Need Help! Dio/ Photoshop

[ender098]

First off, I need ideas, advice, etc to make the following;

In my upcoming Dio, It's gonna start with MindBender telling Riddick his origins and how he ended up an unwilling participant in the Venom II Project. I wanna achieve this using a picture of MindBender in the background (kinda like a watermark on a webpage) and little hazy bubbles with scenes of Riddick being a Alley Viper, Killing his Commander, being a BlueShirt Cadre, in the lab, etc. I'll post a pic of the crappy start I had soon and you can pick it apart and give me ideas and critique.....


Any critism and ideas are appreciated!!

[ender098]

Ok, here was my first attempt...I still need to lighten Mindbender to get him to look like a watermark and so I can place black text over his picture.....


http://i106.photobucket.com/albums/m251/ender098/Imgp0703.jpg

[Sonneilon]

I would make the Mindbender more transparent. Don't ask how to do it in Photoshop, other than play with opacity levels.

[General Scarlett]

Give the shots a bit of a 'darker' feel too.....make it look more of a fuzzy set of memories........

[lehsreh]

[COLOR=Red]what graham said. more transparent, except his head. see how that looks.[/COLOR]

[Violentfix]

So these are all layers right? You have four of them.

I would use a lasso tool to cut Mindbender out completely, take another shot of the lab at the same angle without him and then paste him back in the picture that was taken of the lab without him. This way you could mess with his transparency and keep the background more solid. I feel like it might be more dramatic if Mindbender is the top layer and that the pictures edges kind of tuck behind him slightly.

I'd also use the outerglow tool (Layer - style menu) on the memory scenes (assuming they are different layers) then find a color that will contrast the background, next add noise around the edges.

Did you consider taking the pic of Mindbender as if he's walking toward the camera, maybe a menacing look on his face by tucking his chin in. I think that would add a lot of drama.

Just some ideas.

[Sonneilon]

He kinda looks like a professor giving a speech with his chin up? lol

[Outrider]

Is this the sort of effect you are after Frank?
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2370/2282462432_7e5b988544_o.jpg
If so, all I did was paste the pics of Bombstrike and Barrel Roll onto a black background, and then pasted the pic of Blackout over the top, using the opacity slider to set the transparency level (I think for this particular shot it was around 70%).

[General Scarlett]

What Craig just posted is what I was thinking of........but I personally think that you should give the pics a bit of a 'darker' feel.......make it more 'murky memories'......


That's my opinion........take it or leave it...... ;)