[Creation] : Mess about with Creativity

I've decided to get down with the Drop in the Ocean topic this week with something I've been enjoying lately... making avatars! The avatars I've created over the past week have taken no longer than 10-15 minutes and generally consist of free selected imagery and a certain background.

This time around I decided to push the boat out!

I had a little bit of fun with the effects with this avatar and decided to just get into the creative flow and make it up as I went along. I've used three images, no more than a dozen effects and basic scaling and selecting tools. Nothing fancy.

HOW FUNKY

The first image I decided to use was of a series of hanging lights. I thought the colors from each individual light would work well together using the Mosaic effect. I tried to mess about with the Fractal settings (after many computer crashes) but settled on using the Illusion effect instead to create an added layer.

To finish, I added a canvas effect to the whole image and I trimmed it down to 500X500 ready for the finished image (I have no idea if the canvas makes the image look any better, it probably reduces some of the gloss effects overall).

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_{source - photo by paul volkmer}

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FINISHED LAYER

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BALL OF JELLY

Time for the next layer in the avatar, which turned out to be a jellyfish! I have no idea why...

I knew I wanted to find a top-down image of the jellyfish so I could create a circular image for the next layer. Once I free selected the jelly out of the original image, I pasted it into a separate file and began to mess about with the Ripple effect.

I changed the pixels to Tiles and added a Softglow effect to finish the layer and it ended up giving it a white noise-esque effect.

_{source - photo by genton damian}

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FINISHED LAYER

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ADD A BIT OF COLOUR

As you can see, the past two layers are a bit dark and dreary. I decided to add a big splash of color as my focal point in the avatar to bring attention and also to brighten the whole image up.

This one didn't take too long. Basic ellipse selection and paste into a new screen, then I added the Waterpixel effect and messed about with the saturation and contrasts. I added a 4px black stroke selection outline around the layer before added it to the final image.

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_{source - photo by sharon pittaway}

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FINISHED LAYER

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PUT THEM ALL TOGETHER...

Now all the layers are finished and ready to go, it's time to scale them all down to the relevant sizes and get some copy and pasting done! I created the avatar and then added a Shift effect right at the very end to give it that added trippiness.

I'll not say anything else on the matter, you can let me know what you think in the comments!

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FINISHED AVATAR

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This post is part of the Drop in the Ocean show on the BuddyUP server

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_{top image: source - photo by lurm}