Let’s Make A Collage - Off Week

Here is my entry this week for the LMAC off-week.

Normally I create all original 3D models to add into the reference picture, but since this isn’t an “official” challenge this week, I thought it might be fun to just do a regular photo composite, with no 3D at all.

There were a bunch of really cool reference pictures that were pulled from the last several years of challenges and it was really hard to pick just one! So I decided to use only reference pictures and nothing else from other websites to create the collage this week.

This was my starting point. I really liked this tall cliff with the water and thought it would be cool to mirror the cliff.

Next, I needed some sort of visual interest in the middle, between the two cliffs, so I used this forest looking beach. The sky was really cool too so I left that in.

Then I felt like it was starting to look a bit cinematic, like a hero’s journey before traveling down the river. Maybe he needs to get to this forest?

But then I saw some of the castle structures from other pictures and thought they could be traveling there instead of just some forest.

I saw this archway and thought it sort of looked like it could be repurposed into a bridge, but that didn’t really work the way I wanted it to so I just threw it into the background and mirrored it behind the castle so the castle looked bigger.

Next, the left side of the castle was looking a bit bare so I added another building, the one in the back left of this picture.

Then I really liked the small, but tall tower all the way in the back left of this picture (maybe it’s actually rocks and not a tower haha) and wanted to add it to the top of the forest, like a look out point I guess? Adding just one didn’t look good so I made 4 of them for symmetry.

And that’s it! I had the most trouble with getting exposures and saturation’s to look right between so many different pictures. I added a shadow layer to the building on the left so that it mimicked the shadow of the building on the right. I felt like that made it look more real.

Thanks to @shaka for these pictures and the LMAC challenge every week! Also thanks to @brittandjosie for putting something together this week and putting all those pictures into one, easy to find place!
Thanks for following along!