First off, thank you very much for all the kind comments on my previous wall. Though honestly, I don’t think I deserve all of them. Like the blue reflecting off his coat. It was by a stroke of luck that I got that effect, and not what I intended!
As per usual, the full description is in my journal. My Sora reference is here. I also have a background only version here.
For the reference image, because I don’t see any way I can provide it…do a Google image search for “Kingdom Hearts crossroads” and you’ll get it. It’s from the first KH game’s secret ending, and it’s one of my favourite images from KH. The original image's size was about 640x480 I believe. ROUGHLY about there. I know that it's blurry enough to warrant a full repainting.
(Just for kicks, you can see a very old version of a wall I did using that image. Be forewarned though! I did it before I knew anything about vectoring, painting, AP and MT)
I did this for the grass and ground painting practice. I figured that since I managed to do clouds in my previous wall, I should try and do grass and ground too. So I started with the background first, specifically, the grass. No point proceeding if I couldn’t do it, right? So might as well start with the most difficult part.
I referred to 2 tutorials: MissNysha’s famous tutorial and Susiron’s grass tutorial. I didn’t follow any of them exactly to a T; I added in the main grass strokes with the brush tool and added in additional shades with the smudging technique. Still, I had to do them multiple times before I got this effect, and even so, I’m not very happy with the top 2 grass patches because the depth always seems to disappear the moment I do some sort of colour adjustment! Well, at least I got much better at brushing grass strokes. I will attempt grass again; this battle is far from over!
(again, just for fun, see an early wallpaper I did using the vilified grass brush. Again, be forewarned)
The ground…I was randomly searching for ground tutorials when I just got this idea to do a series of mounds on the ground. The end result: this rather muddy looking ground. Not very satisfactory, but better than whatever I ever did last time (I hope). I used DanLuVisiArt’s brushes to add texture to the ground.
As for the sky, I was inspired by this image from Pixiv. I used 4 star brushes sets for the sky: LadyVictoire’s brushes one and two, BL1nX’s brushes and gvalkyrie’s brushes. The confluence of stars there was an accident; I wanted a spot where the intensity of the stars was higher, but then I got carried away and this happened.
I saved Sora for the last. I wasn’t too careful with him, because I knew he would be tiny and most details would be lost. Even though the reference image was rather blurry, I had experience drawing Sora from a previous wallpaper so I didn’t find it too difficult.
As a finishing touch, I duplicated the finalized image, added a radial blur with the confluence of stars as the centre, and set this layer on hard light. I find that it creates those circular lines around the stars which creates this tunneling effect, which I don't really want to ditch because...ever since I learnt how to use the radial blur for this wall, there's just something about radial blurs that just make me want to use them.
Layers:
Sora: 91
Grass: 50
Path: 13
Ground: 17
Total: 171
I find that the front of the grass appears completely black when I set it as my wallpaper. But when I view it in Photoshop and Picture Viewer, I can see the strokes I put in to blend the grass with the ground. Would this be a display problem? Perhaps it’s time I got myself a good monitor…
*stares at the "Upload and Submit" button for a long time*
I think one day I will die of a heart attack when I click that button...
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ERMAHGERD. ARE YOU KIDDING ME? THIS. IS. JUST. EPIC. AND. KICK-ASS.
You really captured the moment here! Also, you're very, very, very, VERY good at recreating scenes from blurred
references to a high quality and high definition works like these!
The starfield is just breathtaking and GORGEOUS! The grass, OH that grass. It's as if I'm watching a paused scene from the game itself! XD
Wow wow, this is simply beautiful. The sky and grass are gorgeous. I think it would also look great if you put some text on it. <3
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