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Here There Be Dragons!

For the last three posts I have been talking about the graphic design major I am thinking of taking at college. I also gave you some examples of what I have done for the church Facebook page by making verse posts. Well, as you know, I am home-schooled, and when I get free-time during classes, sometimes I will mess around with the Photoshop program I use (Adobe Photoshop 5.5). I was eating lunch with August one day, and we started to talk about the Photoshop. He wanted me to do a mash-up photo; the idea he had was to have someone from medieval times with a sword fighting someone from Star Wars with a lightsaber. I never did actually do that, now that I think about it, but I started to try to find a way to do something similar. Eventually, this is what I came up with. You will need to click the image to see the details well.
Click to enlarge to see details in this mash-up photo I made.
I struggled at first to figure out how to fit images from wildly different games and movies into one image. However, as I was looking up information on Google about
Adobe Photoshop, I figured out how to use a tool called the magic wand. "The Magic Wand selects pixels based on tone and color." (Google Search)  Thus, if I was to click on, say, the red part of the dragon from the picture above, it would select all of the touching red pixels in a range of 32 in tone and color. This tool made it possible to select certain objects out of a background without having to take the rest of the background with it. For instance, this:
Click to enlarge.
after a little magic wand work became this:
Click to enlarge.
I deleted the background, turned the image horizontally, and voila! This dragon (or wyvern if you are picky) was ready to be used. The rest of the pieces I used in my mash-up were from various images, and I did not keep them all. I also could not find them again when I went back to look, but here they are some of them:
Click to enlarge. The background to the entire image; I removed the way-point indicator at the top.
Click to enlarge. An At-at from Star Wars, it had a black background and
was thus easy to select with the magic wand.
Click to enlarge. Just a picture that had green laser shots. In my mash-up I needed the
millennium falcon to be firing laser shots, so I just chose
a picture and took lasers from it.
Click to enlarge. What the laser looked like when I was ready to insert it.
Click to enlarge. When I first started working on the mash-up, Han Solo was shooting at someone.
I like Han Solo, and still wanted him in the picture, so he was added in the back.
Click to enlarge. This is the original for the poor dragon trying to escape the Millennium Falcon
(the ship in the background of my mash-up).
   So that is what it takes for me to make a crazy mash-up photo. It took a few hours at least, and that over the course of multiple school classes in multiple days, but I enjoyed it. Making this photo also led to me learning how to use this software better, which is needed to make better photos in the future. Just thought I would share with you a crazy creation I came up with in my spare time. 
   If you have any ideas for mash-up photos you want to see me make, comment them below or on Facebook.

Comments

  1. Dad!April 18, 2016 at 4:04 PM

    Lots of work, but a great result! This is exactly how I learned to program....playing and practicing. You're doing great, keep it up!!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Melissa A. FreemanApril 18, 2016 at 5:18 PM

    Ok, well, you said we could request a mash-up picture. So here's my request: a meadow with horses, but one of the horses has to be from "My Little Pony". Also, include a boxer dog somewhere in the pic and a palm tree, too! Ha! Have fun! :) Are you going to post my requested pic on this blog?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Addie FreemanApril 18, 2016 at 6:13 PM

      Sure! Whenever I finish the mash-up photo, I will make a special blogpost just for it! I look forward to trying to make this crazy picture for you :-)

      Delete

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