The first photos I took for my front cover image, was of a model of a skull. I set the skull up in a dark boxed in shelving unit to achieve a completely dark surrounding, because this is the colour background I will have for the front cover.
I used a Canon EOS 500d, which is a pretty good camera which takes some fairly professional, high quality photographs, and a Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 prime lense (fixed focal-point.) I used this lense as opposed to my other lenses because it's a good lense for portraiture, as it captures the details in faces extremely well. The skull model isn't a face as such, but it had a lot of detail that I would want to include in the final images.
The lighting was natural, from a large window nearby the set up, which makes the detail of the skull stand out fully.
In my contact sheet, it is clear to see that I tried to see how the skull would look from all different kinds of angles, including head on, profile, and slightly stranger angles. I also tried to see how the skull would look with the jaws agape, and how that would effect my image overall.
I did this, because I wasn't entirely sure how the skull would work with the actor, and what would look best so I tried to cover the skull from all angles.The next shoot I did, was of my actor. I chose a male actor, which quite a distinct jawline. I chose this kind of look, because I wanted the skull I'd taken photos of to fit closely with the face of my actor.
Set up-wise, I used the same camera and lense as last time, and chose to use a black background. I attached a large piece of black paper to a wall, and seated my model in front of it. I used a soft box lamp to light my subject, and placed it low on the floor to the left, to create interesting shadows on my model's face.
From my contact sheet, you can see that I decided that I preferred how my model looked from the front, and I knew that this was how I wanted him to look. From further research from Empire front covers, I noticed that most of the characters/actors on the front cover are shot from the front, or at least are staring directly into the camera (therefore breaking the fourth wall, how Empire grabs the attention of the audience and tries to connect to them)
I did take a few shots of my actor with his jaw hanging open, if I was going to stick with the first cover idea of the 'dislocated jaw' type image. However, I didn't really like those shots very much, and preferred him to look straight-faced.
Though I don't tend to use it, I tried out the flash on my camera, to see how this looked. I don't use flash normally, as I feel it rids the scene of the natural shadows and makes everything look very false/harsh/too bright. However, I realised that in most professional photo shoots, flash is often used.
I found that when I used flash, I actually thought it looked less professional, and looked as though I had been using some regular point-and-shoot camera. The background became more noticeable (the folds in the paper that I couldn't get rid of) and some of the shadows on the face that I liked so much had disappeared.
This was the photo that I liked the best out of the shoot with the actor. The shadowing to the right side of the face is perfect for adding the half-skull to the face, and overall I can see more potential in this image than in any of the others.
Using Photoshop CS2, I first started editing my images by opening the portrait shot of my actor, and tweaking the colours.
I first altered the brightness/contrast. To boost the shadows, I lowered the brightness, and I upped the contrast to heighten the highlights.
I noticed that my image was far too orange, so to cancel this out, I fiddled around with the colour balance. I Turned up the cyan on full, which gave everything a green-ish, blue-ish tone which works much better with the 'horror' look of my image.
I felt that my image was still far too colourful, so I altered the saturation, by lowering it. This took out a lot of colour and made the image more 'bland' and 'dull' looking which looked much more professional and better for what I needed. The FD posters feature actors with very pale skin, which allows them to contrast and stand out against dark backgrounds.
To get rid of the horrible background, I used the 'magic wand' tool, which selects the background. I then deleted what I had selected.
Behind the image, I then added a plain black background.
So far, this is how my image is looking. Compared to what the original started off like, there is definitely an improvement. The edited image is much more professional looking, and embodies the horror genre much better. The plain background really forces the actor to stand out, and his paler skin works better for applying the skull to the right side, as it will blend in easier.
The next step was to edit the photos of the skull I took. I chose an image of the skull from the front, the most detailed image I took.
In Photoshop, the first thing I did was to flip the image around. I did this because the model was missing teeth on the right side, which I didn't want to include in my image.
The next steps were to edit the skull in a similar way to the image of the actor. I lowered the brightness, upped the contrast and made the skull a cyan tone, though less than I did for the actor, as the skull image looked better when there was a more subtle colour to it.
The last thing I did to the skull before editing it together with the actor's face, was to crop the image. I didn't crop it perfectly in half, because to blend the two images together, I'd need to graduate the images together, which means I'd need a little more of the image than I actually wanted.
The next step was the insert the image of the skull into the document of the actor's face. Before I did this, I played around with the size of the skull, to get the skull to match up to the face perfectly.
I also got rid of the inside of the skull's eye, by using the brush tool and a fairly large brush size.
I basically drew round the shape to create a 'hollow' look which would make the skull look much less cartoon-like. To blend the black colour in with the rest of the skull, I used the blur tool around the line where the black meets the rest of the skull, to blend the colour in. I also used the smudge tool to drag the outside of the skull into the black, to again blend it in better.
I also used the eraser tool to fit the skull to the head better, and to match the jawline. For the moment, it looks very rough, but later I will blend the edges much better.
For the first stage of blending in the skull, I used the brush tool in black to go over the face - working into the shadows better. I did this because the skull over the top will need a dark colour underneath to show the cracks better.
The next step was by far the most difficult: creating the cracked effect on the skull and blending the skull in with the face. I started first on the forehead and eye, since this would be the most difficult area.
I first downloaded photoshop effect brushes from deviantART.
Special effects Photoshop brushes work similar to how the normal round brushes work, but are in different shapes. Photoshop is very customisable as it allows you to download custom/special brushes to use. You can change the size and colour of the brush, which also adds to the custom-ability.
This is an example of some of the crack brushes I used. The crack brushes I placed on the skull were in black, to show up properly against the pale skull.
I've found that the best way to get good effects using Photoshop brushes is to use lots of different ones, in different sizes and opacities. I also like to overlap the brushes to create different looks, and to make some areas a bit more heavily built up.
To blend the skull in with the face, however, I had to get a little more creative. Still using the Crack effect photoshop brushes, I used the brushes for the eraser tool.
Like the brush tool, the eraser tool can use all the same shapes. I used this to my advantage.
Here, you can see where I've applied the eraser tool using the same method as the one I employed with the black brush tool. By using the eraser tool in this way, I've ensured that my skull fades into the face well.
Both these methods of using the brush tool and the eraser tool are quite lengthy and requires me to flip between both tools quite often, and I usually undo a lot, to make sure I've got the right effect I want.
This is the result of the editing techniques I've explained about. I'm very happy with how this has turned out. I think this idea was much better than the 'dislocated jaw' idea I had, as I think I would not have been able to create the right effect very well. I think this image is successful, because the skull/face idea is very simple but because I've managed to edit it well, is very powerful. I think this kind of image would stand out very well on the front cover of Empire.
No comments:
Post a Comment