Photobashing : Kingdom in the Sky Background

Final image of the photobashed background.

Hello steemians. Hope everyone is doing great. For this post I try to put together some cropped images from my comic and will try to explain how I achieved the final image of my background. As the title reads, I used the photo-bashing technique, or using my other paintings or some part of them to create a new background in Photoshop. No real photos were used as I far as I can recalled, but I will say that I have nothing against that if you have already learned the fundamentals. For me, the technique in itself is a lesson to be more creative in your process. Use whatever tools or techniques as long as the result serves its purpose, whether to get some realism in your painting or to solve design problems efficiently. So, let's explore more.

Apart from illustrating concepts and backgrounds, I also draw comics. One of my comics is a canon or a kind of a fan-fiction for the "Awang Khenit Universe". Awang Khenit is an animation series produced by Sead Studios, a Malaysian company co-founded by @Rambai and @Aurah. Awang Khenit has been aired repeatedly in our local TV station and gained many fans. It is quite popular locally considering our small country, with an average of 700k viewers every time the show was on tv. The company also publishes a cartoon magazine based on its animation debut, which features many contributing local artists. My "Extreme Pip & Mus" is in it. The comic tells about these two buddies who are fanboys of the series main protagonist, of which his name is also the title. Awang Khenit is a kid cursed to be a young boy forever. But one day he found a cape which granted him the flying ability and super-strength. Extreme Pip is the eccentric bird who likes extreme sports, while Mus is the mouse with the obsession for Awang Khenit. They are bestfriends and always in their (sort of) cosplay costumes, imitating their hero. The two-page comic is about their amusing meet-ups and silly misadventures around Indrasakti, the kingdom in which the series mostly takes place.

"Extreme Pip (right) & Mus (left)" are fanboys of Awang Khenit (mid). The copyright of "Awang Khenit" belongs to Sead Studios.

The background for the first panel of my comic.

The first panel depicted Mus was bathing in a creek. I love to paint nature for background in all of my comics. For this technique, I had used the first panel of my comic to make the background for the last panel. First, I flipped the whole background upside down. Then I duplicated the layer and flipped it again, this time horizontally. I adjusted the blending option of the upper layer and make the two layers as if they were mirroring each other. I also darkened the whole image and lower their color saturation. At this point, I was still looking for shapes or interesting form to be developed into what was suitable for my vision of the final image. You could say the process was progressively random. Including this next step in the 5th box, I just slapped another painting and more pieces of random images from my library of paintings on top of the layers. I went through the layers' blending option list to see what effects I could use. There's a lot of trials and errors along this process until I would get that "aha" moments, whenever the images turned just right. Just right to be carved into the final background fit for the story I had in mind for my comic.

I have not thought of a concrete image to begin with. But I was building for a fantasy kingdom in the sky surrounded by clouds. From the photobashed layers, I painted little by little into what eventually turned into statues, flowery plants, clouds and signs of structures. I especially like the mother and daughter statues in the foreground of the image. This was the fun part, when I finally got in the zone and had the whole picture figured out. In the 9th box of my process's break down, I put more clouds in the far background. Then I cleaned up the whole scene and sharpened the edges to differentiate the foreground, middleground and the background. Nearing my final steps, I once again laid down a duplicated image of the whole painting to experiment with the blending options. I adjusted the contrast and made some color corrections. The last part was darkening the far background to bring out the foreground more. The round shaped architecture and cloudy atmosphere were there because I subconsciously leaning to paint them from random forms. And if your workflow is fluid like mine, it can be very interesting to see what you can come out with.

Gif for the process.

So here is the final image with my original characters in it, "Extreme Pip & Mus". The three figures in the back are obviously referenced from the Fallout game. Sorry for the lack of context here, maybe I'll share you the whole comic someday.

Me as one of the comic artist in the cartoon magazine. X)

Thank you for your support. Until next time.

• Afique

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