Over halfway done

The front is nearly done, yay!

So the front is nearly done at this stage and after that is completed, all is left to is finish the back and this part is completely done. So on with the next bit.

Shadows and fire and text, oh my!

So as you may have seen, I inadvertently included some screen shots with the flames behind and or in front of the tripod. This was the next phase. As you have seen in the concept drawings, I wanted the tripod to have its leg in a building. But as you can see from the last update, I wasn't able to do that so an idea to cover it to give the impression that it is in the building is to cover it up with fire. Now the only problem I saw with just one layer of fire is that when I put in front of the tripod, it didn't look like the leg was in the building.

Doesn't look like the leg is breaking the building

So the only way around this that I could think of with time looming over me was to add another layer beneath the tripod and edit the levels again slightly. So I added another layer but after changing the levels, it didn't seem quite right. I reset the levels, changed the opacity of the flames in front and was left with the finished result:

Fire at the front and rear of the tripod

It doesn't match the image because the fire added is a CG quality picture and with a little more time and skill, I could have made it blend in a little better with the background.

Next job, the people

In the concept I had an image of two people standing in awe in front of the tripod and I still wanted that so there could be a sort of size comparison. I wanted to inspire viewer to really sympathise with the people in the movie (if it was real) how big the aliens were and to give them that sense of fear.

So early on, I saw a cover I wanted to use for inspiration and luckily enough, it had a shadow figure on the front. So the first task I needed to do was to cut the figures out of the image. This time I decided to use the magnetic lasso tool as this gave me a little more control over the edges and what I could and couldn't select. It wasn't ideal as there was not much contrast between the shadows and the rest of the image, but after placing them I was left with this:

The shadow figures but it caught the colours of the original image

Now the one problem you may notice as I did was that the cut also cut a part of the original image leaving a red outline around the shadows. Now an option for me was to delete the image, use the quick selection tool, create a mask and use the refinement tool to clean the picture up, but time is of the essence.

So from this stage I modified the Brightness/Contrast and Hue/Saturation level which gave me this:

Finished shadow figures

If you look closely at the shadow figures, there is still a slight red outline round the edges of the figures which gives the illusion of the fire illuminating the front of them. So it actually worked out for the best.

Last bit for the front

As with all movies, they need a title. The title was already decided in the concept stage of the project. The biggest task for the text was making sure I chose the right font. I looked in Type Kit and Google fonts to see if there was any to choose from, but as you can imagine their selection is very large. So I looked through the list of installed fonts of Photoshop and found one I could work with and typed the title in a 60pt size. Here is what the finished front looks like;

The very nearly finished front

The choice behind the text was that I wanted something that was still readable to a wide range of audiences (Due to my interest in HCI) but I also wanted something that looked futuristic and alien like in appearance. The one thing I did change since the screen shot was taken was that I moved the text down slightly so that the picture of the lightning wasn't making the letter O of OUT hard to read. All that is left to do for the front is add the company logo and a few official ones to do with DVD Video and the front is officially done. Now to start with the back.