked out the clock and then with a brush with a middle opacity I created some darker areas on the right hand side to create some shadowing.

Using a clipping mask and a black and white adjustment layer, also a levels adjustment layer, I was able to give the clock a black and white/ darker feel. Not because I want to give the clock an ‘old’ feel as such but I am hoping having a colour scheme like this will help to create a smokey effect later.

To first add a smookey effect I started a new layer and used the ‘clouds’ effect. Using a soft brush eraser I removed any unwanted areas of ‘smoke’. I also had to reduce the opacity to remove some of the intensity in the bright white and grey colouring.

While researching different smoke tehniques I came across a new way to create a very simple and whispy floor which I decided to develop and use to underline the clock as such and to start giving the image some depth. This was created by adding  new cloud effect layer and bringing down the height. After that it was simple to use a black soft brush to clean up any sharp edges.

The clock face was looking a little too clean for my liking so I found a gravel wall texture to try and make the clock look a little more damaged. This I masked in and removed any unwanted areas.

However, as the image above shows, adding a texture lots some of the grey smokiness that the clock face had. This was simply fixed by adding two adjustment layers, the first being a black and white the other being a levels.

My next thought was to add some flame to the image and bring some colour and intensity to it. I used a stock image of some flames and had to play around with different methods so that the flames looked real and not to heavy or false. The process I ended up using in the final image was taking a feathered lasso tool and selected an area of the orignial flame stock image. After removing the rest of that image I was able to mask it and by using a soft brush remove any harsh edges or unwanted background.

I wanted a bit ore depth to the colour of the flame so I adjusted the colour to make it more red-ish and then masked out areas back to the original colour scheme to give a rounded range of colour.To expand on the flame I wanted some flecks to appear off and around the clock and flame. This was created in the same way as the first flame however it was masked more intensly. The only difference also being that I used the ‘liquify’ effect so that these flecks seemed like one long flame rather than a group.

I have always been fasinated with shattering effects using photoshop and I thought this gave me perfect scope to experiment. By using different sized and shaped brushes I masked out small ares of the clock and at random intervals, this left the dges very ruptured. Then on a new layer I used the same types of brushes as before and brushed around and out of the clock. Just outside the areas that I had previously erased. The colous matched that of the differing areas of the clock. This gave quite an interesting shattering effects that I think works well.

The final element to the clock was to add some lighting to really make the clock striking. I tried a range of colourings but none worked as well as the golden effect that I went for. The light was a soft brush highlighting the edges with the layer blending mode set to overlay.

 

 

Image 1: Adding some extra detail

After evaluating the image so far I had found some elements that I was not completely happy with and thought that the image as a whole was still a bit bland. It was not the abstract explosion of creativity that I had hoped for. However, after this I managed to create some more elements to give the composition some depth.

I had concentrated on feminine objects and elements that would work with the girl however I now wanted to add something a bit more musical to work with the Gramaphone.

Here I used the stock images of the music book, cutting out the musicical notes and chnaging the levels and opacity I was able to lay down some effective music.  with the use of some musical brushes and other musical elements a little blended feature was created.

After these small elements were added I branched out and found some larger pieces to include that would add depth. I duplicated several objects and changed the black and white scale and blending modes to create contrasts between the images.

In order to give some scope I used large feathered brush strakes with differing size, opacity and blending modes to give some sweeping effects around the main image. This roughened up the image and made less of a harshness between the main image and the background.

Final images

Final design view:

Tweaking

A quick render to show what needs slightly changing .. I think the main issue here is the lighting.

The above shows a frame now around the ‘mirror”. Wooden material added which matches the smaller mirror.

The above shows some corner spot lamps to highlight the walls.

Change to the flooring, something a little less heavy in colour:

A shift in idea

I have come to the conclusion that having a floating bar with a cloudy exterior is not the right path for this image. My head is not fully happy with the idea and because of this I was not achieving anything just staring at the screen.

However, while staring at the screen, I did have a fresh idea that I thought could be more interesting and have a better outcome. This is not the idea of a never ending bar as such but on the back wall remove the top wall part and have what will appear to be a mirror. It will actually be a plain piece of glass but behind that I will recreate a mirror image of the original bar area.

All elements had to be placed identically in reverse. Even down to things such as the lettering on the welcome mat and mirror had to be in reverse. This was slightly tricky to get every element in the exact position but hopefully it will be rewarding in the end.

The above image is one without a centre wall, this render was created to gain some perspective on where this would actually work or not.

The image above is a part render. It includes a centre wall with a large open space on the top half of the wall and you can start to see the objects in the “reflection”.

Cloud experiments

Experimenting with differing cloud and smoke textures and materials was an interesting venture, However, it did have a rather taxing render time to it. There where elements and settings that got you from light fog to dense smoke. However, all of these did not have the look nd feel I was hoping for. Here are some examples:

Although this is a fasinating material to explore I feel that it isn’t exactly the feel I am trying to achieve.

Surface changes

All the way through this development I have had the thought that there wasn’t something quite right about all of the wood materials. The pool table wood surfaces were far to ‘noisey’ to look really real. To fix this problem I lightened the colourings so that there was less shadows on the beveling. The second thing to be done was to lower the number of viens in both the X and Y axis’s.

Before:

After:

The second material change was to the bar, doors and tables. This was the same problem as I experienced with the pool table, the bevel was just too heavy. Changing these I made the colouring darker and stronger which then blended with the bevel shadowing. I also, again, lowered the number of veins in the X and Y axis.

Before:

After:

Walls

The walls give the room the enclosed feeling which will ultimately compliment the space that will been seen outside of the doors and fire. Again, the same as the flooring, the walls shouldnt be too busy. However, I did want to capture many elements of actual walls found in a bar/pub situation.This meant that there were quite a few elements to building the wall:

1. Top 2/3 of the wall, geometry which was given a colour of deep red.
2. The lower 1/3 is the same type of object and texture as the top but it has a cream/lighter colouring.
3. I added, down the bottom, a piece of thickish geometry which, once a wood material was added, made a piece of coving.
4. To make the join between the top and bottom parts of the wall more smooth and hidden I created a rectangular wooden strip and long tubing. Which when put together created a rail like piece along the middle of the wall.
5. The wood material had to be made different to the other wood material used. this I changed the colouring on this one so that the viens and main colour was an off white, similar to most common coving.

This can be seen clearly on the right hand side of the image below.

Walls like this I then erected around the other sides of the flooring creating a room.

I put coving above the doors as well, just to give that part of the wall a nice finish.