Challenge of the Artists (which I think should have been physical fights with sharp pencils) just had it's first round - here's my entry with some art notes: I wanted an 'old school' feel for this image and nothing says old school like 'Kirby Dots' - the old school art technique pioneered by Jack Kirby to convey energy and power. To figure out Absorbing Man's foe, I did some research and found out he actually squared off against Black Bolt once (one of my favorite heroes) in of all things a Dazzler comic! Apparently Absorbing Man has absorbed Dazzler's light powers and she called Black Bolt (he's on my speed dial too!) to supercharge her with more sound waves so she could defeat Absorbing Man. Goofy story maybe but I thought it could yield a cool picture.
I started this off by figuring out the type of base images I needed. I thought my best bet would be to look for weightlifters and wrestlers. Absorbing Man started off as a weightlifter bending over to get something and Black Bolt is a composite of westlers in choke holds and lying on the ground. Additional base photos include the chains, part of a ball, and shoes. Once I had the general composition I began playing with energy effects and tried almost a dozen color combinations of the energy effects and Kirby Dots. The Dots were achieved with multiple layers of circles and circle cut outs with a number of filters. Since energy was all around I played around a lot with the 'dodge and burn' to give the effect of the characters being surrounded in energy. I even toyed with adding Dazzler in but it was too distracting and detracted from the composition so I abandoned her. Everything was done in Photoshop CS.