new to the community rate my work

[colorznhd]

just thought id say hi im new to this forum and been using photoshop for about a month now im going to IADT to get my bachelor of fine arts for graphic design here is some of my work a before and after please comment and critique i know its not perfect but like i said im fairly a newbie

[daemonzul]

New to photoshop huh, Well ya wouldnt know it....that right there is a good critique.

i like how you worked the perspectives of your floating block pieces...although I guess your adding your own artistic ideas to the image I was just curious to the intention....but thats the artists eye not mine. Overall very good. Its a bit flat in the face which makes me wonder if you textured a 3d element, with the mesh there its kinda like you used something in the warp area there and kept the lines...its different. I like it. The blending is almost top notch...try adding some textures with brushes at low opacity to bring things together a little cleaner...avoid that blur look. I started off using the blur/airbrush method and it really sucks, but it gets the job done quickly.

Again...I really looks like a texture image over meshed layer....which is why i keep thinking its just flat...no dimension in the face....but your intention giving the cut-outs may have been the idea you were going for.

Now for the background....Is that an original piece or something pulled from an outside resource? The ears are from another image as well I think that was composited in.

Either way...awesome job for a month into the program...i just have to wonder how much of it is the photo and how much was pre-existing design. tell us more about your process.

[colorznhd]

wow thanks for the great critique and yes background was sourced from google images as well as the hair and ears i used layer mask to remove and paste to the image with help from clone stamp and burn tool but i started with the original image then i created a new document 100 by 100 pixels then created a 1by 100 horizontal and vertical filled with white and defined pattern went back to original photo and used a large soft edge brush with black to cover up any unwanted areas surrounding the face used the square marque tool and boxed the face and filled the box with my pattern then used the warp tool to conform the grid around the face



i then went ahead and created different curve layers to get the desired color that was needed for the facial tone control i to invert the color and used the eraser to highlight the areas of the face to bring out the said facial tone

liquified the eyes and bloated them out to make them bigger used layer masking to change the hue and saturation to give the eyes the yelowish color used burn tool to darken the edges of the irisis

duplicated layer selected pen tool to make edges around grids moved to where i wanted repeated process used burn and dodge tool to highlight and darken diff parts of the face
flattened image used collor range to remove the black background added the background picture i found on google images set to back layer used burn tool to set the image with the background
then added the hair transformed and scaled it to fit more burn tool to blend in and i was left with the image u see above and thank u for the tips i will continuously be striving to improve my work i hope u have enjoyed this walkthrough on my thought process on how i did this manipulation

[daemonzul]

Awesome and great explanation. You sound like an avid photoshop user and its safe to say you can stop calling yourself "beginner" at this point.

Interesting thing about these kind of effects. Online you will find that those that really love photoshop and all the things you can do with it will watch a movie like Avatar and spend the next week trying to recreate the effect. There are a slew of tutorials out there on this thing since the release of the film.

Im a subscriber to photoshop user magazine...and one of the issues had this tutorial in the magazine...and built it from the photo of the individual rather than trying to blend it with another resource. I was very close to giving it a shot but just didnt have the time to sit down and work through it. That and I wasnt a big enough avatar fan to want to do it.

http://free-web-design.co.cc/create-jam ... orial.html

this one was one of the better ones I have seen out there and even goes into the skin textures and lighting which will help with that flat image look.

Great job!

[colorznhd]

very cool tutorial it looked great except the ears looked more like rubber yea alot of ppl arent into avatar but who wouldnt wanna turn thier wife into a sexy blue person

[daemonzul]

Keep in mind shes also about 9 ft tall now...among other things.

[colorznhd]

i went along with the tutorial and this is what i got what do you think?

[daemonzul]

What do I think!?

You know what I think, Its a huge improvement. So much more detail there and the lighting is great. Awesome job!