What's In A Manip?
I've been thinking about this for a while, seeing reactions to fan arts from old fans, new fans, artistically inclined fans, and those who appreciate it. I want to share just what goes into making a typical photo manipulation since that is one of my more prolific ventures in fan art. Now, I have done a tutorial of sorts before, which can be found here. But I guess this is more for those who dont particpate in fan art to see the many things that can go into creating such an image beside the pasting of heads onto bodies.
Now, this is the base image I found on tumblr. Of course I'm going to make these guys into Jack and Daniel here because why not? *g* I start in Photoshop. I am using CS6 (Don't get me started on CC *grr*). Jack will be the dip-er because we know he's that kind of guy, and Daniel the dip-ee.
Before even starting I need to think about the angles of the heads and how to match those with screencaps. These guys are kissing so there are really only a handful of instances of Daniel getting a nice smooch, so I used this on from Prometheus Unbound. I lower the opacity of the placed image so that I can scale and rotate it to fit as neatly as possible with the base image. I hardly ever get it 100% accurate, and this is where the perspective tool can be a big help. Thankfully I did not require it in this instance.
Of course I zoom in for the more detailed work. To erase everything but the head, I use a Cintiq tablet, however over the years I have been making manips (err... *cough*twelve*cough*), I have used a number of the Bamboo tablets as well as just the plain old mouse. You don't need fancy equipment to do this stuff, not even the programs. I use a number that are much more affordable than Photoshop, such as Paintshop Pro and of course GIMP is free.
Now Daniel is starting to look like he belongs there. I use a small eraser tool with a low opacity to chip into his hair, picking out any of the background colour I can see and to give it definition. The softening tool is good for blending the pixels on the edge into the layer below. Yes, a lot of the time I will work on a pixel by pixel basis.
Now Daniel needs to be the same colour, so I play with the levels to match him with the skin tone of the hands. What I have noticed some folks doing is just using straight up screencaps in their fan art without thinking about skin tone and such. The lighting done when that film was shot will almost never be ideal when you are trying to combine it with other images. Take the time to look at the image overall and how those layers blend together. This also goes for folks using those programs where you just insert an image into a premade 'scrapbook' or 'wallpaper', or where the images are combined for you. It may take 5 minutes, but they still look like fuzzy screencaps (and good luck with trying to use anything pre digital (season 4)). I have to sharpen most of them even when making icons! It may take some training of the eye, but you'll find your work improve so much more if you take the time to edit the screencaps yourself.
I also use other tools to match skin tone and colours, here I am desaturating Daniel's face.
And using the colour balance to match him as best as possible.
Getting there...
Now it's time for Jack to join the party. Same steps as before. Matchng him up as close as possible, not only to the base image, but to Daniel as well as he is not exactly the same as the base.
Hi Jack! At this point Jack and I aren't exactly sure who wants to be on top (of the layers), though I think he really doesn't mind...
Now that Jack is in position, I can see that his nose fits well against Daniel's cheek and that I can erase a slither of Jack's chin to show Daniel's, thus giving the appearance of thier faces being angled into the kiss.
Again, playing with Jack's levels to match skin tone...
Now the tricky stuff. This can sometimes take me *hours* to do. I am digitally painting Jack's neck, as the image did not have enough neck to blend properly. for this I usually use a soft round brush, and use the eyedropper tool to pick out the colours to paint. Sometimes there will be nothing underneath where I am painting and I will have to do it from scratch. I have painted entire limbs into my manips. This again just takes practice. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. It is also important to think about the shapes and muscles as you go. I don't want Jack's neck to look flat so I use a number of colours. I think about where the carotid artery is, the neck thickness, so I'll go back and look at other images of Jack to try and get these as accurate as I can.
Of course Jack's head is not the same shape as the guy in the original image, so I give it a quick clean up with the clone stamp tool. Even though I am not keeping this background, it's good to see if I have missed anything else and that the head I have placed there is working with the other elements of the image as a whole.
I have now layered the background (base) image and placed the background I want for them beneath it. It is a good contrast. I then created a mask layer for the base image and erase everything but for the two figures.
And now they're at Jack's cabin!
The screencap of the cabin falls a little short of the foreground, so I Googled a dirt ground image and blended that with the screencap before giving our boys a bit of a shadow to ground them.
Now I have to get rid of Cameron's car because he's not going to crash our boy's lovefest! on a new layer, I just digitally paint in where the wood of the cabin would be if the car wasn't there. The screencap isn't that great in terms of resolution, so it's a matter of picking out some of the colours and paniting them in.
Here I have a blurry corner of the cabin painted in, which I blend with the screencap by adding some noise to the layer (I do this with all of my digitally painted layers). It's not perfect, but there is more I can do to it later.
Again, some more painting to finish in the front porch and plants along the side. Cameron's car is completely gone. I have also used the clone stamp tool to clone some of the ground to meet with the painted areas.
The image is now ready to be saved as a PS file (yes you should do it earlier, I get so into what I am making that I forget and if the program freezes I can lose a number of changes that I made after the last auto save). Then I open my PS file in Paintshop Pro. Here I am using Paintshop Pro X5. I do this because there are a few features that some programs have that others don't, and sometimes the same features give different results, etc etc. In PSP X5, I have merged the layers and am giving the whole image a digital noise removal. This helps blend all of the elements together again now that everything is on the one layer.
Now for some atmosphere. I add a clouded texture, playing with the blend mode and opacity until I like the way it looks. I also add some colour filters of my own. This again helps unify everything.
This is the time machine effect, which I find can give these screencaps a decent amount of clarity. I don't use the Cross Process option much as I find it can be a bit too powerful, but it worked well this time.
More colour editing using the film and filters options. Here I used the glamour setting with a custom warm colour.
And finally, I added a little texture just to tie it all together.
As you can see by the clock in the corners, this took a few hours to make, and is actually one of my quicker works. With that amount of time, I am thinking while making it "Why are they at the cabin?" "Why are they wearing those clothes?" "Is this an established relationship? New?" "When could this have taken place?" There are so many stories that go through my head when I make these, fleeting thoughts and ideas I don't write down or share because those are my interpretations of the image, and everyone will have their own and ask themselves those same questions when they see it. And that is generally how I make a manip. Of course there are varying difficulties, and each attempt brings its own set of challenges, but that's how you learn different techniques. I make manips because I enjoy creating these little worlds for our characters. I'm not the best writer, and feel I can better better express 'their story' through images rather than words, but that's just me, and that's why I put the time and effort into making these.
If you've made it through all of that, thank you for taking the time to read this and letting me share a little of why I make fan art. The finished manip will have a post of its own shortly. :)
Now, this is the base image I found on tumblr. Of course I'm going to make these guys into Jack and Daniel here because why not? *g* I start in Photoshop. I am using CS6 (Don't get me started on CC *grr*). Jack will be the dip-er because we know he's that kind of guy, and Daniel the dip-ee.
Before even starting I need to think about the angles of the heads and how to match those with screencaps. These guys are kissing so there are really only a handful of instances of Daniel getting a nice smooch, so I used this on from Prometheus Unbound. I lower the opacity of the placed image so that I can scale and rotate it to fit as neatly as possible with the base image. I hardly ever get it 100% accurate, and this is where the perspective tool can be a big help. Thankfully I did not require it in this instance.
Of course I zoom in for the more detailed work. To erase everything but the head, I use a Cintiq tablet, however over the years I have been making manips (err... *cough*twelve*cough*), I have used a number of the Bamboo tablets as well as just the plain old mouse. You don't need fancy equipment to do this stuff, not even the programs. I use a number that are much more affordable than Photoshop, such as Paintshop Pro and of course GIMP is free.
Now Daniel is starting to look like he belongs there. I use a small eraser tool with a low opacity to chip into his hair, picking out any of the background colour I can see and to give it definition. The softening tool is good for blending the pixels on the edge into the layer below. Yes, a lot of the time I will work on a pixel by pixel basis.
Now Daniel needs to be the same colour, so I play with the levels to match him with the skin tone of the hands. What I have noticed some folks doing is just using straight up screencaps in their fan art without thinking about skin tone and such. The lighting done when that film was shot will almost never be ideal when you are trying to combine it with other images. Take the time to look at the image overall and how those layers blend together. This also goes for folks using those programs where you just insert an image into a premade 'scrapbook' or 'wallpaper', or where the images are combined for you. It may take 5 minutes, but they still look like fuzzy screencaps (and good luck with trying to use anything pre digital (season 4)). I have to sharpen most of them even when making icons! It may take some training of the eye, but you'll find your work improve so much more if you take the time to edit the screencaps yourself.
I also use other tools to match skin tone and colours, here I am desaturating Daniel's face.
And using the colour balance to match him as best as possible.
Getting there...
Now it's time for Jack to join the party. Same steps as before. Matchng him up as close as possible, not only to the base image, but to Daniel as well as he is not exactly the same as the base.
Hi Jack! At this point Jack and I aren't exactly sure who wants to be on top (of the layers), though I think he really doesn't mind...
Now that Jack is in position, I can see that his nose fits well against Daniel's cheek and that I can erase a slither of Jack's chin to show Daniel's, thus giving the appearance of thier faces being angled into the kiss.
Again, playing with Jack's levels to match skin tone...
Now the tricky stuff. This can sometimes take me *hours* to do. I am digitally painting Jack's neck, as the image did not have enough neck to blend properly. for this I usually use a soft round brush, and use the eyedropper tool to pick out the colours to paint. Sometimes there will be nothing underneath where I am painting and I will have to do it from scratch. I have painted entire limbs into my manips. This again just takes practice. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. It is also important to think about the shapes and muscles as you go. I don't want Jack's neck to look flat so I use a number of colours. I think about where the carotid artery is, the neck thickness, so I'll go back and look at other images of Jack to try and get these as accurate as I can.
Of course Jack's head is not the same shape as the guy in the original image, so I give it a quick clean up with the clone stamp tool. Even though I am not keeping this background, it's good to see if I have missed anything else and that the head I have placed there is working with the other elements of the image as a whole.
I have now layered the background (base) image and placed the background I want for them beneath it. It is a good contrast. I then created a mask layer for the base image and erase everything but for the two figures.
And now they're at Jack's cabin!
The screencap of the cabin falls a little short of the foreground, so I Googled a dirt ground image and blended that with the screencap before giving our boys a bit of a shadow to ground them.
Now I have to get rid of Cameron's car because he's not going to crash our boy's lovefest! on a new layer, I just digitally paint in where the wood of the cabin would be if the car wasn't there. The screencap isn't that great in terms of resolution, so it's a matter of picking out some of the colours and paniting them in.
Here I have a blurry corner of the cabin painted in, which I blend with the screencap by adding some noise to the layer (I do this with all of my digitally painted layers). It's not perfect, but there is more I can do to it later.
Again, some more painting to finish in the front porch and plants along the side. Cameron's car is completely gone. I have also used the clone stamp tool to clone some of the ground to meet with the painted areas.
The image is now ready to be saved as a PS file (yes you should do it earlier, I get so into what I am making that I forget and if the program freezes I can lose a number of changes that I made after the last auto save). Then I open my PS file in Paintshop Pro. Here I am using Paintshop Pro X5. I do this because there are a few features that some programs have that others don't, and sometimes the same features give different results, etc etc. In PSP X5, I have merged the layers and am giving the whole image a digital noise removal. This helps blend all of the elements together again now that everything is on the one layer.
Now for some atmosphere. I add a clouded texture, playing with the blend mode and opacity until I like the way it looks. I also add some colour filters of my own. This again helps unify everything.
This is the time machine effect, which I find can give these screencaps a decent amount of clarity. I don't use the Cross Process option much as I find it can be a bit too powerful, but it worked well this time.
More colour editing using the film and filters options. Here I used the glamour setting with a custom warm colour.
And finally, I added a little texture just to tie it all together.
As you can see by the clock in the corners, this took a few hours to make, and is actually one of my quicker works. With that amount of time, I am thinking while making it "Why are they at the cabin?" "Why are they wearing those clothes?" "Is this an established relationship? New?" "When could this have taken place?" There are so many stories that go through my head when I make these, fleeting thoughts and ideas I don't write down or share because those are my interpretations of the image, and everyone will have their own and ask themselves those same questions when they see it. And that is generally how I make a manip. Of course there are varying difficulties, and each attempt brings its own set of challenges, but that's how you learn different techniques. I make manips because I enjoy creating these little worlds for our characters. I'm not the best writer, and feel I can better better express 'their story' through images rather than words, but that's just me, and that's why I put the time and effort into making these.
If you've made it through all of that, thank you for taking the time to read this and letting me share a little of why I make fan art. The finished manip will have a post of its own shortly. :)