Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
Sunset Theas’ spectacular images provoked some wondering of the “How did he do that?” kind, so after the article last week, I thought I would ask him about a few of his pictures. The first I asked about was “Rolling on Caramelized Sugar” (above). He had a hard time explaining, because when he started editing the photo, he didn’t have a clear finished product in mind: “I just start adding some light effects and then playing with filters, contrast, blur, and stuff like that.” Once he liked what he saw, he used the free online editor Pixlr to add texture. “After four years on Flickr everything is quite natural, I just start and then I stop when I see something I like and somehow I feel it has a sense.”
It was easier for him to explain how he did this untitled picture below, which used more Second Life-based features, to create the final effect:
The first thing he did was play with WindLight in SL. He rezzed a wall in front of him. The figure you see is his shadow on the wall. He played around with the WindLight settings, in particular with the gamma light which made the circle of light. By clicking on his avatar, depth of field blurred the shadow. This resulted in a black and white screenshot with the circle and his shadow inside. It’s a fiddling-as-you-go along process and he doubts he could recreate the effect, and he seldom tries.
Then he moved on to the editing in Pixlr. He increased the contrast, which he usually does as it gives him a cleaner image. “I added a multicolored texture to have that effect on the border of the circle. I added a pink texture for the center of the circle, and another for the red strip and the blurred white on the bottom.” That is all. He recalls editing the picture took just a few minutes and just a few texture layers. Sometimes, though, he might add ten or more light effects and textures to get a result that pleases him.
In the end, it’s just a process of trying things out and seeing what happens. “I would have liked to be more helpful [explaining my process], but really I don’t pay much attention to what I’m doing in the process. And maybe that's the thing I love more when I take or edit a picture.”
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