17 June 2009 - 3:53Heavy Metal

Lesley came to me about a year ago with a body cage and a big furry carpet.  Luckily i had a funky space gun ( It’s actually an airbrushed toy gun from ‘Star Wars’) which gave it a ‘Red Sonia’ meets Battlestar Galactica feel.

I was sitting in front of this image for a few days trying to come up with a concept to ’spice’ up the body cage and ‘gun’  . . . Voila!  a southpark episode just played with a parody of the classic cartoon ‘Heavy Metal’ . . . yes some inspiration comes cheap!

Besides a lot of airbrush work,  I gave this image a little more of a ‘cartoon’ feel by using the ’smudge’ tool set to ‘darken’ and brushed through the hair to remove ‘whispies’.  The layer was duplicated, given a small gaussian blur and set to ’soft light’ at about 60% (this raised the contrast, saturation, and smoothed the skin – i did erase around the eyes, gun and some areas that i still wanted to apprear sharp.

Sometimes i wish i was better with Wire frame creation, but for now i’m using some stock images from Istock photo.  Here are the images that went into this file. . . can you spot where all the suit of armour pieces came from?

Follow up email:

I totally love it! The armour looks so cool and I have never looked better! Great ideas, I’m  really excited.  Thanks,  Lesley