Spider-Man 2: Escape from Doc Ock

I watched Spiderman DVD again and had the germ of an idea for a scene I wanted to manip. The idea was for a scene from the next Spiderman movie incorporating the DVD menu/border frame.

 

The base pic was an old black and white pic of body builder Bill Davey posing in a spotlight. He wasn’t as bulked up as he seems to be now. The pose seemed good for spidey preparing to swing off. As opposed to my usual style, first thing I did was create a background for the pic by using a layer filled with a brick texture. I then deformed part of this to make a ledge for him to ‘stand’ on. It was originally going to be a ledge on a building but I remembered my old Spiderman game with spidey escaping through the sewers being chased by Doc Ock and that set me on the way.

Used Xenofex Little Fluffy Cloud filter with a lot of noise added to add the green slimey texture to the wall and ledge. The spotlight on the original pic gave me the idea that it could be the light from the sewer entrance case on the wall. I used vector circles to recreate the spotlight (which was incomplete at the bottom and side where it went off the original pic) and deformed part of that to match the angle on the ledge. This was softened and the blend mode set to soft light.

The original shadow was also cut off at the edges so I used the vector tool to draw around it and extend the arm. Ock’s shadow was created from scratch using vector drawing. This was blurred and the layer set to soft light to give a sense that the shadow was cast from further away. Now for Spidey himself. Cut out the model from the base pic and promoted to a new layer. Used the smudge and soften tools to remove the edges of his shorts, facial details and generally smooth out the body so it looked costume like.

I created a new layer filled with a chainmail texture. This was colorized blue. Using the body to create a selection, the extra was cut away, leaving just spiderman’s shape. I used the lassoo tool on this to select the areas of the body to be colorized red. I nearly forgot that the red strip down his extended arm would be twisted around, due to the angle of the wrist. I moved the body layer above the colour layer and set it’s blend mode to overlay. This gave me the highlights and shadows of the body providing definition to the costume.

Time to take a deep breath and start the webs… using the vector point to point line I layed out the verticals upto the collar. I worked out the pattern on the face using a quick pencil sketch. Extended the verticals up from the collar to meet over the nose. The horizontals and face circles done in the same way. This was fiddly but didn’t take as long as you might expect. This was done using a silvery metal texture as the pen color. Used the webbing as a selection and create a drop shadow slightly offset. This gave the 3d look (i hope) This shadow layer was set to multiply at 50% opacity.

The spider was created much larger in vectors, used to create a selection. This selection was used with Eye Candy chrome filter to get a 3d look to it. I shrunk this down rotated it to match the pose before placing it. Eye created in the same way. The web flying out the pic was created using three straight vector lines (with own drop shadows) with a squiggly line drawn over the top also with a drop shadow. Added a shadow web coming from the shadow arm.

At this point I was about to add some logos and stuff, but still thought it looked a bit bland. So copied the layers to a new canvas, and merged them. I then used Flaming Pear’s Flood Filter to create some murky water. This was cut out and placed back into the original picture. I think this added a whole new dimension to the pic. Time to add the little extras. The rat was found on google, cut from it’s original pic, reshaded and recolored. Added drop and wall shadows for it and placed it against the wall. The cobwebs were created from a texture downloaded from the net. The texture was rotated to various angles and used to fill layers set to screen which made the black areas see through.

The layers were built up to give some depth. These cobwebs were to form both part of the scene and the DVD menu frame holding the scene selection panels and the corner logo. The logo itself was cut from a promo pic of a Spider-Man 2 poster. The three picture panels (supposed to be for scene selection) were created using photos of the model of the movie Spiderman from various angles combined with excerpts from a panoramic view of Manhattan at various angles. The panorama was actually a daytime shot which i made negative, then colorized a pale green, and set to multiply over the original pic – and made a night view. The combined model and background pics were tinged grey/green and a border added to make it look like a nightvision photo. Sections were cut using a rounded rectangle (from the vector used on the borders).

Battle for Beyond: Hulk Vs Thing

The hidden battle from Secret Wars. What we didn’t see was Hulk and Thing going toe to toe on a mountain top as the Beyonder looks on in the background through his rip in space. The latest in my digitally colored works began as an inking by Bob McLeod. The basic coloring is done using a version of the texture on a color, and one on a multiply layer. Additional highlighting done. In order to get some depth to the colour I used added some noise on an overlay layer. The logos were altered from the Marvel Versions by use of additional colour and texture. The background is cut from an image called Celestia III by Gene Martin (signature done in vectors from original). I liked how this turned out so much.. I signed it myself too rather than just putting my logo on it.

X3: Weapon X-Periment – Collosus

Using the same process as my previous piece to create collosus, and a wider shot of the same background. Here we see Collosus being forced to extend his stay in Steel form by being immersed in a vat of acid. The tank is created using layered gradient fills. The unknown model is one I have used previously (in my first Cap America manip and in a Human Torch manip)

X3: Kitty’s Dream…


…is that beneath his Man of Steel exterior Colossus has a heart of gold… :p This was just an attempt at getting a realistic effect for the organic steel. Done using both Eyecandy Chrome filter, and the built in PSP Chrome filter on overlay layers. and a bit of smudging and softening. Added the belt and additional manual highlighting. I found this picture of Cameron Mathison (which had a caption similar to the first line of these notes and set me off on the idea) and thought it would be a good pose. The background is one of the X2 concept art pieces from the official site.

Notes: I realise looking back he appears to have a 10 pack. Some guys are just greedy. Must pay more attention in future!

X2: Logan’s Art 101 Field Trip

By the time this pic goes up I hope that everyone who wanted to see X2 has managed it. This is just a quick manip based on one of the funny moments in the film. At Bobby Drake’s parents Wolverine is introduced as Professor Logan. When asked what he is professor of, Logan replies Art. I remembered this pic from the first movie of wolverine in the snow and I thought with his skill and claws, Ice Sculpture should be a piece of cake for him. Just a bit of fun, bit of blending and shading to make the statue match the pic.

Bob Mcleod – Along Came A Spider (Coloured)


This has been digitally coloured and textured from a Bob McLeod inking I downloaded from the net. All the original pic had was spidey. I tried something different as far as the lighting goes here, it is all done using PSP Illumination effect on various layers. The texture on spidey is from a chainmail I found on the net thru Google. The wall from a simple brick texture I already had, filled a layer then free deformed for perspective. I tried to get his underarm webs to be a bit shiny with chrome effect on some of the strands. It kinda looks like a still from a cartoon now.

X3: Scarlet Witch

Still got X2 fever.. here is an idea for Scarlet Witch. I decided to go with the ‘Ultimate’ surname of Lenshirr, as I guess that is what the movie makers might do. The base pic was a small pic of Shannon Elizabeth in a cream lace up top which tied at the bottom. Using this as the start point, everything else is created from scratch (I used a hood from a jacket as the basis for the cloak hood.) I particularly like how the new lacing turned out. Just a bit of fun – hope you like it…

Crimson Dynamo (Coloured)


This image was grabbed from an issue of Advanced Iron – a great fanzine which has featured the works of our (DCG) very own Welshcat. It was inked by Troy Brian. The coloring this time was done using a brushed metal texture and a red metallic gradient fill. over this i did some dodging. The background is made froma blue metallic gradient fill and a circuit board texture. The floor has hopefully come out as reflective. The metal of the suit still seems a bit flat.. I guess I need to work on that a bit more.. wish I could get me metals looking like welshcat does.

X3: Jennifer Ellison as Emma Frost #3

Final one of this concept. Thought she might get a bit chilly wandering about in the previous outfit all the time, so manipped this coat together.

It started out as a dark brown mac on a models dummy. colorised it slightly blue, duplicated the layer about 8 times set to screen which brightened it up nicely. merged these layers, corrected some color problems, them manipped the coat to fit the pose. Added some more of the x-logos to look embossed into the leather.

 

X3: Logan – Mutant Vs Metal

Just a quick manip of something I would like to be shown in X3.. how Wolverine’s claws were not infact artificial, but were natural. They could do this either using Magneto to extract the adamantium OR maybe just have a flashback, with a repressed memory surfacing. Started with the Wolvie X2 wallpaper. The claws were created using the metal ones as a guide. I used an actual bone texture I found online. Shaded manually. Added extra reflections to the eye. The logo is from scratch. The font is called RedFive.

Fallen Angel

Just a quick piece I threw together one slow saturday morning. This started out as a cover preview I saw over on CBR ( for Lucifer #40). The minute I saw it I thought.. hmmm thats Angel that is. First thing I did was color the hair. Then using masked overlay layers I added the Apocalypse Bust (Bowen), and a couple of trading card pictures from the net. These were all smudged to match the painted style of the original base pic. Lightning added using dodge and overlay layers. To add more interest, there are a couple of overlayed textures hopefully making it look like a mural painted on tiles. The border mask is from PSP frames.


X3: Jennifer Ellison as Emma Frost #2

Ok.. same actress as my previous Emma Frost pic, but this time I decided to try my hand at a movie style costume, rather than civies. Seeing as the White Queen always wears white(ish) stuff, I kept the movie costume white rather than black, but tried to create the style of Jean and Storm’s costumes.

Jen was originally wearing a blue leather jump suit. I cut this onto a new layer, desaturated until I was happy with the tones. This layer was then set to Hard light. Power effect, and X-ornaments taken from previous pic. Background created from scratch using freeform deform tool on a tiled texture, with gradient fills on top. The raised sections of the costume were created in the same way i described doing seams before. I think it turned out ok, and hope the movie costume is something like this. I think the standard held on by hope costume she wears now wouldnt work in the movie.. not that i would mind seeing them try;))

The New Green Lantern

Shania Twain as the new female Green Lantern in the upcoming Warner Bros series. OK.. i made that up.. but the look i was going for was the sort of promo page you get in tv guides 🙂

Started out with a picture of shania in a purple pvc outfit. extended the vest part of it to make it look more like a uniform. then began adding textures per previous art notes. the mask is done the same way. She had her hand against the wall for some reason.. so i put a door switch there, and then the sliding glass door moving to the left. All the lantern logo’s done from scratch. I put in the large one on the wall behind her using a screen layer and blurred it to make it seem more diffuse.

I almost forgot that back wall was reflected in the wall next to her, so i had to repeat the process for the logo’s reflection. The pattern in the GL text is actually stripped from a JLA Secret Origins Wallpaper and features lots of GLs flying to OA. The font is called Armor Piercing. Added WB & DC logos from Net and my own logo. Final thing i added was the GL oath which was one once in green then blurred and once in black on top.

Birthday Gift 4 Anyte: Anyte Flux

Just realised what the date was coming up and wanted to do a quick birthday manip for Anyte. Happy Birthday 🙂 I think she is sassy enough to be the live action Aeon Flux.. so here it is – made from a statue, work done on the hair and color to blend in Anyte face. Background created from various textures (distorted with gradients applied) to give a 3d look.

X3: Jennifer Ellison as Emma Frost

Not a preferred casting or anything, but I saw this lass on the TV one saturday morning singing and I went looking for pics. Jennifer Ellison is probably best known to Brits from Brookside(soap set in Liverpool) but she has just released a single. Anyways.. she is hot… She is possibly too young to play Emma (she just turned 20 at the start of May) and would really need to learn how to tone down her broad scouse accent.

The manip is a relatively simple one. The pic i chose was quite grainy so I used what i picked up from Marrow’s tutorial to get me started. She was wearing multi coloured pants. So they were first desaturated, then a slightly colored texture was added on a new layer. The X-logo on the belt is from scratch using vectors and chrome eye candy plug-in. The power effect was done using CGTalk tutorial linked by dperciful in the Hints’n’Tips thread. Added more highlighting and power reflection to her eyes, and glows to the hair, cheeks, nose from the power effect. The main X3 logo and name-tag were done from scratch again. 4 layers – 1 for aluminum texture, 1 for gradient fade on multiply, 1 for bevels on multiply, 1 for bevels on overlay. The effect is pretty neat. I may do some more pics using this actress, cos working with her is a pleasure 🙂

Brunhilde – The Valkyrie

Well, it has been about a week’s work on and off, and over 120 layers in the making, but finally here we have Rebecca Romjin Stamos as Barbara Norris aka Brunhilde aka Valkyrie.

From various web bios:

Height: 6′ 3″ Weight: 475 lbs Eyes: Blue Hair: Blonde

Occupation: Adventurer, (former) Chooser of the Slain

Place of Creation/Birth: Asgard

Known Relatives: none

Info: The Valkyrie possesses the conventional attributes of an Asgardian woman (“goddess”). Like all Asgardians, she is extremely long-lived (although not immortal like the Olympians), superhumanly strong (the average Asgardian female can lift about 25 tons; the Valkyrie can lift 45 tons), immune to all diseases, and resistant to conventional injury, (Asgardian flesh and bone is about 3 times as dense as similar human tissue, contributing to all Asgardians’ superhuman strength and weight.

The Valkyrie’s Asgardian metabolism gives her far greater than human endurance at all physical activities) She can exert peak strength for an hour before fatigue impairs her ability level. The Valkyrie has had extensive training in unarmed combat, swordplay, and horseback riding. Her natural fighting ability is unsurpassed among Asgardian women. Valkyrie employs two weapons, the enchanted sword, Dragonfang, and unnamed iron spear.

Dragonfang is the name of the sword wielded by Brunhilde the Valkyrie. An Oriental wizard named Kahji-Da was said to have carved the sword out of the tusk of an extradimensional dragon. It eventually passed into the possession of the Ancient One, who in turn gave it to his disciple Doctor Strange. Strange awarded it to the Valkyrie after the Norse goddess had returned the Black Knight’s Ebony Blade, which she had been using, to its rightful owner. The sword is virtually indestructible.

Art: Starting with an image of RRS standing in what looked like a wheat field, first thing i did was remove out the original collar line of her swim costume. The main body of the costume was created in the same fashion as my Xmen Judgement piece (see art notes). The metals were all created with various layers of gradient fills and the burn tool.

The cape was attempted using one of the tutorials Dperciful posted to the hints’n’tips thread. Added additional texturing to the resultant material. The background is actually three seperate photo’s of the Highlands up areound Ullapool – The sky and big hill is a layer, Castle Ardvreck & the water & hill on the right another layer, and the grass closest at the bottom on a third layer. I actually went as far as texturing Dragonfang (seen behind the title) before I remembered in this piece it would be in a scabard which is bound with rectangles with a deformed leather texture as is the sword handle. The font is Skeksis.

From the desk of… LocalHero

This is a little bit of fun I had early this morning.. it’s amazing what an inability to sleep can do for creativity! I wanted to do a bit of practice with perspective, so I found the pic of the desktop on Google. Then I layered on some of my recent pics and even some works in progress I am currently working on. Using the freeform deformation tool, I tried to match the perspective of the desk and pc screen. I added the C2F logo to the cup by deforming it, then cutting the top and bottom of the square logo pic to give a curved edge. then I darkened the furthest away edge multiple times as it curved round the cup. this layer was set to softlight. I duplicated the logo layer and set it to color. the art page shadows were done using the vector tool to draw straight black lines which were blurred. the shadow of the page hanging over the edge of the desk was done using a gradient fill. the cap/wolvie pic i did recently i tried to make look like a comic by duplicating that layer a couple of times offset slightly. A little bit of cutting of my first Invisible Woman pic and a new shadow, and the pencil looks like it is on top now. The WIPs showing are all based on Tom Derenick sketches. Just a bit of fun, but surprisingly effective. I am definitely going to use this to frame other art in future.