[Tennis] davenewt vs. SharkShark

HAHA!!! Great to have you back Dave! Very well done, it came out beautifully. Sometimes the simplest ones are the best. LOL I'm thinkin I should give a play by play like you are . Gald you are enjoying this, I will have my return up tonight or tomorrow. Welcome back!

It's good to be back, SharkShark


Yeah, it's pretty straightforward, unlike my previous volley! Still, like you say, that's sometimes the best thing to do. Keep it clear, simple and let the picture speak for itself instead of muddying it with excessive layers and unnecessary effects.


Yeah, do. It's good to see the thought processes at work behind each volley - it's what I liked about -this book- which inspired me to give this Tennis thing a go in the first place

Look forward to seeing your next volley!

Cheers,
Dave

Here we go! ~ Lord Forget Us Not. ~




Well I must say this one had me working LOL. Believe it or not, i ended up using your entire image. The main problem I had with it was actually cutting out any part of the bird. Because so much white and grays were used, it blended in exceddingly well.

My first thought was to cut out the dove and have it flying through the air over a dead tree, on which I was going to add some new leaves and small flowers to give the impression of new life. It just wasn't working out though. I wasn't able to get the damn bird cut out properly .

I finally settled on a church window, and using the entire picture, I mosaiced it via a filter I have, and placed it in the window. Nope, still didn't like it.

My third option was to use filters and make it look like a chalk drawing, and place it on a sidewalk. Good idea, escept I couldn;t find a good sidewalk picture to use it on. That was when I thought of using a wall.

Had a heck of a time finding a stock photo that wasn't copyrighted and had usage restrictions. I actually tried and refused 20 different one before I came across the one I used. I placed the image, used filters to blend it into the stone, and the rest of it just kinda went on from there!

I duplicated the wall layer four times, adding different filters each time to give not quite a dark feel, but still one that the viewer could tell that something dark lurked behind the window.

With the Dove, many times representing peace and often the Son of God, I went with that theme, I cut out the window, and added lighting effects to brighten it just a little bit.

I added a white beam of light over the window, and smoothed it out with two instances of Gaussian Blur. and lowered the opacity on both. I then duplicated another window layer over that, lowered the opacity, and filtered the light hitting it. I wanted it to look like the light was actually penetrating the room although you couldn;t see what was going on inside. I wanted to leave that up to the viewers imagination. .

Added a Verse to go with the theme, and Viola'! Not entirely satisfied that I acheived my aim with it, but I think it did come out rather well.

SharkShark you are my here ::hehe::

*assumes she means hero, and passes out from the thrill* thanks flavah! Much appreciated.

Thats is a very very very impressive image. I love the color schemes. And the bird's placement is perfect.

What on earth am I going to do next!??

Very nice, SharkShark.... very nice.

Wow. I'll give it a shot tonight if I can...

Dave

<-- DUMMY hehe yes HERO is what I meant..........

*bounce* *ping!*... volley 6... Peace of Lego (sic)



Well, where do I start with this one?!

Again, blown away (hehehe, no pun intended!) by SharkShark's volley... I decided to take the 'bloody' texture of the wall and go in the complete opposite direction to 'peace' which had been the theme of the previous couple of volleys.

My first idea was to get an aerial view of some houses and paint the wall texture onto one of them, then go on to create some kind of post-apocalyptic image of a burnt village or something. There were two problems with this initial idea: 1) I couldn't find the kind of picture I wanted to use my vast photoshop skills on; and 2) I don't have vast photoshop skills!

Then, I stumbled across an image someone had been sick enough to capture, of a little lego dude committing hari-kari. At Christmas, of all times. Don't try this at home kids!

The original image, however, was far too 'bright' (in a light intensity sense, not in terms of its overall mood!) so I needed to make it a lot darker.

I started off by removing the lego man's original stripey blue and white jumper (in photoshop, guys! ) so he had a plain yellow body, then cutting out a section of the wall from the previous volley and applying it with a layer mask (to isolate the yellow areas) in overlay mode at 90% opacity. This added a good 'bloody' feel to the image. I also applied a patch of the texture from the bottom of the wall to the lego man's legs (linear light, 80%) and their reflection in the floor (applying a semi-transparent layer mask to darken the pattern applied to the reflection).

I then thought Mr Lego Man might have been in his spacious new york apartment when he decided to take drastic action for the lack of christmas decorations to hand, so I selected the window from the previous volley and pasted it, scaled down, in the background, applying gaussian blur and setting it to Luminosity blend mode, 50% opacity.

(I copied the window three times. Tried messing with them to make them less identical, but then thought it wasn't really worth it with them being in the background. Not sure I made the right decision there, but anyway...)

To darken the image, I applied a levels adjustment layer to everything (input levels 62, 0.59, 255). Then, using a patchy brush and the light purple colour from the windows in the background, I scribbled all over the image on a new layer in overlay mode to give the shot some grittiness. I also applied a posterize adjustment layer, 16 levels, to help with that (without the posterize layer, the colour tones were still too smooth for my liking).

Finally, I felt a comic 'BANG!' was needed to add some impact to the scene and emphasize the absurdity of the final image. But of course, a lego gun wouldn't go BANG! would it? More likely it'd go 'CLICK!' To put this in, I used the '2 Ton Sushi' font from -blambot- in a bright yellow hue with a dark drop shadow to lift it above the image. I rotated and scaled each letter individually to give the text the required dynamism.

Then I put a 1px yellow frame around the image (in Linear Dodge mode, 25% opacity), cutting off a pair of opposite corners - mainly because I've always wanted to add a border like this to an image! Hehehe.

So there ye go... a seasonal, comic/tragic volley for you, SharkShark!

Where to next?

Dave

Now what the heck am I supposed to do with that !!

Very well done Dave! Great use of your "Vast Photoshop Skills"
Look for a return tomorrow!

You'd better believe it! Took me *ages*, that did!



Dave

You two are great, nice match guys!

Ok *whack* Back at ya Dave! -- Seperated At Christmas --



This one I am the most upset with believe it or not .

First off, what to do with a frickin lego man right? LOL. I thought about using just the head and placing duplications of it all over a tree, and have a christmas tree full of lego heads. Nah.

OK, then I was messing around and chopped lego boy up into seperate pieces and I had and Idea! . Why not place the pieces inside christmas ornaments? Problem, finding a picture of a tree with the ornaments big enough, and enough of them to put the pieces in. I finally found this stock phota of ornaments all in a row, and low and behold no image restrictions! I really did like the image so off we went together to the land of photoshop.

First I wanted to darken the image, I wanted to give it the same type of dark feel as the original by Dave. So i duplicated the image 3 times using Screen and Pin Light on the top two. That darkened it just a bit and highligted the lighter areas.

I then placed the lego pieces into their respective ornament, applied Mulitply to each piece to make it blend. Then I added another instance of the main image on top of everything, and changed it to Darken. that really made it look like the pieces were inside the ornaments. Now what to do with the big empty space at the bottom?

Since the overall feel was to be one of feeling seperated, I thought an image of someone crying or looking exptremly lonely would go well. Thus the crying girl. I pasted her in place and added Hard Light to make her blend in.

The grunge feel I acheived using brushes. I wanted the viewer to notice that it was the christmas season, a time when everything should be happy. I added a hue to different brushes, using greens and reds, the festive colors, but then I lowered the opacity on them and on some changed them to Luminosity, or Vivid Light. This blended them witht he rest of the image giving it a dirty feel. Now when the viewer sees the picture, the see a christmas that is not how it should be. The colors are all faded, and you feel lonely along with the girl, and pain when you notice the seperated lego man. Lonely and Seperated.

Unfortunatly this image was kinda rushed and I don't think I did as well as I could have. Hopefully, the viewer can tell what I was trying to convey by looking at the image.

That's it! The final serve goes to you!

nice one, what a match this has been.
How did you guys learn your photoshop skills? And how long did it take you? I just got a copy and really want to get started on it and producing my own things. Any help would be appreciated, perhaps someone has msn or YIM and could help me.
Anyways cant wait til final serve

Thanks mtracerz and congrats on getting Photoshop! Basically all it takes is practice I know, I know that's what everyone says, but it really is like that. I have learned what I knwo so far in Photoshop only in the past year. And most of it came through participating in tennis matches like this. The only way to get better is to keep trying!!

I am glad to help out anybody who needs it, so you can catch me on MSN via: wccbiz@hotmail.com or via YIM: wccbiz@yahoo.com. My AIM is SharksBeComin

Feel free to messege me and good luck! Thanks again, glad you enjoyed the match