Spent a load of time of this. Thanks to Bear_Music for helping me choose and find ways to improve the image.
Originally two shots, one with me in the chair with my hand out, and another with me leaning forward with my face in my hand. My left hand is pasted and lined up in both shots, with the empty hand being covered by the hand with the face.
I used the liquify tool to reshape my hand, arm, body and faces. I have an outtake with a much more grotesque version of that.
Ran lots of noise reduction on the "mask" to make it look a bit plastic. Overlayed some NIK Silver Efex. Lots of selective curves layers for individual adjustments.
The flames are rendered from clouds with curves and contrast applied. Duplicate fire layer used for the light cast on me in the chair.
I also did some high pass overlays for sharpening effects which caused a lot of heavy graininess in my skin which I healed and used NIK Define to selectively remove.
I have my own idea as far as what I meant for the image to represent, but your own interpretation is up to you. :)
[Sep. 5th, 2011 02:20:34 AM]
Votes: 125
Avg Vote: 6.9280
This makes me really appreciate how hard it is to get a 7!
**POST CHALLENGE**
I'm grateful for my first honorable mention!
Check out this .gif of the creation process. Give it a second to load, it's 2.4MB.
Here also, are two outtakes:
Abandoned this idea early when I realized it wouldn't work well at 800px.
Went with more of a subtle edit. I didn't want to look like a gargoyle.
Statistics
Place: 4 out of 47 Avg (all users): 6.8595 Avg (commenters): 8.7000 Avg (participants): 6.4483 Avg (non-participants): 6.9359 Views since voting: 3027 Views during voting: 461 Votes: 185 Comments: 23 Favorites: 0
Congrats on an awesome image, the new PB, and the nifty star for 4th! And thanks so much for the gif showing how it was done - that's fascinating! Excellent work!
good use of the rule set, like that it's still primarily a portrait but also has that little something to make it expert, the object to the left is a distraction for me
Add photograph to your favorites
Add photographer to your favorites
Photographer found comment helpful.
