Friday, February 11, 2011

Black Manta pt. 2


Final!  So over the Xmas break I worked on a complicated, full color render piece that was required to be able to be rearranged, and elements could be dropped out or replaced.  Because of that, I think the image came out a little less than it could have been, but it also messed with my mojo a little bit.  I had finished this one yesterday, but it wasn't sitting right.

Before the end of the day I reopened it to take another look and decided that I was perserving too much in terms of layers, so I merged a few to make it easier to work with, and created new alternate highlight layers, using the Overlay setting, with different colors creating the light source and diffuse lighting. It brought out a lot more depth, and it also afforded me the opportunity to blur around the legs and outer edges, to subtly pull focus towards the center.

So I may go back and tweak the Flash image a little, it also suffers from the restrictions I had to work with on the last big full color render image I did - that simply don't need to be there for my own development work.  It's kind of a nice lesson/reminder to have, not to get buried in the tech of photoshop, and do what's best for the piece, not use every trick just because you can.  If that makes any sense?

Anyways...I though this one came out pretty good, he looks pretty badass.

3 comments:

John-Michael Gariepy said...

He *does* look pretty bad ass.

I have a favor to ask. I was looking for an image that encapsulates a time travelling Black Manta for my DC Adventures Log at JMGariepy.com (The log itself can be found at http://www.jmgariepy.com/category/dc-adventures . It's just the continuing story built from a DC Adventures role-playing game I've been running. Normally, I review games, but I like to mix it up.) Do you mind if I use him, and attribute your work, with a link to your blog?

Ken Christiansen said...

No problem!

John-Michael Gariepy said...

Excellent... and the article is done. Feel free to check out Black Manta gracing the top of the page at http://wp.me/p2S61P-rg . But I do warn you, it's the last leg of a nine part log from a role-playing game. I try to keep the story as interesting as possible, but reading other people's rpg logs is an acquired taste.

Thanks a lot again! Here's hoping you pick up some web traffic in the exchange. ;)