Slightly disturbing

[Metalstrm]

Pins and Needles:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3575/3352172302_be28e463fb_o.jpg

[Foxbody]

Son of a bitch that looks like it hurts.

[Metalstrm]

It's all processing Fox. Took me some 13 photographs and a few hours to finish. But I hope it looks decently realistic.

[jon_ridley]

Brilliant! Mind sharing the process? Presumably you pushed your skin with something then edited it out?

[HSK]

nice!

[Metalstrm]

Brilliant! Mind sharing the process? Presumably you pushed your skin with something then edited it out?

Sure thing. First I took a photograph of my hand alone. Then I grabbed a cushion, put a paper on top of it, and using the same lighting conditions (same direction of light as well) I made some photographs of needles stuck into it. Next, I grabbed a single needle, and pushed it gently against the skin with my other hand (with the subject hand placed in as close a position to the initial photograph as possible) to form a depression. I made quite a few photographs this way.

The process then involved taking an image of one needle, cropping away the extra parts and masking off everything except for then needle itself, and placing it onto the image in multiply mode, including its shadow. Then, I took one of the skin depression photos, and did the same, using a soft brush to only let the depression show through, and tweaking the position of the needle and depression so that the whole thing looked fairly realistic, perhaps even cloning out some stuff at certain points.

This whole process was repeated for all the needles. Finally, I fixed the shadows by using liquify to give them a more realistic kind of curve over the skin, and tweaked the whole thing to make everything fit in. Last of all, I put a texture on top in overlay mode for a more distressing kind of look.

Hope that helps! :)

K.

[tkbslc]

I think it looks very real and well done. Only thing is maybe there should be a little blood?

[jon_ridley]

Ingenious, and you pulled it off perfectly. I've added you on flickr, you have some interesting stuff in your stream. When I have the time I'll go through it!

[Metalstrm]

Thanks guys. Yes tkblsc, I think a little blood wouldn't have hurt (hmmm, love the pun), but honestly I had been going on this image for quite a few hours and since this is my first attempt at something of the sort, I thought that I'd keep it a little more modest. Next time there will be blood!

[tkbslc]

Thanks guys. Yes tkblsc, I think a little blood wouldn't have hurt (hmmm, love the pun), but honestly I had been going on this image for quite a few hours and since this is my first attempt at something of the sort, I thought that I'd keep it a little more modest. Next time there will be blood!

Much better than I could have done, I was just nitpicking. It's really good.

[Athena]

I think it's fabulously interesting. The only part I don't care for is the texture being on your hand. :)

[Roach711]

Looks totally real to me. Nice job!

[Cl!ckFoto]

i love it. minus the texturing as mentioned.

[Jpiano]

thats looks PAINFUL!! nice capture but not a big fan of texture.

[masse]

VERY cool, thanks for the work flow breakdown!

[dank ink]

Looks great... only thing I could point out is the shadows on a couple of the pins? The very top one near your pinky and the big one in the middle have shadows that seem to be going in a slightly different direction than the rest. Were there multiple light sources maybe?

[Metalstrm]

Looks great... only thing I could point out is the shadows on a couple of the pins? The very top one near your pinky and the big one in the middle have shadows that seem to be going in a slightly different direction than the rest. Were there multiple light sources maybe?

There was only one light source, but the method I used to create the image does not easily lend itself to perfectly aligned shadows. You are right. Besides that somebody pointed out that the far needle looks too sharp to be realistic. I think I'll fix that when I have some free time. Those shadows are a bit tougher to fix, because you really need to visualise the way the shadows will undulate on the hand when there were really no shadows at all.

Thanks everyone for the nice comments.