War Zone

War Zone

I was originally inspired by that highway scene between Optimus Prime and Bonecrusher in the first Michael Bay Transformer movie. Somehow it morphed into this scene between Jazz and Scrapper instead.

The background picture is not mine. It is from a 2014 AFP photo of a car bombing in Beirut. 

I shot Generation Toy J4ZZ and Scraper with some colored gel on my flash in anticipation of matching them to flames. In Photoshop, I used curve, photo filter, and saturation layers to further blend them into the picture. For Scraper, I placed a shadow layer under him and some dust to obscure where his feet "meet" the ground. His eye flare is from a lens flare render. For both figures, their faction symbols are actual stickers, but with inner, outer, and gradient layer styles enabled to provide that shimmering effect. As usual, I covered up obvious screws, filled in gaps in the form, and provided some subtle glow layers.

In the foreground, I blended in some embers from stock photos by placing them in front and behind J4ZZ. They add some more depth to the image.

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Jazz

Jazz was one of my favorites. Fortunately, he survived the great toy purge of the '86 movie, but he seems to have lost some prominence in the third and fourth seasons of the cartoon. For some reason, I always thought of him as Optimus Prime's second in command, and was disappointed that the mantle of leadership was passed onto Ultra Magnus and then Hot Rod instead.

Unlike my previous two portrait subjects, Jazz is definitely lacking in viable options. Generation Toys J4zz is more IDW-inspired; so is Reveal the Shield Jazz from so long ago. There is still no official Masterpiece version of this character. Is this a case of official car licenses getting in the way of toy releases?

I shot Maketoys Downbeat in my light tent, with a magenta gel on my key light to try and match the background I had chosen. Besides the usual time spent cleaning up blemishes, I also added some eye and headlight glows. Too bad the figure's hand doesn't retract to match the shot from the cartoon.

The background is a shot of some random summer evening when the setting sun was leaving visible light streaks in the sky, even to the naked eye.

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Sunrise Race

This was actually my first concept for Generation Toy J4ZZ before scrapping it in favor of what I'd posted for Sunset Drive. Maketoys Downbeat has a pretty good looking vehicle mode. It's not my favorite form factor for a Porsche, but it is true to the G1 cartoon. Be it the paint job or the build material, my rudimentary knowledge of Photoshop sliders had no effect on how Downbeat appeared.

To try and simulate the sun glinting off of the cars, I initially placed a flash off to the back, but found it blew out the "track". The same was true for using a lamp. In the end, I simply took a shot with only ambient lighting. I was afraid the sandpaper would be too fine grain to simulate a paved road, but it actually worked pretty well. I have more sheets of different grains to try out for future shots. The background is a shot of a sunrise at Black Mountain in Los Gatos (have I mentioned it was a 2 hour hike?) The low level fog seems to help to blend the horizon line. Instead of trying to draw the sides of the track, I downloaded a couple of pictures from a Wikipedia article on race tracks. Taking a cue from JJ Abrams school of cinematography, I also threw in a bunch of lens flares.

I completely overestimated the amount of depth of field I would get at f/16. Sideswipe, being slightly out of focus, was difficult to cut out because of his less defined edges. Next time I do something like this, I need to make sure the parts I intend to cut remain sharp and in focus. I can always blur it in Photoshop.

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Sunset Drive

This is a actually my second attempt at this picture after spending a whole day working with a different one that just wouldn't come together.

I placed Generation Toy J4ZZ on a Toyhax dark ground tile with an aquarium rock deco. The sunset is a shot I took during a vacation in Waikiki Hawaii. The smoke is from a picture of clouds. Unfortunately, I had to find a forest picture online; there's nowhere nearby for me to get a shot like that. The road strip and skid marks are drawn in. I also added headlights and a motion blur for the tires and rims.

I'm not quite satisfied with how the road and rock edges blend in with the background. Still a lot to learn about how to do blending in Photoshop.

Direct link - https://drive.google.com/open?id=0Bwxl1QbH6hwVdl9xVElTM0dhbGc

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