Escaping The Photoshop & Cementing a Style

Sometimes images just don't escape Photoshop.

You know exactly what I mean and I have been guilty of this. They're ugly and disgusting and only similar words can do best to describe them.

Escaping Photoshop to me is the first step in escaping your medium To me escaping your medium is imperative to good execution of whatever concept you're trying to convey. Sometimes the problem lies in a lack of said concept, but other times it's pure lack of skill.

Always, always though concept is what makes any execution shine.

Just check out this page here on Web Urbanist where the artist melds together concept and execution to define completely mind blowing non realities.

Concept is where every great design has it's foundation. Back in the seventies and eighties the design team known as Hipgnosis rammed their metaphorical phallus in everyone's face using their almost scizophrenically genius concepts. They dominated rock and roll album covers with a photoshop that was more involving and intensive then your friend burning you a copy off some torrent site.

There's a lot of bad photoshop out there, heck look at the banner above you.



The above tree and stereo-castle was something I was proud of. Two or three years later and I'm looking at the something cheesy and plagued with obvious dodge and burns.




Image on the left was a sketch that I pulled into the photoshop and started applying all kinds of textures. It looks rather terrible. The image on the right is my attempt at something http://souljunk.com type art.

I don't remember what the point of this thread is really.

I'm trying my best to cement a style in a digital age using digital mediums.

I like more organic things - but everything has a need for some polish.

Concept and composition.

blah

Fucking Epic

I've been firing my way through Robert Jordan's third book of his most epic saga: The Wheel of Time.



I just finished reading Chapter 36 which randomly brings us back to the main character Rand Al' Thor. Rand is the Dragon Reborn, destined to fight the last battle against the Dark One. To be the saviour of man and womankind. You get the idea right?

A woman leads a small squad of about ten horsemen up to our main hero here who is camping away. She announces her intentions of camping the night with him and where they're going etc. He immediately decapitates her with one fell swoop. Literally wielding a sword made of fire he kills all of them without so much as an inch of effort.

He literally murders like 10 or 11 people without asking any questions.

He then arranges the bodies so they're bowing towards him and rubs his dragon reborn-ness all up in their faces.

I'm sure if I read between the lines, something she says makes him realize she's completely bullshitting or whatever. but holy shit this was shockingly awesome.

This is totally fourth edition material.

Dragging the body that is my only real hobby

I'm not a person who sticks to plans or can make regular appointments with people other than doctors and scheduled classes. This sucks when it comes to trying to apply one's self to role playing.

What got me into D&D is whatever got me into fantasy.

People who get into smoking after quitting usually pick up a drag here and there, then they're having the occasional cigarette to themselves - next they're buying a small pack and are back to smoking by a weeks end.

Same can be said with my interests in fantasy. I wasn't into it for the longest time than suddenly it's all I ever do.

It started out very robin hood for me. In early high school I wrote stories of the lone warrior rising up against a tyrant. I wrote a good novel and half with the classic cliche of a real world being sucked into some fantastical parallel dimension. I didn't know but I was throwing in the cliched magical mentor stereotype. I was probably following sword-in-the-stone patterns mind you rather than Lord Of The Rings.

By the end of high school, I had done a successful book report on the Hobbit, the movies were coming out and I was chewing on the written trilogy. Friends who had a family-thing going of reading all of the Wheel of Time, pulled me into the series.

Now I have a shelf filled with Conan and other thin pulp styled paperbacks ranging from mostly seventies to the eighties. I'm trying to get through the Wheel of Time for the second time before starting the final few books. I have read the Silmarillion twice now I think.

There's an active community of fantasy lovers around me in my area - but still haven't grabbed up an active game.

I had a good two hourish session I was planning on dropping in - but now I have class this semester. I was playing 4th, a Dragonborn Cleric.

I would love to hook up some first edition, the books are so compelling.

But then the body that is my hobby continues to drag across the ground.

This is the woe of many a gamer, not having a consistent campaign. While others boast twenty - thirty years of game.

Oh bother.