Dismemberment / Photo + Photoshop Scene - (some CG gore)

[Dario D.]

Hey all,

Well, once again, my brother and I have done a Photography/Photoshop blending test, as we did recently with the pics of [our clones, here] (http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=312856).

My brother enjoys the work of Ryan Clark, and wanted to do something kind of similar, so today we practiced... well... dismemberment. I basically just took a bunch of shots with him in different poses, layered a few of them, then cut out certain parts to reveal the layers beneath. The gore and window reflections then had to be painted in manually (or duplicated & mirrored).

The whole thing took about an hour.

http://img209.imageshack.us/img209/9800/vcrawl1bcy4.jpg

http://img148.imageshack.us/img148/5147/vcrawl2bdb2.jpg

[SingingSabre]

Awesome!

My only beef is that in the first one, he's reaching for his left hand with his left hand, yet his right is the one that's missing!

[Nicole Faith]

Yeah - the first one is the wrong arm! lol.

But great idea and I love the dirty tinge to them! Also - the small amount of blood and it's reflection on the second one is wonderfull and very real feeling.

[Dario D.]

Awesome!

My only beef is that in the first one, he's reaching for his left hand with his left hand, yet his right is the one that's missing!
Yes indeed. We realized that when it was too late, and had packed the tripod away already (it's really, really hard to get the camera back into the *exact* position that it was). But oh well... I won't tell anyone if you don't. :D (oops, too late)

[Busto]

I love these! Very different. However, the shiny floor is overexposed. Good job overall!

[khall]

I think the saying is "Having Two Left Hands" Different but well worth the try, just lost on a technicality, but the next one will be a winner.
GOOD LUCK Ken.

[Dario D.]

I love these! Very different. However, the shiny floor is overexposed. Good job overall!
Thanks. Yeah, the floor is a little bright, but I had to underexpose as it was (didn't have any external fill flash, and the window light is intense), so I couldn't get the floor any darker without massive loss of detail in the rest of the scene. You'll notice it's already quite grainy.

I won't have my flash gear until later this summer, and then I can do it properly. In fact, I was going to wait until then to do this, but my brother was bugging me frequently, so... :confused: But he's handling the camera and the Photoshop next time. It's essentially a training exercise for him.

On my own time (as if I have any of that), I want to revisit the clones idea again, with a different, more humorous take on it, but not until I get the proper lighting. I want it to be a half art assignment, and do it in front of a green-screen, so as not to continue on with terrible sets and lighting, wasting my time.

[ramblingman]

Awesome!

My only beef is that in the first one, he's reaching for his left hand with his left hand, yet his right is the one that's missing!

Oh, that made my evening. Too funny. Maybe he's reaching for his friends arm? :lol: Pretty interesting use of Photo Shop.

[Herbo]

To make up for the two left hands mistake I would shoot another frame with the guy looking puzzled with two left hands. It would be interesting at least.

[mkuriger]

how hard is that to do in photoshop? i love the affect!

[cdifoto]

Where's his elbow?

[Dario D.]

Where's his elbow?
He ate it. :D

how hard is that to do in photoshop? i love the affect!
Not hard at all, if you know your way around the basics of Photoshop. You just need a tiny bit of knowledge of layers (they simply need to be stacked), and then use the eraser tool, with a hard edge. The only "hard" part is painting in the gore, which can be mostly avoided if you angle the arm so that you can't see into the flesh of it (such as in the second shot). The bloody trimming in that shot is just a grungy, dark-red paintbrush brush, with Color Burn mode (which is also how the flesh inside the arm was painted, in the first shot).

As mentioned in the first post, the entire process, from shooting to getting the final product in Photoshop, was about an hour. A Photoshop novice will obviously take much longer, until he has mastered the needed tools, but it's really quite easy if you know what to do.