Osca Wallpapers

Walrus entry WW62

2007-07-09T07:41:00.000-07:00

The WW62 source was an owl.

I wanted to do a 'Walrus' wall this time. It was my seventh entry and by now I've learned a lot more about cutting out images and how to apply tools like the eraser, a smudge brush and various softening tools and filters to remove any unsightly edges.

Selection method :

1 cut out desired image.

2 using the selection wand set to opacity, select the image.

3 using the modify selection option, contract selection by 1 or two pixels, invert selection and apply a softening filter.

4 the edges of the selection are no longer pixelated.

At the time, there were a number of artists in the Walrus competition whose work I thought amazing - and out of reach of my artistic or technical ability - especialy the ability to overlay and blend images to give a wallpaper a 'mood'.

Having found the images to use, it was a matter of carefully cutting each out, fixing the pixely edges and applying colour and texture filters to make sure all the cut pieces have a tonal and colour likeness to them.

Once all the images were combined, a fair amount of work went into blending and erasing various parts of the images, to give the wallpaper a uniform flow, adding lighting and highlighting specific areas such as the eyes.

WW62 entry - Owl Dreaming - 28 10 2003

Walrus entry WW61

2007-06-28T13:59:00.001-07:00

The WW61 source immediately presented a challenge when I saw it.

How to remove the girl from the picture. I don't mean just cutting her out, I mean removing her from the source image.

This was trickier than I at first imagined. Removing the girl with a point to point selection tool was easy, using a clone brush the leaves dissapeared soon thereafter. To re-create the pillars was a matter of selecting an outer edge of one of the visible pillars and flipping the selection to create the oposite side. A little bit of erasing to blend the selections into place and all was done.

How to incorporate it into a wallpaper though escaped me :) So for my entry I ended up going in an entirely different direction.

The mirrors gave me the opportunity to learn how to make something appear as glass by using a water texture and varying the opacity. The girl's skin colour was changed by using two layers. Colouring the lower layer to the desired shade and then erasing the appropriate areas from the upper layer.

The mirrors were to signify that our sight and mind confuse us and often, when we look into a mirror (even metaphoricaly) we only see what we want to see.

WW61 entry - Cave of Mirrors - 24 10 2003

Walrus entry WW60

2007-06-28T12:18:00.000-07:00

The source for Walrus week WW60 was a pumpkin. Halloween should have been the first thing that came to mind, alas it wasn't. Instead I embarked on a still life project.

The idea I had in mind had a bit of a twist to it. Create a scene, put the real pumpkin in the picture frame and using the smudge tool to make the pumpkin in the baking dish appear painted.

Armed with my new digital camera I thought to be clever and take photos of all the elements I needed. Small serving table, a painting and palette with paint and brushes. I also made a wallpaper tile with a little angry pumpkin, which pretty much dissapeared in the final entry.

With this entry I finally learned how to cut out an image without having the annoying edges. Zoom in on the image to about 400% and using the point to point selection tool, maticulously cut the image out. Much more time consuming than using the 'magic' wand, but far more accurate.

Once all the elements were ready, it was just a matter of putting them all together.

The final entry didn't look anythink like I envisioned, and the effect I was trying to achieve wasn't at all obvious. Not a waste entirely, I learned a lot of new skills in the process.

WW60 entry - Painted Pumpkin - 14 10 2003

Unhappy with my entry, I continued to play with the source, this time trying to stick to the theme and even attempted to add light and shading. For someone who had never carved a face into a pumpkin, I was quite pleased with the finished piece. So much to learn...

WW60 nonentry 1 - untitled - 16 10 2003

WW60 nonentry 2 - untitled - 18 10 2003

This may also have been the week my sig first appeared.

Walrus entry WW59

2007-06-28T11:39:00.000-07:00

This entry was a bit of a struggle. Very short on ideas, I searched the internet for space related images until I found a photo of the original Apolo astronauts and imagined Buzz to be a bit of a cheeky rogue at a photo op.

The wallpaper was composed of three pictures. A photo of the sky ouside my window, a cut-out of the astronaut picture and Buzz. The cutout was terrible and I tried (unsuccesfully) to remove the edges with an eraser tool. Later I learned that when done properly, this can be an effective method.

WW59 entry - Say Cheese - 09 10 2003

Walrus Entry WW58

2007-06-28T08:17:00.000-07:00

The source for Walrus week WW58 was a guitar. The artist who posted the source image had a band.

The challenge I set my self was to rotate the guitar, and make it look three dimensional.

Using the selection wand, I cut out the source image. The cut-out image had a thin white line around it. In those days I had no idea of how to remove it so I used the smudge tool and in the process tried to give the guitar more of a 3D shape.

The finished entry was supposed to signify the band's journey through music to a gold record.

WW58 entry - Musical Journey - 30 09 2003

Walrus Entry WW57

2007-06-26T18:29:00.000-07:00

When I first saw the source of a Pacific Islands mask, I was intrigued as with some other ancient Earthly artifacts that the design uncanily resembled spaceships soaring to the stars. Well, you know what they say "It's in the eye of the beholder".

After some time of searching Google images, I found enough pictures of rocket and shuttle launches to use to suitably replace the original design and create my WW57 entry.

WW57 entry - Going Home - 25 09 2003

First Entry in the Walrus Competition

2007-06-26T05:47:00.000-07:00

While searching for high resolution pictures to enhance my computer background, I came across a newsgroup alt.binaries.pictures.wallpaper. In those early days of the world wide web and download speeds of 54k, large high resolution graphic files were hard to come by.

a.b.p.w. is the home of Walri. A curious tribe of digital artists that self administer and compete in a game known as the "Walrus Competition".

The object of the exercise is that an image is posted at the beginning of the week and participants world wide use it to create a computer wallpaper. Everyone enters their artwork and at the end of the week they collectively vote to declare that weeks winner. Affectionately known as "The Big Walrus". It is up to the Big Walrust to post a brand new image and administer the competition for the following week.

After some weeks of lurking, through no fault of my own, I reluctantly entered the competition in walrus week WW56.

This was the source image.

Superman was also known as the "Man of Steel", hence the inspiration for my wallpaper entry.

The challenge was to cut out only the line art of Superman's face, enlarge it and make it appear as if it was carved into the steel plate texture. A very simple design, the learning process came in trying to cut out 'only' the line image and enlarge it without the edges remaining heavily pixelated or having any left over remnants of the original image.

WW56 Entry - Man of Steel - 19 09 2003

Little did I know then what a key role this competition would play in the development of my skills as a digital artist and that it was to be the kernel of my interest in photography and textures.

http://oscatextures.blogspot.com/