Author: Darrell Hannan
Email: amiga@wildcoast.co.za
I have always made birthdays cards for my brothers - cos it's fun and the ones in the shops are useless. But over the last couple of years I have been doing them electronically on my Amiga. I use a 1200, 50 mhz 030 & FPU, 32meg ram, Prograb 24RT, ImageFX2.1, Photogenics 1.2, DrawStudio and CandyFactory. And a Canon 8mm video camera.
Right at the beginning I was struggling to come up with an idea of what to do. I knew I wanted to so something based in Taiwan cos my brother and I were there on a youth exchange for a couple of weeks at the beginning of 1993 - and he's there at the moment. And then I felt like having some fun and doing something different and challenging - a crummy action film poster!
Firstly, I had to go looking through the video material that Ryan & I shot on our jolly 'oliday in the Orient for suitable shots.
After many hours I got some that I thought would be just dandy and grabbed them using ProGrab24RT, and edited them (gamma, size and focus) in ImageFX.
So now I had to try to see what could work with what and make something that looked complete from the bits 'n bobs I had.
I knew I needed to have a shot of Ryan riding on a scooter, preferbly in Taipei traffic - and wouldn't it be nice if it could be in front of a nice temple or monument.
So here is how I did the one bit (and I'm quite proud of this):
| Firstly I needed to get a decent shot of him on a scooter. The only place we ever used scooters was when we were in Kenting (resort area at the very southern tip of the island), looking for a wildlife park that did not exist (how we we to know they meant the nice jungle/garden park - us coming from Africa where a wildlife park means, y'know - animals and wildlife!). So here is the original of Ryan on a scooter. |
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| Right, now that I got that, I needed some traffic. The traffic in Taipei is notorious for being deadly (without actually killing anyone). Buses and taxis are a rule unto themselves - and it is not uncommon to see entire families riding on one scooter. So the traffic looked like this. (For the potential tourist looking for a "familiar" meal, there is a Macdonalds to the right of the pic). |
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| And the final component - a temple or monument. Thankfully, the shot of traffic I filmed was just on the other side of a rather nice public area with nice lawns and gardens - and buildings that suited my purpose exactly, the Sun Yat Sen Memorial Hall. (For those who want to know - it was in this building that you can see the changing of the wind-up guards - the type that seem to be more mechanical than human) |
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So I got the 3 components. Now to cut out the bits I need.
First up come Photogenics and it's Airbrush tool (which is faster and easier to use than the one in ImageFX).
Turn the brush yellow and brush out all the background around Ryan on the scooter and it's shadow and save that as a brush.
Then it's time to see if the traffic will work with the Memorial - Photogenics again. Load both pics in and fip the Traffic one to mirror it. Composite the Traffic on top of the Memorial to see where to place it and add any extra space that might be needed.
Now I got both pics setup and aligned for the Rub-Through. I rubbed through the lower half of the Traffic pic (cos that's the bit with the cars 'n stuff). And then more time was taken in going round the pedestrains and stalls and other little things. When that was done I was incredibly happy to see how lucky I was that they both worked together so well!
Now I had to add Ryan into the pic. ImageFX worked here. Load in the new Traffic&Memorial pic and load in Ryan-on-a-scooter as a brush. Resize and place in foreground.
Now the problem with ImageFX and it's "Magic Wand" when cutting out a brush is that it leaves a few pixels of the background colour around the brush (in this case, yellow). So the way to get around this is to load the new Ryan composite and the previous Traffic&Memorial pics into Photogenics again. And I used the Rub-Through again to rub out the yellow pixels to reveal the previous image underneath.
And this is the final result - of which I am most proud and happy. It's presented in it's full glory for you to see the detail of craftsmanship ;-)
(and yes, the shadows of the cars and Ryan don't match up and the perspective of the road also isn't quite right with the building - but hey - I'm not Industrial Light & Magic!)
Now the other bit - the main "Ryan - the mean & moody dude in the night-lights" bit.
Of course, it had to have a close-up of Ryan, preferably something that looked a bit "dude-ish" - a sort of cliched hard-looking pose. And I found one ;-). Then I also knew that it absolutely needed to have some of the lights from the streets, cos that is the main ingredient in sight-seeing in the East at night - all those neon lights.
| Lights. At night. In Taipei. Filmed on zoom through the windscreen of a taxi. (Be warned - the taxi drivers are insane loons. They speed through the traffic, miraculously not crashing into anyone or anything.) |
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| Athough I was satisfied with the neon lights pic, it still had a huge gaping hole in the middle which needed plugging up with something. So I had a look to see if there were any nice tall buildings that we filmed at night. The best one was a shot of the Banking District in Singapore which we filmed on our way back from Taiwan. |
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| The pic of Ryan being a hard-donkeyed dude from Hell. Well, it helped that in this shot he was wearing shades and he was fuming and mouthing off about the current situation we were in. This shot was filmed when we were at a bus-station somewhere halfway up the western side of Taiwan (somewhere near Taichung) trying to catch a bus across the island (along the East-West highway - highly recommended). The reason behind Ryan's tight jaw is thanks to a couple of other South Africans who were also on the exchange with us. Ah, such happy memories ;-) |
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| Well, similar to the previous process. Except this time I loaded the Singapore buildings into Brilliance and used the line and Rectangle tools to make the unwanted area black. Then I took that and just stuck the individual buildings on top of the street-lights pic. Then I airbrushed yellow around Ryan in Photogenics and took that brush, resized it and plonked it on top. Then the same procedure as before by using the previous pic as a backgound to rub through to get rid of the yellow pixels around his head. |
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The rest is not so complex.
The picture of the Monk was filmed in the shops below the flat where we stayed in Taipei. They are novices who wonder around the city asking for handouts to help them out and they also give out blessings.
The final construction was done using ImageFX and Alpha channels to try to get a smooth transition between the pictures.
Then the text was done in DrawStudio and exported as 24-bit JPG's and then just stuck on.
The 20'th Centruy Fox logo was done from a font of Cable-network logo's in DrawStudio and rendered in 2-colour. It was then imported into Candy Factory to get the embossed and bevelled metallic sheen. (Candy Factory is bleedin marvelous - wonderful prog that gets better every update).
And the other text at the bottom was just done in ImageFX and stuck on direct.
And that is how it was done!
It was fun doing something different and challenging - and it took quie a while. I really felt a sense of accomplishment with the fake traffic-outside-a-memorial pic though. And I like the final picture - it almost achieved the exact look that I was after, which I'm really happy with.
(now if only I had a 060/PPC, graphics card, 21-inch monitor and a scanner)
Oh, and for those who want to see the final picture, here it is...
