Tall Short - Digital Illustration 3

Tall Short

The theme is purveyed through the obvious means of tall chap and a dwarf, in the style of Vaudeville with a contemporary spin.  It’s quite punchy and comedic which I feel will be memorable.

The featured subjects are from a Photograph.  I traced them with the pen tool and created a mask to reveal just them. I used the mask to cut them out to create a blurred effect on another layer.

I upped the contrast, added a colour layer to make it look sepia, the majority of Vaudeville images I have seen are in Sepia.  The blacks were darkened, I added a dark corner with the gradient tool with a soft light blend, darkening the image slightly.

Another colour layer was added, set to Exclusion, which softening the colours but brightening some of the features and upped the contrast slightly.

Lastly I went round the subjects with the smudge tool to soften up the edges and refined the mask.

I created another layer below the subject composite.  Using the custom tool I created a target, a cross, a rectangle and line tool, rotating them with transform. 

I used Illustrator to create 2 black curves with the pen tool, using the blend tool with specified steps, duplicated curves filling the space giving a gradual colour change.  This swirl moves the eye away to the background giving a sense of depth.  I also used Illustrator to create a checkerboard grid.

The shapes were placed asymmetrically to balance out the overall image, and enhance the contrasting heights of our subjects.  There is equal distance between the top of Tall’s head and the top of the image, and that of the distance between his centrally positioned foot and the bottom of the page.  This foot is closer to Short’s foot which makes the eye draw to this more concentrated are, it feels heavier and therefore cheats the usual balance approach.  The edges of the bottom shapes are set equally away from their closest edges.

The top layer, with the subject matter and all it’s effects, was set to the blending mode Pass Through, which allows the effects to be active on both the group and the layer beneath it.

Mark awarded = 73