From This to This # 4

Here's a new one! For this image I wanted to do a depiction of Christ coming back in bright powerful unprecedented glory. However I wanted it to be from the vantage point of a remote area with no inhabitants... almost as if it is in the split second where no naked eye from humanity has had the time to register what is happening. And the earth is shaken in awe-inspiring force.

I started with this image of a sunset sky over a tranquil body of water.


Then I added this foggy mountainous picture I've used in the past. I used the soft light blending option to merge the colors and lighting in an obscure glow.



I then pasted in this epic looking picture of a valley in New Zealand! I used the overlay blending option here, and it really defined the colors from the underlying layer.



Next, I added this picture of another valley with some flowers. I changed the hue to give it a greener look and brought the saturation down a bit, and gave it slightly more contrast.



After that, I found a picture of the sky with the glowing bright sun being the central aspect of the image. I used a glow eraser to mold it into a wedge that fit behind the mountains.


The next thing I added was this image of a rippled water. I have had this idea in the back of my mind for quite some time. (combining water ripples with the sky/sun). I again utilized the glow eraser and centered the ripple around the sun.


I wanted the sky to look like it was blown open by the presence of Jesus. I added this image of outer space in the background to reflect this.


Finally, I wanted the centralized sun (SON) to be flooding the earth with rays of glory! I added this image of a supernova looking burst of light. I flipped it vertically, again used the glow eraser, and pulled it into the center near the sun. I changed the blending to screen and changed the hue to a more bluish vibe.


Finally I merged the layers and adjusted the contrast. Here is the finished product (Click the image to view it larger), I hope you like it! I know it does not even come close to depicting His triumphant return, but it depicts my minds imagery on the matter perfectly! :)

From This To This # 3

here's the latest! Feel free to give me some feedback!

From This to This # 2

Here is my second entry of FTtT. I used an image of a bonfire that Lauren took at UNT a couple of years ago, and a foreign looking castle image I found online. Don't forget to click the image to see it larger!

From This to This #1

Here's another series of entries I am going to start called From This to This. Where I take an image and turn it into something else.. Here's the first one!

Leave a comment!

Left-click the image to view it larger!

My Favorite Album Artwork/ Packaging

I am now going to begin a series of entries based on my favorite album packaging and design.

To start things off: Invisible Creature's (then Asterik Studio) design for And The Rest Will Follow by Project 86. From 2005.

Click the images to view them larger!!

Feel free to leave comments!

This is the outside cover of the Physical CD.

This is the front of the booklet.



The two sides of the machine open like double doors (awesome)..once opened, it looks like this.




After flipping it over and opening the rest of the folds, the track names and lyrics appear with a band photo in the center.

DEsiGn

AS some of you know I like to dabble in graphic design as one of my hobbies. I put together a War Of Ages (Christian Metal Band) image this weekend and really was thrilled with the way it ended up looking. So I thought I would give details on how I designed it.

I started with inspiration of a shield and figured i wanted some sort of Epic looking landscape.
I wanted a really neat looking shield, and it took me a while to find one on google images. I eventually found this one..
I noticed right from the get go that I wanted to change up the shield's wording and the battle hammer into a cross. First I removed the surrounding background. I then was able to remove the wording from the banner by pasting pieces of the surrounding red banner over top of it. The battle hammer to cross transition was just a matter of removing the upper half of the hammer and copying and pasting a part of the lower handle as the top of the cross.

The next thing I wanted to do was change the skull into a lion. War Of Ages has used a lion in it's identity in the past. I downloaded the lion in this picture from google.


I then scaled it down and adjusted the opacity and placed it over the skull for a transparent look.

The next thing I did was add the traditional War Of Ages typography logo to the top of the shield. the finished shield came out like this:
For the landscape I wanted something epic looking. A smokey battlefield vibe, yet vacant. I decided to find a cloudy elegant sky. I came up with a picture from google that had that quality.
I followed that up with a smokey mountainous picture i found. I cut the mountains out of this picture and used an eraser with glowing edges to avoid an ugly fringe between the mountains and sky.
After those were put together I used a desert piece of land from this photo to add the near-ground where I wanted to have the shield half buried.

To pull this off with all the different pieces of land and sky from several different pictures..I utilized the glowing edge brush and adjusted the contrast and lighting effects pretty heavily.
The result was, I think, a perfect setting for the shield:


For the addition of the shield to the landscape I simply pasted it and trimmed off the bottom left corner for the buried look. I added a stroke to the outline of the "War Of Ages" wording. I then added the word ETERNAL to the banner and put a motion blurred layer underneath it for some wear and tear. I adjusted the lighting effects to finish things off.

Once everything was put together I was really happy with how it looked. I think it is probably my favorite and most complex design I've done thus far. Here's the finished product!