Man, it’s been busy as hell the last few weeks, if it wasn’t for things like having to pay bills life would be so much easier. After two failed attempts I’ve finally finished a new Harley Quinn manip! I was going through the archives the other week and realized I’d never done a fuller body shot of the character, so I figure I may as well do one. I found a great image of my usual Harley model Kristen Bell that fit perfect for what I wanted, a slight look of craziness. Including the two failed attempts probably about 12-14 hours work.

Yes, we all make bloopers. We all make choices that make us go ‘WTF?’. I’m guilty of it as much as anyone. Sometimes, things just don’t work out. Way I look at it, you can do one of two things, either continue and try and resuscitate the dieing artwork, or simply start from scratch. Here are a couple of abandoned concepts that just never worked.

WW concept – turned into a different concept

Chun Li illustration – Pose wasn’t working for me, will start from scratch.

Magdalena Manip – Design was heading in the right direction, but wasn’t happy with the pose, will be doing this one again.

Harley Quinn movie still – pose was never quite right, started from scratch.

Riddler Teaser Concept 1 – too greenish all round.

Cheetah concept – Was never quite happy with how it was going, may come back to it at a later date.

Poison Ivy Concept – I have absolutely no idea WTF I was thinking here. This was a very old concept, I’ll put it down to being young and foolish.

I like seeing fan made posters of upcoming films and past films, I like seeing some amateur (or sometimes even professional) using promo photos and other elements and coming up with a completely different design to what gets officially released, in fact some of the ones I’ve seen end up looking better than the real stuff the studios produce. So what makes a good fan poster? Personally, the good ones look like the real thing, someone who’s taken the time to make things look official. In this workshop I’ll give some tips and tricks to give your fan posters more of an authentic feel to them.

Part 1: Choose Your Poster

Before diving head first into the design phase, it’s best to think beforehand what kind of poster you want to do. Teaser Posters are generally minimalistic, often a single image of some sort and little in terms of text. Character Posters are what the title says, images depicting a certain character again usually with minimal text. Official Posters are busier, usually with a collage of characters, design elements, text and production credits; these are generally the last poster that gets released. With the latter, try not to go overboard with the collage and have a main image as the focus point. Have a look at some examples to get a feel of what the norm is.

Part 2: Give Me Credit!

Official posters usually have credits somewhere at the bottom of the layout. One could if they really wanted to spend the time creating their own custom credits, however the font used for real is one you have to buy, and in terms of free alternative there’s nothing really close (not that I’ve found anyway). The easiest thing to do I find is to just pinch the credits from a real poster. If you’re working on a dark background poster, copy the credits from an equally dark real poster. Once pasted into your doc, set the transparency mode to Screen so that only the text shows through. If working on a light background find an equally light real poster or alternatively, invert the credits on a dark poster so that it becomes black text on white, then simply switch the transparency mode to Multiply.

Part 3: Font Overload.

Don’t go crazy with fonts, general rule of thumb is to limit the number of fonts in a design to 2, 3 at the absolute maximum. Keep in mind the type of fonts, the two main categories are Serif Fonts (eg, Times, Garamond, Goudy Old Style, tails and stems) and Sans Serif Fonts (eg Arial, Futura, Helvetica, no tails and stems), generally these two font types don’t work together. Big bold Sans Serif fonts are usually the most used font type for blockbuster posters, they’re clearer and easier to read. Also be weary of font effects, drop shadows gradients and raised effects are fine, but use them subtly.

Part 4: Add Some Mystery

The posters I find the most intriguing are the ones that are somewhat ambiguous, where it leaves you guessing as to what the film is about. Try adding a sense of mystery to the design, maybe making a character or design element not in full focus or view, or perhaps in deep shadow with high contrast, or add in a few elements that may hint at the story. Get people’s minds actively thinking about what’s going on in the image.

Part 5: Colour Consistency

Most posters have a dominant colour running throughout. It’s good to try and keep things all within a similar colour range and to avoid multiple hues; however this is not a set in stone rule, some contrasting tones and colour applied to certain design elements can really help to make things pop.

Part 6: Studio Logos and Extra Garnishing

For that extra bit of authenticity add some studio logos. It helps to sell your poster if you’re using the correct studio logos for which ever studio has the rights to the character/franchise. Again like the Credits, try and get white logos on black background, paste them in a new layer into your design and simply switch the transparency to Screen if on a dark background, invert the process and set transparency to Multiply if the background is light. For some added believability add a website address of some sort (either official or made up). Finally, if you’ve got your marketing hat firmly on try adding a tag line, but try and avoid anything corny or clichéd like ‘This time it’s personal’, take some time to think about the character/franchise and the story you have in mind and figure what phrase best represents it all.

I’ve always had concerns Thor is going to be a tough sell, so the other day I thought I might do a little test to see what kind of support the character has. I whipped up this ‘teaser’ concept and had it posted in some forums via someone else under the guise of it coming from an ‘insider’. I deliberately added a few lighting errors and other errors just to see how perceptive people are.

The feedback results? Surprising muted. Make of that what you will.

Well what a year it’s been! Really this site all started after Slashfilm wrote an article of my photo manips that I was posting at Deviant Art. As cool as it was to get like 100,000 hits in a couple days the down side was some Neville Nobody decided I wasn’t playing by the Deviant Art rules, promptly complained to the admins of the site, resulting in most of the artworks being taken down. But It was not going to stop me! I decided to start this blog and after humble beginning, I’m pleased to say audience has steadily grown over the past 12 months. I’d like to thank all those who have commented and critiqued my designs, and for the many, many folks who have sent messages of support. More of a look back at the last 12 months after this.

Looking back, there have been a few highlights, I’ve had a couple of articles written about my designs on sites Slashfilm, First Showing and Film School Rejects, there was the Joker Oscar Poster that swept the web which some confused as being legitimate (something which I quite literally knocked up in like an hour), and there was that MTV video where the reporter told Kristen Bell about my designs that cast her as Harley Quinn.

On an artistic front, it’s kinda fun looking back at some of the older designs and seeing how they hold up now, some of them seem to work, other not so much. I’ve gotten a lot of good feed back on the Green Lantern and Wonder Woman ‘movie stills’, surprisingly the design that gets the most traffic is The Joker and Harley Quinn piece, I’ve never been able to work that one out. Personally, my favourite designs that I did was the ‘If Women Ruled the Earth’ series featuring gender reversed Batman, Joker and Two-Face. I have to say I had the most fun these three designs, coming up with an entire reversed gender cast and running The Dark Knight in my head with them was hilarious to think about.

On the painting side of things, the Kitana portrait seems to be the one that most people like the best, I’ve gotten more messages on that one compared to any other. On top of that the many Wonder Woman concepts art pieces have gotten good feed back from a lot of the Wonder Woman fans. For me, the one I’m most satisfied with is the Terminator illustration featuring Summer Glau, I’d never done some much metal work before but the hours spent were worth it.

So what’s gonna come up in the next 12 months? I’ve got ideas, some of them are a little daunting to think about but are worth the challenge. I’m gonna be trying to broaden the range of characters, including Marvel and Top Cow characters, I’ll be trying a few new ‘What If’ artworks, I’m toying with the idea of bring animated characters to life, as well as try and get more Workshops up to help others with there own designs and photo manipulations. All in all, all I can say is there is more to come!

Whipped this up in about 6 hours for a forum contest using an image reference, sorta kept it a bit loose and a little more comic book looking, not quite as detailed as my WW photo manips, but I kind like it a bit simpler for this style.

Brand new Desktops folks, right after this.

Man, it’s been a busy month, I’ve had very little time to do any personal artwork but none the less I’ve still managed to squeeze in a new Catwoman piece before the month’s end. Similar style to my previous design, but changed a few elements here and there.

UPDATE: I was clearly suffering from a combination of sleep deprivation and insanity coz I woke up this morning, looked at this image again and went WFT? I really butchered that mask up so I redid it again. Much happier this time.

Thought I should do an updated WW still, nothing major here, just a few design tweaks here and there, and a bit of a colour boost.

Sadly we got very little in the form of promotional imagery of Two-Face from The Dark Knight but that hasn’t stopped many a photo manipulator from doing there darnedest in trying to create there own imagery. Here I’ll explain the process I went through with the Two Face gender swap I did a few weeks ago, but this can apply to any imagery really.

Part 1 – Images and References

First things first images, I decide to use Hilary Swank as my model for the gender swap as she once stared along side Aaron Eckhart in a film.

One thing that becomes painfully annoying is the lack of available Two-Face imagery from various angles and with lighting sources, I’m basically limited to 5 images but luckily most have a similar angle and lighting direction to my image of Swank.

Part 2 – Surgery!

After cutting out my Swank image and creating a new folder called ‘Face’, I start adding bits and pieces from the Two-Face images. I’ve found starting with the basics like the eye and exposed jaw are a good starting point, it doesn’t need to be clean at this point, just roughly cut pieces to get a basic layout going. It may be helpful to draw in some guides of the contours of the face on a new layer to help with getting the shape right.

Part 3 – Micro Surgery!

With the basic layout done I start work on the details. For the paint work I used a Rough Ragged Brush on a low opacity setting to build up the layers gradually to get the burned effect blended in with the image (The rough brush works better for skins textures than a smooth brush). I keep referring back to the original image to get the shadowing and highlights right as well as the Two Face images to match the burn marking. Once done I create a new layer and subtly paint in reddish skin tones to match the underneath image.

Part 4 – New Hair Style

With the face done I move onto the hair. I’m kinda taking liberties with this part coz I have trouble finding references of hair damaged by flame. I cut out a portion of the hair from the original image of Swank and darken it using levels. Then on a new layer using a small pixel Solid Round Brush I start painting in wisps of ragged hair strands gradually at various Opacity’s using the light tones on the skin as my paint pallet.

Part 5 – New Wardrobe

I want a bit more of the figure to be seen so I increase the Canvas size, as a result I’m going to need more clothing. I hunt around and managed to find a pinstriped skirt to match the jacket, that’s the easy part, the annoying part is covering that pesky piece of paper. Using various bits and pieces of the existing jacket I slowly build up the rest of the jacket until all the paper is gone, it’s time consuming but it’s worth it. After completing the main portions of the jacket I paint in any parts that need filling using a Rough Brush.

Part 6 – Fire Damage

Now it’s time to ruin that suit! I start with the red shirt first, using a Flat Round Brush with Wet Edges selected I paint in using dark colours to simulate fuel stains. I also paint burn marks over those nice pearls, (shame, they look good!)

Next is the jacket. Using what I can from the only Two-Face suit image I could find I start to add burns to the suit. I follow the contours of the jacket and, using the Dodge and Burn tools, match the lighting and shadows. Lastly I cover a few pieces of Swanks hair as well as add a collar to the jacket.

Part 7 – Extras and Background

Almost there! Whilst I knew early on that I was going to have her holding a coin, I only realize at the last moment that the other hand should hold a gun, so I quickly hunt around my stock images and find an image to suit. Lastly, with the figure complete it’s time to add the background. I want it to look like a movie still so using an image from an actual movie still, I clone and copy bits and pieces until they are blended together nicely. The last thing is to use is Levels to match the tone of the image to the background, and using the Blur brush, gently blur the edges of the figure.

And here is the finished manipulation!