ALL SCI-FI

[Bud Brewster]

The picture of the Wishbones after it crash lands might not look like much, but it was a real challenge.

The Wishbone lands in a flat field on the planet Philcani-tu after a long space battle.





It skids across a cultivated field and comes to rest right in the middle of a rural road. Here's the picture I made for that scene.





To make the picture, I needed a photo of a big green field with a road running right through it. After a long search, the best I could find was this one. (The road was the hard part).





Doesn't look much like the finished picture does it? The hills need to be removed, the road is too short on the bottom, and not enough sky is showing. So, I started by pulling the sky down to cover the hills. Later I did a little work on the horizon so it wasn't just the straight lower edge of the pasted sky that covered the hills, but that was easy.





The picture still needed more sky at the top and more road-and-field at the bottom. The sky was easy, of course. I just stretched the blue upward with Microsoft Paint.

The road was more fun, though. I copied the lower portion of the picture, then I enlarged it so the road and field looked like closer portions of the road and field. Notice how the tar pattern on the road is the same in the foreground and the middle ground.

Here's the result.





Next I pasted in one of the pictures of the spacecraft model that I used as the Wishbone, and I drew in some smoking rising from the red-hot engines.





Hot damn, it looks just like I imagined the scene when I wrote it!

Almost. Just a few details to be added.

First I painted in a few clouds. Then I pasted in a big fat moon (after painting it up a little) to remind us that this is an alien planet. ("Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas any more . . . ")





Next I took on the daunting task of drawing a long trench in the field to the left where the poor Wishbone skidding along. I used nothing but poor old Microsoft Paint and my own awesome talent.

Ta-daaaa!





You can't really appreciate the details of the trench by looking at the 800px version above, so click on the image below to go to the large-size version on Photobucket, then right-click and select "view image" to see it in complete detail. Notice that I drew in grass along the edges! It really helps the illusion.



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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[orzel-w]

Just goes to show, you don't need a big heavy-duty photo editing app to get the job done. You just need to know what can be done with the tools you have.

Bravo, Bruce!
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...or not...

WayneO
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[Bud Brewster]

Thanks, Wayne. I think I'll look into some of the new devices that allow the artist to draw right onto a tablet with a pen-like mouse. That would be amazing after having so much fun doing this stuff with a mouse in my right hand -- instead of a brush in my left!
_________________
____________
Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[orzel-w]

My earliest acquaintance with CAD when we first implemented it at work was by way of pen and tablet. Years later when we eventually switched over to PC-based CAD with mouse input, it felt unnatural. So I think you would find a pen and tablet to your liking.
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...or not...

WayneO
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