Art 3

This was done using Gimp 1.2 (with standard extras and perl-fu)

This built on the techniques of the previous work and did a few more things as well.

"Coming To Life" is the final artwork:

  1. Spend hours looking for just the right picture. (grin)
  2. Remove all background, leaving Blake and Avon. Do this using the Layer Mask method. Call it "blake-avon".
  3. Duplicate this layer, call the new layer "avon".
  4. Remove Blake from this layer, leaving only Avon.
  5. Duplicate this layer, call the new layer "avon-trans".
  6. We want the avon-trans layer not to have a Layer Mask, but to be just Avon with the rest transparent.
    1. Right-click on the layer in the Layers window; do Mask-to-Selection.
    2. Click on the image rather than the Layer Mask.
    3. Invert selection.
    4. Edit -> Cut
    5. Right-click on the layer in the Layers window; Delete-Layer-Mask.
    You should now have Avon with a transparent background and no Layer Mask.
  7. Duplicate avon-trans. Call the new layer avon-posterized.
  8. Desaturate avon-posterized and posterize it (6 colours).
  9. Follow the proceedure for Carving effect to make Shadows and Highlights layers from avon-posterized.
  10. Make new white layer called slate.
  11. Click on the "avon" layer and do Mask-to-Selection.
  12. Fill "slate" with the Slate pattern.
  13. Select -> None
  14. Add a Layer Mask to "slate".
  15. Do a radial gradient fill in the mask from black to white, starting from the point where Blake's hand is touching Avon's shoulder. This will need tweaking.
  16. Make a duplicate of avon-trans and put it at the top. Call it avon-trans-trans.
  17. Add a Layer Mask to avon-trans-trans.
  18. Do a radial gradient fill in the mask from white to black, starting from the point where Blake's hand is touching Avon's shoulder. This also will need tweaking.
  19. Reorder the layers if need be in this order:
    • avon-trans-trans (mode: normal)
    • shadows (mode: multiply)
    • highlights (mode: screen)
    • avon-posterized (mode: overlay)
    • slate (mode: normal)
    • blake-avon (mode: normal)
    Make sure only these layers are visible. You can delete the other layers if you like.
  20. Merge Visible Layers. You should now have just Blake and Avon, with Avon looking mostly stone-like, fading into flesh near Blake's hand; the background transparent.
  21. Now for the background.
    1. New white layer at bottom, called pattern. Pattern fill. In this case the pattern was a green vine pattern I'd made and added to the patterns palatte ages ago, based on a border I drew once.
    2. New white layer above "pattern", called "whirl".
    3. Filters -> Render -> Clouds -> Plasma
    4. Desaturate.
    5. Filters -> Distorts -> Whirl-and-Pinch; tweak this until you like it.
    6. Change the mode to Overlay.
    7. Duplicate "whirl" to strengthen the effect.
  22. Flatten image and save as .jpg Undo and repeat for different backgrounds if you can't make up your mind.