ThePredator151 Wrote:
The concept is really cool. The picture doesn't look finished though.

Good job though. You may have just inspired me to do something like this too.

Elnino Wrote:
Cool, it makes it seem that the next game won't be a bunch of temples and crap to fight in because of the cities, and the guys face at the top keeps people guessing on who it is.

ThePredator151 Wrote:
Oh! Sry bout that.

- I mean that it looks too reliant on filters, or filter effects. The clouds for example, are just the start of an effect. The emboss effect on the dragon symbol, text, and your banner are a little too simplistic. Making it easy for people to tell what you did to get that effect.

I did use a few filters on the front but its no quite as obvious as you think. I didn't use the emboss on the dragon that was something i id on my own to make it look blood like lol. The clouds were just some rendered clouds that were darkened to blend in with the eyes.
- I like the placement of things in your picture, but you might wanna go in and make sure things are aligned with your "rulers". That is, if you haven't already. Should be under "View" somewhere, no matter what program you're using.

Done that lol
- Although we can tell that "Mortal Kombat" says "Mortal Kombat", anytime blending letters happens with the background, is usually taboo as far as typography is concerned. Not unless the creator intentionally does this as a part of a statement they are making with their piece.

Done that on purpose so that the clouds text and dragon come together almost as one image if you see what i mean just so that its not a plain solid colour and just been plonked there as the title.

- The cutout of the eyes is not good at all for quality. Even though yea, it kinda plays to the theme of the picture by being messy like that. But, it looks like you may have just used the magic wand tool, or "Extracted". Which is under the filters drop menu. Doing cutouts this way will always make you "miss the pieces" that you really didn't want, and it forces you to have to hide the blemishes in the cutout. It's almost always "less than perfect" doing it this way,and is unnecessary because it makes you work too hard for the cut out.

I also did the eyes that way intensionally too as when i was making it and sorting out the eyes with the grainy bit where its roughly cut out i thought it looked almost like the eyes where coming together bit by bit out of the clouds sort of thing and looking down on the pathetic mortals lol. I should have made the eyes a little darker anyways so that it didn't look a little crappy but its men't to be like that with the eyes coming out of the clouds.
Can you tell I learned the hard way? lol

I always recommend using the pen tool, and feathering no more than about 1 or 2 % (I normally don't go above 0.05%. But it depends alot on what the cut out demands). Yes, it is tedious in the beginning, but the reward once you get good will be better than most cutouts you see on t.v. and on DVD covers.

Assuming you're using some version of Photoshop: If it's unreasonable to use the pen tool, then get extremely familiar with this tutorial on Cutting Hair.
Looks like that could have helped you with all the little particles around the eyes.

L am using Photoshop CS2 on my mac
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Typically man, I cut everything....and I mean EV-ER-Y-THING, if I'm gonna use pieces of pictures for a project. Some cutouts require both the pen tool, and the layer mask. I've done 4 and 5hr cutouts before, just for the hell of it. Here's the source for cutouts on MKO if you don't already know about it.

- Last thing I wanted to say is about blending. I can tell that the image of the city in the background isn't blended well. For this, for starters, I'd just say experiment more with the blending modes drop menu.

The other thing is to just get really familiar with how your layer masks work.



Doing this allows you to erase and edit things without actually affecting the picture on that layer. But I'm pretty sure that tutorial on cutting hair explains this well enough.

I used a gradient mask to blend the city image in so im ok with that.
Umm...that's all I can think of at the moment based on what I was thinking when I wrote the first message. Hm... a site that doesn't hurt as a resource for all kinds of tutorials that I refer to from time to time is PSDTuts.com.

Do as many of these as you can tolerate(lol!). If nothing else, doing what other people can do helps you hon in on your particular style easier and quicker. I typically take pieces from other peoples tuts and try to get my own style to work from what they are showing me.

There we go. Let me know if you have questions or whatever. This semester with my photoshop classes is ending soon so I'll share what I can still remember.

lukiLucMac Wrote:
it looks very nice and realistic!