This is
a demonstration of how we create a composite image for a video
still or a cassette label.
Please note that all these images
have had the edges beveled and were sized down much smaller than
the original to be shown on the Internet.
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This image was created for a video taping of South Pacific
performed by Valley High School drama department, it was eventually
resized and used the for the label on video cassettes. |
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First we take a photograph of the ocean to begin our base
image. |
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In this image you will notice that the water has been squeezed
out to just slightly less than half of the image to make it appear
to have some depth. |
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The next thing we need is a picture of some clouds in
a rich blue sky like you might find over a Pacific Island. |
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To achieve the look wanted I turned the sky upside down
and squeezed the image to fit in the available space between
the ocean and the top of the still frame. |
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Now I needed a sunset for my composite image, and I
couldn't find a real one in my archives, but I had an artist
drawing that I was able to cut parts from. |
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I cut the sun out of the drawing, cleaned up the edges,
and in turn gave it a soft edge. |
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This is how the still image looked with the sun superimposed
over the sky and ocean background. |
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Next thing I needed was a reflection of the sun shining across
the water, so I grabbed a little piece of the sun from the sunset
drawing. I then stretched the image downward to make it longer,
softened the edges, and gave it some transparency. |
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Here you can see how the image appears with the sun
shining across the water. |
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The next thing that occurred was to grab a piece of the ocean
just directly under the sun's reflection. |
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The edges of this piece were softened, the whole image
was lighten, and it was given some transparency. It was then
replaced back to its original location to increase the illusion
of an actual sunset. |
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The next thing we needed was to create some illumination
of the haze around the sun, which included some ocean birds.
To do this I cut another piece from the artist drawing, softened
and blended the edges, and gave it some transparency. |
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Our image now appears like this with the various transparent
layers over the ocean's sky background. |
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Now I needed the South Pacific logo from the front of
the program, I captured it with a flatbed scanner. As you can
see, it needed a lot of work, with some of the printing from
the inside page showing through. |
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After removing all the unwanted portions of the image,
the changing the colors, and giving it a transparent background
it was ready for our composite. |
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This is how our image appears with the South Pacific
logo placed on top of everything else. |
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To achieve a three dimensional appearance of the logo,
it was necessary to create a shadow to place beneath the logo.
The edge of the shadow was softened, and it was given some transparency
to achieve the proper look |
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This is the completed composite image that was used
for a title page in the video production. |
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With a slight amount of additional modifications the
image was resized to be used as a videocassette label |
