Suborbital Transit

Despite a somewhat wonky vehicle mode, Planet X Mors worked out better than the official figure for this scene. From this angle, I just had to add some glowie bits and the thrusters.

I found the background, uncredited, on a wallpaper site. I necessarily need to hunt down appealing wallpapers instead of using my own photos for these more fantastical ideas. I suppose it's incentive for me to learn how to create such backdrops by hand.

I put a path blur on the planet to make the background under Mors a little less busy and to try and convey a sense of motion. Although it doesn't make any sense, I added a cloud and fog layer to make the picture more moody.

Drats. I should have had the path blur follow the direction of his flight path. Oh, well. Live and learn. Fixed in the direct link.

Direct link - https://drive.google.com/open?id=0Bwxl1QbH6hwVcDE1dGdrdHZSelk

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Sunrise Overwatch

Besides coming up with an idea, the next hardest part is getting a realistic looking base. I prefer that to trying to blend their feet/tires into the background photo. In this case, it was as simple as taking Badcube Speedbump to the park and placing him on various boulders. The setting sun provided the lighting and shadows.

I used various Photo Filters to color match Speedbump and the boulder to the background I had chosen. Although there are plenty of other ways to accomplish this, I found the Refine Edge settings of Feather and Shift Edge to be the most useful in cutting out objects.


The background is not mine; it's a photo I found on a wallpaper site that didn't credit the original artist.

Direct link - https://drive.google.com/open?id=0Bwxl1QbH6hwVMmlrbWpsYXB4bVk

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Starscream's Brigade

I wanted to try a technique I saw about blending feet into sand and dirt. It's such a small part of the picture, but it does help prevent the figures from looking like they are floating over the background.

I used Warbotron's set of Combaticons and iGear Star Burst. The background is a photo of one of those beaches along 17 Mile Drive in Monterey. All the fog is painted in with my custom cloud brush.

Direct link - https://drive.google.com/open?id=0Bwxl1QbH6hwVWllhMXdJOTFKcVE

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Fire Bird

The evening sky hasn't been cooperating so I had to resort to cutting Unique Toys Allen out of a white background. I added the laser beam and tracer rounds to try and make him look more dynamic. As usual, I spent a little time covering up screw holes and paint blemishes.

The trickiest part was the rotor. I really wanted to capture that sense of motion instead of having a static blade. I tried spinning it and using a long shutter speed, but the effect wasn't convincing and I couldn't cut it out of the white background. Fortunately, I stumbled across a different technique. By cutting the propellor out of the static image, I was able to apply a Spin Blur. I repeated the process with another static shot of the propeller at a different angle.

The background is a shot of an autumn evening sky with a FL+W Magenta filter on my lens. The explosions are painted on with my custom smoke brush. The foreground clouds are also painted on with a custom brush.

Direct link - https://drive.google.com/open?id=0Bwxl1QbH6hwVbGd1aVM5U20zcW8

https://www.facebook.com/lapstransformersphotos/
https://www.instagram.com/laptutran/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/19429167@N02/albums