Category Archives: Photomanipulation

Itsy Bitsy Spider Climbed Up The Water Spout [Original Art: John Romita] Colored

Well this started out as a simple John Romita (Snr) drawing of the amazing Spider-Man. The original drawing simply showed the character crouching and a shadow. After coloring the image, I decided that Spider-Man would be crawling through a dank tunnel or sewer. I created this background using a combination of layers tweaked using the perspective tools to create the illusion that the tunnel was narrowing behind our hero. After looking at the image for a few days like this, I decided to flip it vertically and add some additional elements – so now Spidey and crawling UP the wall of a down spout, towards the lip of a horizontal section upon which there is a small puddle of water – in my head this signifies that Hydro Man is up there waiting for him.

 

 

Gift: Andrew Collins & Josie Long / BBC 6 Music Saturday AM Show

Well i’ve been listening to and enjoying the BBC 6 Music Saturday Morning show with Andrew Collins and Josie Long. A fun mix of music and rambling chat. As a tribute / gift for their efforts I have pulled together a little picture for them, using their current twitter profile picture as the basis. Bit of photomanipulation, smudging etc, then outline drawn over the top with vector pen. 6 Music logo from BBC website.

 

Keep up the good work guys. Hope BBC renews the show as the format is pretty darn good.

Fantastic Four with Black Panther and Spiderman [Original: Fred Hembeck] Colored

Fred Hembeck‘s work on character recreations is just so much fun to look at and fun to color. Here is another from my expansive hard disk collection. Not sure where the black and white art was downloaded from (if anyone recognises the commission source please let me know and ill add details here).  I particularly like how the effects work on the background turned out – real images of fire overlayed over a room created with a circuit board texture and gradient filled squares, skewed to give a 3d effect.

 

Wee Paper People – Tube Man (Customised Richard Herring)

Well Richard Herring posted a link on twitter to the Wee Paper People blog which had cut out and build paper models of various acts appearing at the Edinburgh Festival this year.

Well as you can see they are tres cute and so I thought I would make a custom of Richard’s one to be his character Tube Man – Righter of insignificant wrongs, avenger of trivial annoyances.

Cut out and build Richard Herring AKA Tube Man

Cut out and build Richard Herring AKA Tube Man

Dark Phoenix (Art: Kevin Newburn) Colored

Another of Kev’s drawings, colored in PSPX2. Many layers and effects in this one. I especially liked what is happing with the background – the universe in flames almost. very fitting for this character. The only thing I think I could have done better is more shadows on the sash blowing in front of her – it looks kind of flat now.

Dawn (Art: Kevin Newburn) Colored

This drawing came up on the random image box over at Heromorph. I figured I hadn’t colored one of Kev’s images in a bit so here it is. Background is made of many layers including the skulls used on the dress/bodice layer – which in itself was a lot of pasting, rotating and distortion to match the “curves”, and my “classic” city scape silhouette approach. Mist done the same way as in previous pics.

Mantis (Art: John Buscema) Color

Well I have a few other things I am working on and it’s been a bit busy at work but I wanted to submit something new so here is Mantis (was girl of the week over at HM) as drawn by John Buscema. Colored in PSPX2 as usual. Background is an old one I downloaded from startrek.com many moons ago, with a few tweeks by myself. logo made up as I couldn’t find one for the character.

To the North of Kathmandu [Art: B Timm, Col etc: LocalHero)

I found the base image in the Heromorph Cookie Jar (cheers to Comicfan for the clean up). Original Artwork by Bruce Timm. The background was by Tony Hayes (bogwoppet) although I have distressed it somewhat to fit this image. Coloring etc done in PSP X2. Oh and title is from the poem/song The Little Yellow Idol

Canada’s Finest Star? (V2)

Well the original version of this caused a bit of controversy over at Heromorph, what with talk of lions (or strangely Dogs?) licking thighs and jean paul being caught wearing Hudson’s (Guardian’s) long johns.. so here is a more traditionally colored costume for Northstar – still with the maple leaf motif. Tried simply removing the red tone but didn’t work so ended up adding white gradients to recreate the highlights from the original image.


Canada’s Finest Star?


Well I was at a bit of a loose end so I dug this out from my WIP folder.. begun in 2003 finished 2007. heh. anyways Antonio Sabato as Alpha Flight’s Northstar in a more patriotic uniform. I can’t remember exactly why i didn’t finish this before, but I think i was unhappy with the texture on the suit and the skin color (was originally a black and white image). Redid the color and the textures and tidied up some sloppy cutting and masking. fixed some shading. You may recognise the base from a couple of other submissions – Captain Britain springs to mind.;) nothing wrong with a bit of reuse. i realise this is more normally Guardian’s uniform, but I felt that a government sponsored team would all have similar uniforms. Maybe if i did it again I would add more of a nod towards Northstar’s original costume but in Canadian colours.

Woodgod

Following on from my Rahne pic, I thought I would have a crack at doing another “furry” from Marvel – This time Woodgod. Similar technique to the other pic, used a horses legs as a guide and added different shades of fur in layers over the top. swapped the hooves for ones with a bit more character and added the background (from Google) and some new grass/shadow in the front below the hooves. Logo is done using Vector Layers and a cherry wood pattern.

Wolfsbane


Here we find Rahne Sinclair who has just caught the interest of a Savage Land T-Rex. Well i’ve had this floating about unfinished for a few years now and finally managed to put it to bed. I seem to recall the pose was the first thing that attracted me to the pic, as it immediately cried out to be made into a crouching hero – but which one? I decided that I would have a go at Wolfsbane – seeing as I hadn’t really attempted fur. The model is estella warren. I cut the body from the background and began layering on hairs. This was build up in patches with additional shading done on each set. The grass was done in a similar way. I can’t really recall why I got stuck with it, but I think that it was the original hair that kept putting me off. In the end I just removed it all and added new hair using a wig image as a base and adding more layers. The background pic I have used before in my Rogue/Gambit transgender. (Original Model Estella Warren)

Supergirl – Lost Daughter of Krypton


Just a quick manip of Kristiana Loken as Kara Zo-Rel. Multiple background layers – new york (yes I left in the towers!), couple of exploding planets overlayed and some kryptonian script. Supergirl herself is recolor of Kristiana’s original clothes with some alterations to make the belt/skirt and the cape added from scratch. removed some (few) blemishes and enhanced the eye color. Little ship in the background is kara escaping the explosion. Wanted to do a more realistic version of the current costume, but I prefer the highly saturated feel, these are comic characters after all. This is an homage to the helen slater supergirl promo poster of her flying over new york