Challenge: Absorbing Man vs Thor
 effektdmentality  2007/1/7 11:53
 4207  7
This was for dperceful's first challenge in the Challenge of the Artists tournament, Absorbing Man vs the mighty Thor. Here's the rather long-winded notes:
For my first foray into the Challenge, I wanted to have a battle scene of Absorbing Man and Thor, where thor was ambushed, with maybe the other Avengers coming to help.. For quite a few days, I was torn between whther I should manip it or draw it by hand, but ultimately I chose manipping. I used Photoshop CS primarily, and close to 120 or so layers in total. First, I drew out a thumbnail of the battle, which I then threw into PS. Keeping it as a guide, I started searching for base pics, and I happened across a bodybuilding site with a ton of poses by just googling "bodybuilder poses"
I found a back pose that was perfect for Absorbing Man, so I took it, repositioned the arms a little, and erased the legs. The pants are from a medical scrubs online catalog with a sand texture added on top, and the boots are Lugz from an urban footwear website. I made the ball and chain from scratch, using liquefy to warp the chain. Next, I found brick and metal diamond plate images on the web, and overlayed them onto the arms and ball. I used liquefy to warp the guy's face as well, and the clone tool to strech and shape his head into Absorbing Man's egg-shaped dome. Some dodging/burning to fix shadows/highlights was added as a finishing touch.
Next came Thor. From the same site, I found two separate poses, one for the upper body and one for the legs. With a little franking I was able to shape the pose into the one shown. I copied the body layer and desaturated it for the costume, erasing parts I didn't need, like the arms. I separated the costume layer into the pants and top, using hue/saturation and color balancing to color them. The helmet, belt, and boots were created from scratch. A Dolph Lundgren screencap from the "He-Man" movie provided the head, and a redhead from a hair styling website provided the hair. The helmet wings and hammer are from the Thor hammer prop set. I made the shoulder parts of the cape from scratch, and the cape itself was from a medieval costume site, recolored from green to red. I also copied a portion of the cape to make it look like Thor was holding it in his left hand. Again, used D/B to fix and enhance the contrast. Some lightning from a weather photography site, with a little blue outer glow, finished off Thor.
Lastly, the brick wall and background. I started off with the NYC background. I took a picture of Times Square from the net. Next, I used dperceful's destruction tutorial link in the Artist Help thread of C2F's DCG forums to take some chunks out of some buildings, though it's been mostly covered by the brick wall and characters. I added tiny pictures of other Avengers on the roof of a building on the left, Captain America, Hawkeye, Iron man, Wasp, and Vision. Threw all that onto a Filter-render-clouds background.
The brick wall and flying debris was last. I found a brick wall desktop background on the web, and skewed/perspective'd it to look like it's going away from the viewer. I then cut out a random hole in the wall. I recopied the layer and moved it underneath and to the right, to give the brick wall some thickness, using the clone tool and D/B to rework the wall. Filled the hole's empty space with black, and rendered some brown/white clouds to create dust. Next, I modeled some crude bricks in Blender, some 3d modelling freeware I found out about in high school. I took a picture of maybe 5-6 all flying at the camera, then moved the pic into PS and duplicated it a bunch. Lastly, added some motion blur to make it look like the bricks were flying. Added my signature as some graffiti and that finished off the background. 12ish hours and 120+ layers. |
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The comments are owned by the poster. We aren't responsible for their content.
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| BikerBot |
Posted: 2007/1/10 15:43 Updated: 2007/1/10 15:43 |
Mr. The Mighty Lord *Krackaboom!*   Joined: 2004/1/13 From: The Good Earth Posts: 3277 |
 Re: Challenge: Absorbing Man vs Thor The Absorbing Man came out especially well in this.
A 10 from me.
BB
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| JrMcDeath |
Posted: 2007/1/9 16:12 Updated: 2007/1/9 16:12 |
Kling on HM (WebMaster!)   Joined: 2004/7/19 From: My Box Posts: 6982 |
Re: Challenge: Absorbing Man vs Thor Wow... simply.... WOW.
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| Wasmith |
Posted: 2007/1/9 11:19 Updated: 2007/1/9 11:19 |
Time Lord!   Joined: 2004/8/27 From: Knobblers Gob Posts: 2002 |
Re: Challenge: Absorbing Man vs Thor This is awesome. Glad you are posting here! One nit pick... there's kind of a rule about putting all your "how I done it" comments in the actual post. The size of the text pushes all the other art downward that much quicker and other folk's stuff falls off faster. I think the mods prefer it if you post a comment that contains all the major verbage. I got hollered at for that once...  |
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| Divine_Monkey711 |
Posted: 2007/1/9 9:15 Updated: 2007/1/9 9:15 |
Henchman   Joined: 2004/1/24 From: Sweden Posts: 1089 |
Re: Challenge: Absorbing Man vs Thor This one is awesome! Great scene! |
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| bhm1954 |
Posted: 2007/1/8 16:22 Updated: 2007/1/8 16:22 |
Hero to the stars   Joined: 2005/7/18 From: Moses Lake, Washington Posts: 2852 |
Re: Challenge: Absorbing Man vs Thor This is great work. Thanks for putting the extra effort into it. (120 layers WOW) |
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| DAGhoul |
Posted: 2007/1/8 12:48 Updated: 2007/1/8 12:48 |
Criminal Mastermind   Joined: 2005/10/2 From: Posts: 1856 |
Re: Challenge: Absorbing Man vs Thor dude, this is sweet! it would be awesome if you could do a few pages of a comic like this [although, i understand if you don't because i know how long just one picture can take].
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| Dragondack |
Posted: 2007/1/7 22:55 Updated: 2007/1/7 22:55 |
The Great Eternal Dragon   Joined: 2004/2/9 From: Edmonton,Alberta,Canada Posts: 11252 |
Re: Challenge: Absorbing Man vs Thor  Now that's Sweet piece of work! BRAVO! |
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! Manip !
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