Topic: SithLord229's Custom Figures

[TheCloneCommander]

sweet Job Steve!! even thou i don't much like CW clones as you know but i truly enjoy looking at Jays and yours customs of them. they help me
with idea's for my ROTS clones, only problem is i find it very hard to break up my clean ROTS clones to custom, im a squad man if i paint 1 i would want to do at least 8 to make them look like a nice squad.

[clonecommanderjay]

awsome customs mate the clone of republic heroes is awsome his names boomer i hope they release him in figure hes gt a awsome hair style fett

[Clonehead]

Hello anotherJay. Welcome to the shipyards!

[Clonehead]

Steve, you made the front page again, buddy.

[SithLord229]

Steve, you made the front page again, buddy.

Thanks Clint, I'm really proud of my 2 latest customs so to have them on the Front page is great.

Greatly appreciated dude.

[SithLord229]

After a few words of encouragement from Jules, I decided to knock up a quick "Hangarbay'd" influenced image.
As I said in a previous post, my skills with photoshop are more centred around Corporate identity & logos, image manipulation, while in some areas I am good at it, tends to be a weakness of mine, especially when it comes to incorporating 2 photos into 1.

If you could leave me some feedback & tips on how to improve on this Jules, that would be most appreciated.

[night force cynic]

I'm quite envious at your ability to paint straight lines enough to make flawless looking stripes on the armor for those guys, seriously, they look fantastic. 
 

truly all your work is great!

[spudafett]

After a few words of encouragement from Jules, I decided to knock up a quick "Hangarbay'd" influenced image.
As I said in a previous post, my skills with photoshop are more centred around Corporate identity & logos, image manipulation, while in some areas I am good at it, tends to be a weakness of mine, especially when it comes to incorporating 2 photos into 1.

If you could leave me some feedback & tips on how to improve on this Jules, that would be most appreciated.

great start buddy.  I find that when blending two photos together making them look grainy and out of focus helps make the two immages blur together.  The end result isn't very crisp and not at all fancy but it makes the immage more believable as one piece instead of two splices.

for instance with your immage I would apply a gaussian blur or sharpen mask... to break up the edges of the figure and the background.

I'd also leave out the feet of the figure so that the eye doesn't have a reference to where the figure starts and the background immage starts.  Think of it as a bust up portrait with a static background, you don't show the fake floor in the photo.

hope that helps, that's just some of the tricks I use... I have no idea if they are what I should do or what is deemed professional... but over the years working with offbrand photo software this is what I have found to be usefull.

[XizorsVirago]

Haha, I like your tactic of  "blur everything together"   I wouldn't blur stuff, because I think it's more annoying to look at than a slightly mis-matched picture, but that's just me. I like spudd's idea of cutting off above the feet, it does cancel out some perspective problems, but if you want to leave them in, just flip the shadow to the other side since the sun is above his right shoulder. (Try to imagine a line coming from the sun, hitting the clone, and passing through him, and the shadow should be parallel to that)

Also, if you can, re-taking the picture with the lighting coming from behind would give a good effect, just have the main light source in about the same place as your sun and have a reflection source (like a piece of paper that bounces the main light onto his front) on the opposite side. Or, of you don't want to re-take the picture, you could always just take out the sun and swing the shadow around behind him, moving off to his right (hopefully that makes sense). 

A way you can make it look less like the trooper is photoshopped in is to take a blurry-edged brush (with a really small blur radius) and go around him so it takes just a bit of the crisp edge off, but don't overdo it... you just want to make him look less pasted in there, not really noticeably blurry.

[DS-61-2]

The Arf trooper is amazing man looks really good.

[clonefelks]

wow great looking clone dude nice work on them LT.Nedal realy nice 5 stars all around .

[SithLord229]

Thanks for the feedback everyone.
I am officially dry out of clone fodder now

[SithLord229]

Hi guys, just a quick fire custom from me this time round.
My old TCW Count Dooku had an accident the other day which involved his leg snapping off, so I have replaced him with the newer repack version.
This time around, I've added the ROTS cape to him which helps him stand better & look better at the same time.
I know its not much but I thought I'd share it anyway.

[hangarbay94]

Sithlord,

Awesome customs as always...

I've just caught up with your image, thanks for asking for some advice...

If I were to be truthful, you can do much better, you have all of the photoshop skills, you just need to apply then to the image or images.

The image is a work of art, you need to treat it as such. Start thinking about the shadows more, the light source is above and to the right of the figure, yet the figure shows light coming from the opposite side. The guy is in a desert, yet he has a blue, cold tone.

I use tools like colour balance, gaussian blur, I lasso part of the image (using feather) and add or take away light (using Brightness/Contrast) and I use the Spotlight in Lighting Effects to add light source.

I would really love to see more people presenting their customs as works of art, and you SithLord are better then me when it comes to graphics, you should be awesome at this too.

[DS-61-2]

Nice he looks better than the original, so just what kind of accident did he have