Tutorial: Almost Hell
Ethan on Making Light suggested a mashup between this Kinkade image (title: Almost Heaven) and this Call of Cthulhu image. I was happy to oblige. Click through to see larger.
Here's how to do a fast mashup. You don't need to have strong photoshop-fu, I promise! You don't even need photoshop, just an app with layers and a precision lasso--that is, one where you draw the line with multiple clicks, rather than dragging the line. Transform tools are good too.
Then, choose two images with reasonably similar lighting and get started.
For this image, my steps were:- Drop the water/background image on the bottom layer
- Drop Cthulhu on the next layer
- Cut out (with the lasso) or erase (harder than lassoing, but doable) all the parts of Cthulhu I don't want, being careful to keep all of his tentacles
- Put a second copy of the water/background image onto the layer above Cthulhu
- Erase the upper part of the water image until I've got Cthuhlu looking sort of like he's emerging from the water. Erase the bits around his tentacles so that the tentacles are on top (even though that looks fake).
- Pull up another copy of the original Cthuhlu image and use the lasso to select a big water splash
- Put the water splash on the top layer and use it to disguise the place where Cthuhlu emerges from the water
- Copy bits of the water splash and flip and turn them to cover the tips of his tentacles. Turn the opacity down on some of these layers if necessary to add variety.
- With the lasso, select a very thin line from the tip of the fishing pole to Cthuhul's mouth
- With the eyedropper, click the fishing pole to pick up its color (light greyish)
- Use the "stroke" function to do a 1 pixel stroke of the selection, thereby creating a fishing line
- Deselect All
- Flatten the layers
Ta-da!
