Thursday, October 29, 2009

The Spellbound Forest

My final entry in the Calico Sparrow flickr contest...in the "artistic" category, which allowed for editing.


I have to admit to spending far too much time on this one, although much of that can be blamed on my lack of expertise with Photoshop(Elements)...and changing from one idea to another midway through.

And then there was my own obsessive nature -- it was as if being given the permission to edit compelled me to change every single pixel of the picture.

The hair (Calico Ingmann Creations "Brenna")was the one thing I basically left alone. Just a slight blur to the wispy forehead pieces. The fingers of the hands and the face were relatively unmessed with, along with parts of the background left unscathed.

The rest was cut and pasted from many different shots. Crazy person stuff. I have a folder on my computer with a frightening 233 files of things I shot in-world and the various stages of the edit. (Like I said, crazy.)

Here's the room in the underground maze in the silentsparrow sim that inspired this idea:

I really tried to put those mushrooms in my picture somewhere, but I couldn't make them fit!

The biggest editing challenge was the skirt of the gown(silentsparrow's Ritual)since in-world it just hung straight down into the ground. (I had made the pose with another outfit in mind.) So the skirt was entirely pieced in...I worked on it forever, trying to retain the original textures but have some semblance of realistic drape. Still not 100% happy, but I did the best I could with my fledgling skills.

Below is an in-the-process picture (with original in-world skirt); this was relatively early on when I was thinking about B+W. Poor little skunk didn't make the final cut.


Below is the way the gown is supposed to look. I'm not usually a ballgown person, and originally I was going to wear rouge noir on top with beloved lolita skirt...then decided to wear "how I quit the forest" (because after all, the setting is a forest ;-) But I had an in-store revelation about Ritual and I realized it fit the "fairytale" vibe I was going for much better (although maybe not fitting a ground pose so well.)



Beta pose test with original outfit idea

There's a beautiful back tattoo that's part of the Ritual gown that I wish I had been able to show/use in my picture.


At least we have the leaves and vines in the Brenna hair (Brenna's leaves and ribbons are colorchange btw!) I love this a lot.

And finally (for a post that threatens to be as long as the project) my own favorite part of this project: painting in the thorny vines/ground cover. It really doesn't show much in the finished project - I was trying for ominous shadows - but I think it turned out even a little darker than I had intended when I compressed all the layers down.

Below is a detail, lightened.


It was probably the only thing remaining from my original concept(which was a completely different setting/story...but there's always next year!)

Monday, October 12, 2009

Spellbound

If you run into me inworld (or catch a glimpse as I scurry away) it's quite likely you'll find me wearing silentsparrow clothing and Calico Creations hair. In spite of my packrat inventory, these are the items I wear when I want to be "me."

So it's not a stretch that I've entered a contest sponsored by the two stores. There are four categories, and so far I've managed to enter two. I'm not sure if they highlight the hair and clothing as much as I'd like, but I'm pretty happy with the overall images, especially considering no photo manipulation was allowed.



I've got at least one more idea in mind - in the "creative" category, where you're allowed to photoshop...and it's quite a mess of an idea, but I've got a couple weeks left to straighten it out.