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Lord of the Skies
Lord of the Skies
mycelium


Photograph Information Photographer's Comments
Challenge: Mythical Creatures (Expert Editing*)
Camera: Canon EOS-350D Rebel XT
Lens: Tamron SP AF 24-135mm f/3.5-5.6 AD Aspherical IF for Canon
Location: Dining room table (as ever)
Date: Jul 20, 2010
Galleries: Digital Art
Date Uploaded: Jul 20, 2010

 Boy, this sure did take a long time to make.

This dragon is made of pineapple, eggplant, lettuce, a parsnip, and a photo of my left eye.

I didn't really like the Mythical Creatures challenge when it was announced, but when I saw it was expert editing, I had to enter, because I told myself I wanted to enter the next expert-editing challenge that came along. I wanted an opportunity (or excuse) to exercise my Photoshop skills.

Dragons came to mind, so I did a Google search for source images. Ultimately, the one I liked best was one of the first to come up, and so this is what I modeled my dragon after:



I don't know who the original artist is. I put a copy of this image in a new layer, resized to 3000x4000, and set to work. I had no idea what I was doing at first, but I fairly quickly developed a technique involving the Liquefy tool (which I've never used so extensively before).

I saved copies of my work in progress along the way fourteen times; I uploaded them all, but I'll link to only a few:



All in all, after maybe 30 hours of Photoshopping, I considered myself done. The final image has 299 layers. Here's a 100% crop:



And, of course, the source images:



Finally, I uploaded a shrunken-down version of the Photoshop file (~21mb), if anyone is interested to see how the layers worked.

Statistics
Place: 13 out of 83
Avg (all users): 6.2031
Avg (commenters): 7.5625
Avg (participants): 6.2708
Avg (non-participants): 6.1878
Views since voting: 3988
Views during voting: 753
Votes: 261
Comments: 28
Favorites: 6 (view)

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AuthorThread
 08/09/2010 01:24:31 AM
Seriously under-rated, glad you shared the crafting with us!
  Photographer found comment helpful.
 08/01/2010 02:27:07 AM
VERY creative!
  Photographer found comment helpful.
 07/28/2010 06:08:02 PM
I am ever so impressed by the quality of the final product and absolutely awed at how you did it. This is truly a very creative piece of art and I for one will add this to my Favorites.

Very nicely done.

Ray
  Photographer found comment helpful.
 07/28/2010 02:28:33 PM
Extraordinary!!
  Photographer found comment helpful.
 07/28/2010 12:43:29 PM
Shoulda been top 5!!!
  Photographer found comment helpful.
 07/28/2010 11:34:37 AM
Fantastic and creative work! Reminds me the work of the painter Arcimboldo, in a photographic/photoshopic way :-) This is just art, whatever the name people put on it.
  Photographer found comment helpful.
 07/28/2010 08:18:32 AM
You should be very proud of this work! I sure would be, great stuff.
  Photographer found comment helpful.
 07/28/2010 06:11:22 AM
"This dragon is made of pineapple, eggplant, lettuce, a parsnip, and a photo of my left eye."
Wow. That's incredible.
Thanks for putting so much work into the explanation. I'll never be able to do it, but I appreciate the steps all the same!
  Photographer found comment helpful.
 07/28/2010 03:46:53 AM
This image blows my mind. Don't listen to the negatives about how this is not a photo. Considering you took vegetables and made it into a dragon is just pure art. It's brilliant, sharp, the colours are vivid and the right parts are list and others dark. It's really well done.
  Photographer found comment helpful.
 07/28/2010 12:38:59 AM
I would never have predicted how you did this. Very creative.
  Photographer found comment helpful.
 Comments Made During the Challenge
07/27/2010 10:18:11 PM
Is there anything real about this image (other than the background)?
  Photographer found comment helpful.
 07/27/2010 03:18:46 AM
Maybe its just me, but I don't see any photography in this image. Its an image that could have been created 100% in photoshop.
  Photographer found comment helpful.
 07/26/2010 11:19:29 PM
Too cartoony for my taste.
  Photographer found comment helpful.
 07/25/2010 11:30:14 AM
I gave this a 7 but wonder how much of this has photographic qualities?
  Photographer found comment helpful.
 07/25/2010 09:37:44 AM
Oooooooooh!! Niiiice job!!!
  Photographer found comment helpful.
 07/23/2010 07:12:32 PM
well done. I like the black and the vivid colors. (not voting)
  Photographer found comment helpful.
 07/23/2010 07:11:03 PM
Is that a pineapple I see on the neck?
  Photographer found comment helpful.
 07/23/2010 03:00:25 PM
Cool, i wonder how you did that? is this a cut out of a painting that you took a photo of or something?
  Photographer found comment helpful.
 07/23/2010 09:22:32 AM
A bit of pineapple skin and parts of vegetables?
  Photographer found comment helpful.
 07/22/2010 09:51:23 AM
This looks like a painting but it's fabulous!
  Photographer found comment helpful.
 07/22/2010 07:05:26 AM
Looks more of a drawing than a picture !
  Photographer found comment helpful.
 07/21/2010 10:32:15 PM
Oh great, now I'll have nightmares tonight. 8
  Photographer found comment helpful.
 07/21/2010 01:32:40 PM
Outstanding, wonderful image with a magical feel.
  Photographer found comment helpful.
 07/21/2010 12:49:43 PM
Wow! Amazing dragon. This doesn't even looking like a photo...
  Photographer found comment helpful.
 07/21/2010 08:32:51 AM
Great merging of the individual elements - is that the creative use of a tree trunk for the neck !?!
  Photographer found comment helpful.
 07/21/2010 08:00:11 AM
This is fabulous!!! A fantasy book cover for sure.
  Photographer found comment helpful.
 07/21/2010 01:50:12 AM
Fantastic! Your dragon looks very real and natural . I can't imagine how you got it
  Photographer found comment helpful.
 07/21/2010 12:15:32 AM
woh, im very impressed. looks like it was a bitch to edit, but it looks awesome. great job-10
  Photographer found comment helpful.


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