Sorry Thayne, DD doesn't roll that way.

Does he have lipstick on????

the head doesnt seem right

the body is great, but the face seems out of place

Very nice indeed. When I first saw it I was thinking that maybe you had used a Poser model as a base and reworked it in photoshop. But if I am mistaking 2-D images for , then your experiment was a success.

oh wow man! This is sharp. The experiment was indeed a success, however "I" would've blurred out the face a little or tediouslt smudged it to get it to match the rest of the pic, the face stick out just a little too much, other than that BEAUTIFUL! OUTSTANDING!

You asked for it. Here it goes:
First, I will explain what I was trying to do here. BA????????s Supergirl experiment really had me thinking about the difference between comic art and photographs, also my frustration of looking for hours and hours for base pictures of models in certain poses. So after some thought on the subject I decided to see if I could make comic art look kind of like a photograph (or manip). I figure that the main visual difference between comic art and a photograph is in the transition of light. In comic art it uses hard-edged lines and in photos it becomes a more gradient transition. So I found a comic art image of daredevil, on the Internet. The image was small and in fairly poor shape but it was in a good pose and not very complicated (so I thought). The experiment started and after about 4 complete and utter failures, I was about to give up. Then I had one more idea to try. Originally I was not going to post this one. But after showing it to BB and my wife they both told me to post it.
Ok, so here is what I did. Looking at the image every single pixel has been manipulated in one way or another so here goes. I increased the image size to slightly bigger then the finished product you see here. Then I masked off the comic images head and created a new layer, not including the skin. I then took the smudge tool (fuzzy brush size 8 strength 8) and started to pull the lines out to make them look like a more gradient change. Then I smoothed out the other areas of the mask using the smudge tool following the curves of the head, this helped again change the line work and also smooth out the colouration of the comic image. The horn at this point had disappeared so I had to recreate them on their own layers. The head itself had become pink from under going this part. I then used the blur tool (soft brush size 10 strength 15) and worked on some of the really thick lines to spread them out into a gradient transition. I added in a real jaw and nose, from an unknown model. I had to really warp and mould the face I added in to fit the mask. I used distort, liquify, smudge, rotate and resize repeatedly to get it to fit properly. Then I noticed I still had to give him a digital nose job (it was huge) so after shrinking the nose down, I had to use the clone tool and healing brush to fix some of the skin. I then had to use dodge/burn to match up to the shading in the rest of the mask. I then added in the drop shadow to the real face to finish the effect. Then I moved on to the different sections of the body. I basically did the same thing to the entire body of the comic art that I did to the mask. I had to separate the body into about 11 layers, not including the head, to keep things in perspective and looking proper. The highlight and shading in all of the body and mask look washed out, so using the original picture as reference I used dodge/burn to add back in some of the highlights and shadows that had been removed in the smudge/blur process. I also had to go in and add some new lines for drop shadows using the burn tool. So at this point I had a nice pink daredevil in front of a comic book background. So for the background, I found a picture of the moon rising over a lake. I took the moon out and desaturated it, resized it, and then rotated it. I then added in some clouds and sky, this was taken from the same picture as the moon, again I resized it, I also cloned some, applied a colour change to some, used the smudge tool. And then mixed it all together to create my night sky. The Building in the bottom left hand corner I extracted then resized flipped horizontally then used dodge/burn to enhance the lighting to match what I was going for. Then on to the building DD was on. It is actually 6 layers it self, First the bottom layer is the original comic art, I then masked of the top lighter section of the roof created a new layer for it this was done just to get the shape correct. I then created rock using a Photoshop tutorial about creating rock from nothing. I then put the layer over top of the comic art and set the layer to multiply, and then played with the brightness/contrast of the layer followed with dodge/burn. I repeated this for the top four sections of the roof. For the brick section I found a picture of a brick wall took out a small section of it, rotated it put it in place. Duplicated layer, flipped it horizontally rotated it again and put it in place to make a corner. Then I used dodge burn after merging the brick layers together. Now I went on to fix the pink of the main figure, I just adjusted the brightness and contrast to make him red again. I probably left some stuff out but that is what I remember doing to it. So in total I ended up using 5 base pictures to put this one together. 1 comic art and 4 photographs.
Any questions?

I think its a great example of how a (static) pose can be dynamic. Its a really good hero shot. The style reminds me of two things.. Those 'flare' cards with the airbrushed art, and that guy who did DD after the miller and jansen runs.
What was his name?

-B

I'd say the experiment was a complete success. Whatever technique you are using, I agree with Kallisti, ya gotta share!

This is really cool.

Looks like a 'Marvel Masterwork'.
How many base pics were used? Did you use a base pic for the body/muscles or just add them in?

Nice effect.

good image looks very trading card-like. you should have put his stats on it .

nice work, WH. let's hear more about this experimental technique!