Let's Make a Collage (Round 79) : The Dragon And The Sword
This is my submission for Let’s Make a Collage round 79. I know this contest from a post of @justclickindiva’s (@justclickindiva/family-day-at-the-castle-or-lets-make-a-collage-round-79). Which then I know that the contest was held by @shaka here : @shaka/lets-make-a-collage-a-contest-for-all-creatives-on-hive-round-79-134-hive-in-the-prize-pool.
Oke. The contest owner (@shaka) needs participant to create a collage from this picture:
What came to my mind when I see the castle picture was the adventure of Mario and her brother Luigi. Yeah! I played the game when I was a kid. It was about rescuing a princess which was held captive in a castle by a bad dragon.
Okay. I needed a dragon picture. A non-copyrighted dragon picture. Okay I went to the famous https://www.pixabay.com and typed “dragon” in the search box. I found this picture.
It was from : https://pixabay.com/illustrations/dragon-fantasy-animal-fairytale-4417429/. It is licenced as “free for commercial use” and “no attribution required”. Perfect!
Okay let me proceed with the two pictures I already have. I will let the idea catch up with me in the process. I will work with Photoshop.
So I opened the given picture in Photoshop. I erased the castle background and copy the edited image layer.
I inserted the dragon picture to the image.
The canvas was too low I need it higher.
It looked good. I can always adjust it whenever I need to.
So the idea came to me : I should make the picture in a night environment. So I needed a dark sky. I did it wiht the gradient tool.
Okay!
Of course I needed to adjust the castle coloring for the night environment. I did it by adjusting levels and brighness and contrast.
Okay. It looked perfect.
What about some ligthning? To make it more dramatic? Alright! Some lightning, then! I was adding lightning with Brush tool. The brushes pack I used was Lightning Brushes 04 pack which I downloaded here: https://www.brusheezy.com/brushes/44627-lightning-brushes-04. There are so many free Photoshop brushes on the internet. This Lightning Brushes 04 pack contains 10 brushes. Okay I just needed one for the moment.
Okay. That went well.
A thought came to me. “What if the dragon is not actually kidnapping a princess but is is protecting here?” Okay. So the dragon is a friend to a knight. Alright. So the knight has the dragon on his side and of course a sword among another battle equipments (the story takes place in an ancient era, so we are not talking about laser gun or something like that). And “The Dragon And The Sword” seemed to make a good title. All right! I need a sword. I mean a picture of a sword. A free to use one. Nope! You won’t see the knight in the picture! It’s about the sword and the dragon! It's for a misterious purpose. :D
The sword picture came also from pixabay. The license could be checked here : https://pixabay.com/vectors/sword-sharp-medieval-knight-fight-158585/. It is another “free for commercial use” and “no attribution required” picture.
Placed the sword to the picture, added some lightning to it, and of course the title of the pic. I meant to make the pic to be like some poster for a game or a movie.
I guess it was finished. But I think the sky was too “clear”. It needs some cloud. So I went to get some cloud brushes and I found this pack called “24 Clouds” at https://www.brusheezy.com/brushes/2187-24-clouds. I installed to Photoshop right way.
I guessed that made it!
Done! Here comes the result.
Thanks to @justclickindiva for the information and @shaka for holding the contest.