craig white illustration

Time Lapsed

2010-05-12T13:40:00.000-07:00

Wow, it's been a while since I added a new blog. I've been very busy with many things and really haven't had much time to devote to my little slice in the big blogger universe. I do now, have a little something interesting (hopefully) to share. I made this time lapse movie of a creating a book cover from start (well, almost start) to finish. The movie begins at a stage where I have already roughly placed some of the required elements into my Photoshop document. I used a stock image of a wolf and some background images I have as well as a photo of model David Kimmerle, I shot for this particular cover. The final cover is close to this, but a different color and altered slightly with revisions from the publisher, but it is essentially the same.

Although it is only 10 minutes long, the movie goes pretty fast, so get your slow-mo glasses ready. I can't remember how long the actual time spent was, but I think it was about 2.5 hours. The final illustration with all revisions totaled about a day.

So, if you have 10 minutes to spend and don't mind reading a few very quick captions now and again (sorry), take a look.

Here's the link:

COVER CREATION MOVIE

Cheers!

Craig
p.s. The soundtrack is a beautiful song by BT called "See you on the other side". Simply amazing.

Future abandoned

2010-01-07T19:52:00.000-08:00

A while back my agent called and said he had a series of books that take place in a post-holocaust, deserted cityscape kind of like the Will Smith fiasco, "I am Legend". I loved the look of city set in that film, all unkept, overgrown and decayed and deserted. Very cool. I was excited (and a little daunted) to try and replicate that look in Photoshop.

The image that was decided on for one of the covers was an aged and decayed deserted freeway with a broken overpasses and abandoned, burned out cars with weeds and vines growing all over the place. The ideal would have been to shut down the freeway and park cars in an escape route fashion and shoot the image to my liking. Alas, book cover budgets are not movie budgets, so I had to improvise. Armed with my trusty Canon 5d and my SUV, I took to the freeways of Los Angeles in search of open road and a sprinkling of cars -- a tall order in this congested city. Traffic was quite light that afternoon (wee!), lady luck was on my side. Precariously driving up and down the 105, mostly at speeds over the limit, with one hand on the wheel and the other rapid firing my camera, I managed to take about 300 photos through the windshield of my car. I was fortunate to have a bright overcast sky as a light source so I avoided dreaded motion blur which would have ruined the details of the different elements. I used a medium/high ISO and high shutter speed to freeze the cars, pavement and signs in front of me going 70+ mph.

IMAGE: These overpasses were just right.

IMAGE: These cars were in the right positions.

IMAGE: Overpass image and cars combined.

I ended up using 3 or 4 different photos to compile the final image in Photoshop. I dropped out the sky in my main freeway image then used a different image for the cars in front of me as well as some empty freeway to eliminate my vehicles front end. I painted in the vines and used stock images of grass, broken concrete and asphalt from my library. By painting with the paintbrush tool, I "broke" the windows of the cars, flattened the tires, broke the overpasses. I then added grime layers to dull and "age" the elements. I topped it off with a spooky sky from my library. The client was happy with the final image and didn't make many changes, thank goodness, because it was a huge time sucker. It didn't look like it, but it was a ton of work to create all the damage. I managed to finish the other covers in the series, but this one came out the best I think.

More pixel pushing

2009-09-01T08:33:00.000-07:00

Here's another example of the "Liquify" filter in action.

As in the previous post, our hero needed a bit of beefing up. He's a good looking model, but once again, was not as chiseled as was required by the publisher. Also, we needed to spice up the heroine's look a bit and a little cleavage goes a long way-- so I created a path for the scoop of the dress and painted the skin with the painting tools. Eventually the dress color was changed to a creamy white.

side by side:

Photoshop still amazes me

2009-08-25T09:27:00.000-07:00

A while back I was presented with a "small" problem regarding a book cover illustration. Every once in a while, we get models in the photo studio, who, for some reason or another don't look exactly like their head shots. Ok, more often than not, this occurs, but sometimes it's quite a surprise. For this particular book, the publisher requested a guy who was a native of central or South America with shoulder length dark hair. As is traditional in this type of cover, the model was to be fit and pretty muscular. He would be photographed in a cargo pants and boots, a tight tank shirt as well as shirtless. He would be holding a large Bowie type knife and looking intent and sexy at the same time. Since the book was already late, we didn't have much time to find models that fit the description and absolutely no time to request recent photos from the model ahead of time. The model selected then shot in NYC by Shirley Green, who is an amazing photographer I use on a regular basis. The day of the shoot, my rep called and said the model showed up at the studio and was a bit "small", and he was not sure if the model would work out. Since we had no time, I asked him to go ahead with the shoot and I'd hope to fix the image in Photoshop.

I got the DVD of images the next day and literally did a double take when I scrolled through the images in Bridge. Yikes! I actually said aloud, "I hope I can pull this off." I picked a shot in Bridge and launched Photoshop CS4. I went straight to the Liquify filter. Used correctly, this amazing tool lets you pull and push pixels with wonderfully realistic results. After a time, I clicked ok to apply the filter's effects to the image. I was stunned by what I saw. It actually worked and it looked good! Flipping between the before and after images was a delight. What an amazing application. In addition to beefing up the model, I gave him a slightly wider face and angular nose and raised his cheek bones. Finally I added the boots, changed the color of the pants, and changed the knife. Thanks Adobe, you saved the day (again!).