Composite Tricks / Live Stream - Affinity Photo OlivioTutorials.com

Key Takeaways

[Music] hello my friends how are you doing thanks for joining my live stream tonight and i see we already have a lot of people in the chat room hi jens from germany how are you doing uh kindred from los angeles hi thanks for joining lu lila hi from ukraine hi uh dalford from colorado um go create hobby okay cool from scotland hi so a lot of people already know um kindred says yesterday's video was great okay thank you very much for that i set up up all night making brushes wow okay so you already have quite a set that's cool hana hannes from tyrol hi how are you doing thanks for joining um i still don't uh i still don't quite get how space this brush has this exact distance um yeah you have to experiment a little bit with the distances right oliver from germany hi how are you doing uh jens i tried around with some fork brushes oh okay yes that's a little bit difficult i think to create a fog brush um did not turn out as expected yeah they can be quite complex to get that kind of transparency in there right um lulila says uh do you try dust brushes that come with affinity photo oh yeah there is already some brushes some really cool brushes in there and also you get some uh you get some free packs right um did you do you still get these three packs or not i don't know because um for example uh frankentune is creating some really cool brushes so um that's always a good resource and it's always a good way to to look into how has he created or how is his team i don't know if he does it on his own or not created that but there's also some like brush collections already included that are really good um by the way an important point is that most brushes are a lot better a lot more interesting when you use it with a tablet and a pen because a lot of them depend on the pressure you put on it to to change the size of the tip and also from the angle for example can be important for some brushes not for all of them but you can do a lot with that and they become a lot more alive also the opacity like the how much color is going on to the canvas is being regulated by the pressure of the pen or can be regulated by that not in all cases so this can really really give you a lot more flexibility with the brush and these um tablets you can buy really simple tablets which don't have a screen like this small or something for 30 bucks i would really suggest you get something with a screen because it's really really hard to draw on something because you draw down here and then you look at the screen so that is very complex to do that i never get got accustomed to that if you do some retouching that's okay but if you want to do some more precise stuff something with a display is much better if you already have a tablet like an ipad for example affinity photo works in that uh you can also get a tablet with a screen uh like these um i can see sorry the drawing tablets with the screen for example from i have one from huion it's not as professional as a wacom pad but it's still pretty good right you can use it um the dj tommy hi from chicago hi how are you doing thanks for joining devin hi where are you coming from devin let me know diana hi where you coming from diana russell hi russell thanks for joining you posted some really cool stuff in our facebook group recently uh best wishes to london uk uh doing a new piece today perspective causing some problems yeah that can always be pretty complex with perspective i wish they would integrate a nice tool in affinity photo for um for perspective right um hi roland where are you from roland i let me know let me know devin is from north germany hey that's awesome hi also from germany is diana hi so a lot of germans today pretty cool very nice okay my stream board is also active for the new pack uh by the way um i have created like yesterday in the tutorial i said that my patterns get five brushes i have created them today and then i thought i could also record the process so i made a like 48 minute long video where you can see me in real time creating them i don't have a comment on the video because i didn't want to talk for all of the time i wanted to focus on the creation of the brushes but you can see what i'm doing step by step so i thought maybe that could be interesting right um okay cool uh affinity ipad is amazing that's awesome i've never tried that by the way uh tech reality from scotland hi how are you doing roland from ireland hi thank you for joining um from ireland uh to bavaria oh that's interesting okay that's very nice two regions who are very much into beer so i think you will find if if you like beer you probably feel quite at home with the bavarian choice we have so many small breweries i think we have hundreds of breweries in germany like every kind of little bit bigger town has their own brewery so it's pretty cool um [Music] oh ronald is your husband wow okay so the the whole family is today in the stream that's awesome really cool are you watching on the same devices or like different devices how does that work uh john from the uk hi thanks for joining deborah from new york wow thanks for joining hi how are you doing simon from the uk hi thanks for joining really awesome and cake joe sorry from finland and also raphael from brazil hi lots of people here today okay let's get started with the stream let me switch over to uh what exactly uh let me think about that for a second okay i already know yeah so uh let's go to the live view here and this is the this is basically the edits that i have no wait a second that's not the finished work oh oh there is something missing here one second maybe i should have opened the other one and now i have to search for it wow okay one second let me quickly search for that where does it say challenges oh there super challenge is there a second one this one oh yeah that's the one okay good so this is not the final version and this is the final version so i'm just showing you this as an example i'm not saying like this is a super good work or anything it's just like um it's an interesting work that's the same time simple um and i can of course point out here because i can turn the layers on and off and stuff like that um what i've done and um what went into creating but today i want to start by um talking about what makes an interesting nice composite work in an easy way right um so basically we will look at this work we will look at other works and so the main thing the most important thing is um when so i have i've split this up basically in four different parts the first one is getting started then um classic mistakes that most people do especially as beginners um then making it easier for yourself and then also how to get that wow effect that people are impressed by your work so let's talk about how to get started and um the first thing is that you um want to select a theme that you work on right so we have a certain focus and say okay this is what i want to concentrate on um because this makes it a lot easier and by theme i don't just mean one word like of course my challenge is just portal because i made it quite open from the challenge but what i mean by that is that you think a little bit about it let's say you say it's a zombie apocalypse okay so where is it happening think a little bit about the different elements of of your stream is it happening in a bit big city or on the countryside um is it happening like when it starts or has it already like it's like the city is already destroyed right is it a day scene is it a night scene right these kind of things so you have a little bit of an idea what kind of stuff you want to look for and what kind of direction everything is going because if you have figured that out for yourself in a in a certain way then it makes it much easier to concentrate on just finding the resources just finding different kind of inspirations around that uh rather than uh like going in all kinds of direction and because it's super easy to get sidetracked you see so many cool stuff online and everything is amazing everything is impressive everything is interesting and so you get from one thing to the next thing and then suddenly you never finish the work and instead of finishing one work you study uh sorry you start like 20 or 30 works um and they will never get finished and at that point also the problem is you are getting overwhelmed by all the things that you have started but never finished and it gets increasingly dissatisfying because there's all that stuff that is kind of pushing you down that you think you should finish but you haven't so that's a problem so just like figure out what you want to do um and then stay focused in that regard let me look at the at the uh chat real quick here i will put this over here um hi robot uh uh from vienna so basically neighbor john from texas hi how are you doing uh mali from the uk cell what's click clichorps interesting is that is that how you say that [Laughter] oh you're a pattern now thank you very much christian that's awesome oh i forgot i wanted to show you one second one second let me see um so i made a post also in my uh facebook group user you should join my facebook group too by the way um i made a post i i get this all day long i don't know what that is sorry for that come on um where is that where is that really okay announcements is it maybe a plugin that i have but i don't think so this is the post here you can see i have already talked about that right but i made up uh just so you know i made a post in my um in my community let's make this oh yeah it is already an announcement that's pretty cool um so there's these brushes that i've created you can see different kinds of things so i made a wet brush a dry brush that are on on linen then there is a spray paint that is on stone like on a wall then you have like a dry brush that is on on carton or cardboard and then you have like a like a water paint brush a wet brush again that is on paper so different textures i put everything on this paper texture just to have a nicer background for this kind of cover but actually the backgrounds are different backgrounds right just so you know and then there's also a link included for a 48 minute video and when you come to the page um it looks like this so just you're not surprised it looks like this because it's a it's a reward for my patterns you can become a pattern if you want um just so you know uh if you go here or if you click on join now you see these different kinds of uh selections here the levels that you have these are the the most used and by the way you get this money back every month as a coupon for my monthly pack so basically if you use a lot of my monthly packs you don't basically pay anything extra right and you get a lot of benefits at the same time okay cool and i'm working right now to make my pattern a lot better so this is one of the efforts to try this out and see um what i can improve right to to get it better and to to give you something more uh worthwhile um okay let's get back to uh to talk about um i lost my point what was i talking about what's the last point uh okay stay focused what's the last point yes um hi mickey from the usa how jay from the uk how are you doing hector from denmark thanks for joining everybody hi um wayne hi wayne thanks for joining too oh okay i wanted to write you by the way i forgot about that most helpful if any photo tutorial on youtube wow that's a that's a big honor thank you very much for that wow pretty cool okay ah let me see this is my list here oh yes the mood board so let's talk about the mood board so you can go for example to a page like art station and you type in a different topic that you're looking for and you can see here you find a lot of different works these are mostly like digital paintings or 3d works um they are not photo works but um the good thing still is that they are made by professional artists most of the time um very skilled people and they have a very interesting composition that is hard to do with the camera right so you still get a lot of inspiration in here but what you can also do is simply go to pinterest pinterest let's go there um and you can you can search for any kind of thing you're looking for let's say for example uh zombie uh new york let's see if we find something um well not not too much it's always i want to show something and it doesn't it doesn't work zombie uh scene maybe see i'm kind of surprised there is not more because there is even a video game about that ah okay let's go to zombie artwork zombie artwork let's see um well okay um well i thought this would turn out a little bit better but this is the life effect i mean there is some stuff you see you can click on this and the cool thing is then you can scroll down in this case you can't scroll down so this is really not working today i'm sorry for that uh let's click on this here let's see if we can we can't scroll down either what's going on today why does it not work um let's click on this here there has to be now now it works okay cool so you can see you have this scene here with this kind of warm um not what i was looking for but anyways and then you can scroll down and if you find more things that are similar and the good thing is like you can come up with different ideas on the color scheme uh on the on the composition of different ideas of what could happen you can see there's a lot of different things happening like for example let's look at some of them here let's go with the monster thing right uh for a second let's let's pretend this was our idea okay whoops that was back the back button i didn't want to press that let's go with this here no open link yes please okay cool uh no there's always there's also some strange stuff here too um this one too here okay cool let's open these up so you can see um this is giving you some different ideas um of uh what could be interesting right so this is a completely different scene you see there's a country side you have some monsters in the background um and every everything is also very much dependent on the scale and on the color scheme right uh then you have this here where the monsters on this kind of bridge here it's more like something you could do with the photo basically uh because of the city scene it's kind of hard to find the monster but maybe you can make one up or uh find something on on a stock page or a uh um yeah basically on a stock page like a pixar or freepik or all these kind of pages if you want to it's by the way sometimes finding resources takes really long like it can take longer to find the resources than to actually build the image so don't get um don't get depressed if it takes too long because it's this is just like happening to everybody finding resources is is really hard and maybe by sorry maybe build an archive of good resources if you know you work mostly in one kind of genre you can just for example collect interesting city photos and interesting like uh photos of people on the street stuff like that like things where you know you could use that but you can see like everything here has different kind of setups different kind of color schemes for example this is more like a cool um morning scene with a lot of fog in it and here you have a very warm burning fire scene right so very different from the setup um and uh yeah this is also like more like a fox scene but you can see that all of this has a lot of um impact and again when you scroll down you can find even more pictures like that like here for example is a different one so we have a big monster in a city but this is a different idea for monster in a city this is just a sketch but still it's a good it's a good um inspiration and you could either collect these by saving them into a board on pinterest if you have a account or you just copy the picture over which is something you can do on pinterest gladly you can't do it on instagram sadly but here you can and then you just like you create um create a canvas large resolution let's go here like this one four thousand and then you just put everything in there where you think okay that could be cool i want to do something like this right so uh we have this monster here and then you go with this other monster here like this one and you can slowly build up uh something we see okay these have similar color schemes they have a similar setup but they are still different uh from what they are and you can you can find more stuff like that and then get a much better idea of what you actually want to do and how it should look like here's another one wow this is impressive over here see with this stick sorry big sorry about that big robot uh monster uh zombie here on the on the bridge so this could also be interesting so you see also by collecting these um a certain theme is forming right in your mind where you say hey this is kind of cool so let's do a street scene with a very large monster and then maybe some people or some cars in in front of that right um so that is a very good way to do that let me look at the at the chat real quick pablo hi pablo from germany thanks for joining stefan from slovakia and uh mickey i've already said did i forget someone i don't know i i hope not okay cool by the way ask questions if you have them because i'm just going through my list and explaining everything but if you have questions um please let me know otherwise the chat room is like this not nothing going on in the chat room so please use it ask some questions can i stop this i'm not sure i i yeah okay cool all right uh what else so a mood board build a mood board and you get some ideas of the setup of the pictures of the resources you need of the colors you want to work with stuff like that so that is a very good starting point so you have decided on a theme then you found a mood you created a mood board around that theme to focus on what other artists have done and always think about that art is a form of puzzle and you want to find a easy nice solution for that that is ideally very impressive and you have a lot of fun with that right and by looking at other people's work this is a really really good starting point and this is actually what everybody's doing also professional artists they are learning from other artists and then they're doing their own stuff nobody is just doing it in in a vacuum of creativity it's not it's not how it works you analyze what others do and then you do your own version of that your own you put your own twist on that right okay uh so the next thing you can do and this is again a little bit easier with uh um if you have a if you have a brush uh sorry a tablet uh to draw on but you can also do it with a normal brush is that you start to draw and i would suggest use a normal brush nothing fancy let's go here and um let's go with this that is good okay let's set here this spacing a little bit smaller like so and then what you can do is you just draw it out in black and white yeah you can make multiple layers to make it a little bit easier for you one thing i do is i double click here to have this window sorry it's over here to have this window and then i can quickly change between colors you can just like put it over here and you can see i can paint like this and then i can paint like this and like this i can switch colors extremely fast by just leaving that window open right and so the way it works in um magazine optics basically is usually the stuff that is closer to you is darker and the stuff that is further away is um how is a brighter and has lost less contrast the reason for that is because there's a lot of stuff floating around in the air and that is creating either fork or there is some dust or other stuff why uh stuff in the distance is has less color and is less saturated and it often is also brighter right so you can use this but just to create some kind of depth in your image and you can then very simply like paint out a thing that you want to have and also the hero in a very very simple way right um uh i have no idea what i want to paint right now uh let's just paint the landscape here real quick you can see we make some i don't know a little bit of a mountain here and this looks crappy and it's supposed to look crappy don't worry about it it doesn't have to look super interesting the main thing you want to do here is just to create a nice setup of something um that you want to work with and another thing is you like i said you can work with multiple layers so you can push this layer in the back and then as you can see here when i work with a different color it's just in the background now you see and like this you can really easily uh come up with different kind of scenes and setups and things you want to do and play around uh with a different uh kind of composition right to see where do you want to go with that right let me see oh one second sorry for that um so you just paint the landscape and this is right now really nothing special we maybe can do something more special afterwards but but just to give you an idea you see like this and then maybe let's go here a little bit darker let's say you have your little hero standing down here we can't see anything right now why let's go like this let's make another scene here maybe let's say you have a person standing down here oh my god that's really bad zoom in a little bit like so make this a little bit smaller here maybe he's pointing somewhere so this can be super super simple just so you get an idea of uh what you want to do in your work right um let's say we have a big monster here in the background let's just let's just draw something here you know let's just say it's like this and then maybe there's so like an arm coming up here let's make a layer here in the front like so go a little bit smaller here like this so this can be super simple like i said don't worry too much about how it looks uh just worry about um what the scene is you know what you're creating with that right and so you can play around with that and create something that might be interesting or not um and this is a very good exercise because with this you can create dozens of scenes um in one sitting you just sit down you draw this and you draw the next one you draw the next one and you can also play around with other different kinds of um how can i say how to create drama how to create a story you know through these through these kind of elements and again you can be inspired um by these um elements you have here sorry what is the chat saying one second let's go back to the chat making it look 3d yeah a little bit a little bit by the um by the brightness of things yeah so you can do that another thing you can do but like i said it can be really hard to find images is that you look for images and just bash them together in a very very simple way to see um what could i get from that what could i do with that right um so that could be interesting um like for example maybe i can show you this one second let me open this up real quick here um where is that instagram there we go portal i wanted to do a second portal image but it oh no this is another one i kind of abandoned that because i was not satisfied with it maybe i will work on that more so i looked for different backgrounds for example here you see like i have why why doesn't this change yeah you have this kind of background here but i wasn't happy with that and there is this background here but i wasn't happy with that either this is not the work i wanted to show you sorry one second let's go back here um ah yeah here this one okay so you see i have here this kind of um angel kind of um figure and then um i have these wings in the background behind her where how can i turn oh there's the wings you see so i found the image of her and this actually has a i i painted a little bit of a portal behind her i wasn't sure how to use that and then i painted this kind of landscape around her i thought maybe that could be interesting you know so this is the original picture maybe i should do something with that the first idea was maybe kind of some volcano in the background some lava flowing around her and then she has these kind of wings and she's doing like i don't know um something so that could be interesting and i sketched out some some different kind of ideas of i don't know what what could it be what could be more interesting i also had this another picture i don't know why it's not here with a forest in the background what is this i know this is kind of a mountain here um and today i thought may oh there's the there's a volcano thing uh so i tried a lot of different things with this it's just like the starting point right um just to get an idea of what i wanted to do with that okay but like you see i i sketched this out like a really simple landscape with a little bit of a fortress back here stuff like that so it's a little bit of a medieval scene but it could also be something else right okay let's close this um what were you talking about let's go back to my list here and also to the chat room oh it's a little bit hot here i'm sorry with a light little of lighting oh yeah uh yeah but don't um to don't put too much detail into the sketches the main thing is that the sketch stays quick hi mateen from turkey thanks for joining and that you stay in the creative flow like you just go boom boom boom boom and create one idea one concept after another um because when you push out all the obvious things it becomes more interesting over time right because at the beginning of course you you come up with all the things that are just like jumping at you and then if you work a little bit more on it it becomes a lot more interesting right okay um let's go to the next point yeah that was the sketching oh yeah another thing is to focus on the story so to think a little bit um what do i actually want to do and i think this is um this is also one of the hardest things for for people to do is oh um why is there this guy down here okay um let's take this picture here this looks from do you do you know warframe the game this looks like the beginning warframe right anyways ah what was it talking about uh sorry oh yeah the story like uh what i often see is that people push all kinds of ideas into the picture because they are not focused on the story on what they actually want to show so really focus on the main elements that you need and don't stuff the picture with tons of things like you see in this composition here there's only the guy a little bit of foreground stuff here that looks like it's the end of the world and then you have this big monster in the background there's nothing more you don't need a ton of things and also the more things you want to put into your image the harder it gets to create it especially as a beginner you will be completely overwhelmed by putting 10 different characters in there because you have to find all the materials edit everything it has to fit together it's way too complex right um so we if we come back to this work that i created here um you can see that this is super simple because it basically only it is created of three pictures and then of these are two elements here of my own overlay collection from this month by the way lines of light this one so if you look at the different elements here let me see if i can turn them on and off one second wasn't super i wasn't super clean with my color coding so that's not good what is this this is for the background i guess so this is all the guy here i don't know what this is oh these are the stripes okay this is in blue then and these stripes let's do them in red maybe okay cool anyways so uh to if you turn anything off here let's see let me turn all of this off so we can see a little bit of the elements um oh yeah okay cool um so you can see here that basically what the image is is this picture here of the gate um already with the lightning everything is there but you can work with with finished resources then i simply extended the background a little bit and painted in the light i said it looks um like the picture is higher right and then you have these uh this astronaut here that um also has a header originally had a background that i removed you can see here i think i removed the background altogether so you can't actually see that um and then there is another overlay which is just this wormhole effect this already was also created so this is another good point that i will come to in a second and that is basically to have to work with good resources and then also i have my um my overlays here and then of course the other layers they are adjustments to make everything look more interesting right but you can see like it's not super complicated it's very focused uh on just the guys standing in front of that portal with an open wormhole this is everything that's happening here nothing more right um okay let me close this and oh oh wait a second when i close this i probably have the problem that i'm yeah let's just turn on the layers here again is everything on again i think so yes okay cool uh what does the chest say it would be cool with a lightning strike behind her too behind whom oh from the from the woman before maybe yeah okay so let's talk i think this is like for the for the basic set up that are these are the main elements like think about what kind of theme you want to work on then create a mood board around that theme so you get some good ideas how other artists do that and you get a little bit of a color setup and a scenery and stuff like that then based on the mood board make some sketches very basic sketches with a very big brush no small brush small brush is not allowed just forget about small brushes the reason for that is as soon as you make the brush small you start to draw details and you start to waste time and you start to drop out of your flow so don't do that take the biggest brush you can use for the thing you want to draw and then just draw it and you can see my monster here has zero details but it's still good enough to give me an idea is this a good composition or not should i do it some a little bit different or not and because of the big strokes i can simply create a second drawing in seconds and try out a lot of different things right and it's super okay it that it looks that shitty that is completely normal don't worry all of the sketches look like that okay um and the next point is to stay focused on the story like think what kind of story you want to create and don't get sidetracked by all of the elements you want to put in there okay so let's go at some classic mistakes that people make that keep you from creating cool stuff let me have a look here real quick okay so the biggest mistake is that people put too many elements in there so they want to create something really big and super sophisticated and let's have a look here at a scene like something like this right they say oh cool i i saw this work here um i want to do something like and now i can't find it of course um yeah let's let's take this you say i i see this often people say hey how can i do something like that and i say not at all because it's impossible you can't manage that you can't handle that uh level of complexity because you are already on the like limits of your ability if you just create one little thing in that super complex composition so don't do that at all it's just too much to handle and not only you do you need to create all these elements they have to fit together they have to work together in a way that's realistic so it's not happening you can't do it at all right this this takes a lot of years of training to be able to do this kind of stuff so forget about that keep it super simple as simple as possible like cut everything you don't need everything that is not absolutely necessary to tell the story just leave it out just don't do it because it saves you a ton of time hours of work and a lot of frustration right so very very simple stay as simple as possible then the next one is no complex perspective because perspective is super super hard to do especially if you don't work with any kind of 3d duels and affinity photo is 2d so when you want to draw something in here that is in perspective it is very likely you get the perspective wrong because drawing perspective is super hard unless you are a like experienced artist drawing artist like a sketch artist right um so forget about that too no complex um perspective keep it as simple as possible um and know what i also mean by that is um no uh uh how can i say um no perspective for shortening or elongation you know so what i mean by that is let me let me switch the camera real quick so if i do this with my hand you can see that my hand is really big and the arm is very short and then you don't see much of the arm and then i have a small shoulder behind that so this is for shortening what's happening here and this is super hard to do in perspective right so to to create something and then an effect on top of that maybe you can't forget about that super hard just create something that's very easy from the perspective so don't have someone doing this in a composite with a gun towards the camera just like if you have something that's like this which is easier to do right um you know what i mean that that is easier so no complex perspective either the next one is no complex light because this is also very hard to do um so easy light com uh um either you use an easy light um composition or you use something where the light is already made for you like for example here a lot of the effect that is coming in this picture is the background because if i turn this off this is what's left over and even the gate is a asset from an online store right so a lot of the light work is already done here and still you get a very impressive picture and still this is a work process where you can easily work one two three hours on that to get all the details in there and to figure out how to do that so it's still amazing exercise but you end up with a really cool work without having to deal with all the problems right so think about that too and another thing is uh okay this is basically what i said before don't attempt a master project as a beginner like i said with these super complex things and all the other elements that i just described um that are like this one is super super complex forget about that just make something easy if you make something like this that's good enough right i think that should be able that should be possible to be handled right and this also gives you a lot of experience in for example figuring out how the wormhole should sit in the picture that is not as easy as it looks because it can go in all kinds of direction can sit in all kinds of points if you look at my time lapse i originally had that wormhole a lot higher i had it um i had it in this position like here um and that was kind of nice because it was sitting in the middle of the of the gate but then i i looked at it and i figured out that i had the problem that the figure is kind of hard to see so i pushed it down here and now we have a nice silhouette you can really see not just that it is a person standing bear but it is an astronaut you even see the cable that's coming down here so you can identify all the details just by the silhouette but when you have it like here you can already see that this is really hard to see that there is a cable going down next to his site every detail kind of vanishes and it could be anything that's standing there in front and here you see how clear that is right so these kind of things to think about them that's already a good thing a good learning process right let me go back to the chat real quick um it is extremely difficult for me to deal with shadows and light yeah so that's why at the beginning you should try to avoid that and maybe create a scenery where you maybe don't even have that right so if you look at that first picture we found where is it this one you can see there is no light and shadow because it's always foggy right of course there's a little bit of light situation in there but you don't have to draw in any shadows or any kind of other complex things like for example think about you would have to draw the the um you would have to draw the shadows of these creatures onto the ground because the sun is coming from the background or stuff like that how super complex that would be um and now you don't have to do that at all you have a little bit of water reflection down here that's possible to do and the rest is just no shadow no light right it's just like foggy and nice okay cool ah let's go back here to my list real quick one second and also to the chat sorry for that um wrong screen oh my god ah how how long have i used that screen oh no when when did i switch the screen why did i switch the screen oh i remember ah what what didn't you see i can explain it again i'm sorry i forgot again now i have this tool here the stream deck and still i'm i'm not able to to know what kind of scene i'm in uh let me know what what should i explain again what did i forget to explain yeah yeah yeah i already changed this as you're not seeing it yet um okay let me know where i should start again to explain oh man we can't see your desktop how long ago was that is there any time stamps here in the chat that i can see oh toggle timestamps here um what tell me what was the last thing that i explained and then i will explain it again yeah yeah perspective what what did i explain after that i can't remember um damn i'm so sorry about that oh god um okay i was talking about this thing here but i'm not sure where i stopped lights and shadows no i talked about a lot of stuff before that um let me see here real quick so what we're talking about i think we are through the getting started points right and then i said not too many elements did i show you with the elements this kind of picture here did you see that or not uh this thing here with all the uh planes in here and stuff did you see that or not this one sorry you were talking about wires um oh for five minutes okay that shouldn't be too bad right i i think you have seen that when i talked about that scene and then um started the wall home uh yeah okay let's go back um good so did i show the elements let's i will just turn this off again so you can see okay this um the gate has already the lights on that as i said and then if you turn it off you can see um that without these two elements there is basically not so much in the image right uh so this is very simple you can handle that and you can learn a lot from that and now i will explain again the movement of the wormhole so i started like this and you can see that um you see the top of the character but not really many details because they get sucked up by the dark background that we have now in the wormhole and everything gets kind of lost in there so that's not so great but when i put the wormhole down here then we have a nice silhouette of our main character and you can see all the details and that is an astronaut and can see the cable here and everything and so this already is a good learning process and also how to draw in all these kind of cables around it because this is what i have done i've drawn all these cables are coming down i used a 3d light effect in affinity photo i used it up here and then i did not use it down here because here it didn't work it didn't make too much sense uh so i just used a normal brush um yeah and and drew in some extra cables just to create a little bit more um of how can i say of a story around it of elements that create a story right so that's pretty um like helpful to to create a scene an atmosphere right okay so we talked about the classic mistakes not too many elements uh complex perspective complex light like we said nothing super um problematic uh from the lighting i don't find anything right now but what were you talking about like this has complex light here for example this kind of stuff here um this is very like too complex to create from the perspective from the elements from the lighting everything here is too complex right just create just focus on one thing that you want to create as a compass it doesn't have to be this kind of monster stuff by the way you can do whatever you want and this is what i was talking then before is in this picture here there is no light and shadow right because everything is fog and you have these monsters here in the background but they don't cast any shadow on the ground there is no highlights to draw in there is no shadow areas there is no different light colors to draw in here right which is also kind of complex to draw light on a surface so it looks actually like it's on the surface right um and then the the two characters down here they have a little bit of reflection in the water it's kind of in that sense in that small element easy to make but other than that the light and shadow complex uh situation is not very complex right uh it lifts mainly from the uh from the colors and from the from the nice ambience that is created through the fog right so that's pretty cool and again as you can see it's very reduced from the elements you have in the pictures you could basically also just work with one monster here that would be good enough right and like i said it doesn't have to be monsters you can do whatever you want as a photo composite all right um let's go on to the next point um okay cool so uh what is the next point okay making it easy for yourself so this is the next point i want to talk about how do you make the process a lot more easy and not overwhelm yourself with all these kind of things that we have already talked about so first of all a big thing is the story that creates emotion or basically the other way also around emotion creates story right so these two elements are important so think about um how can i first of all how can i make the story as clean uh sorry as clear as possible in my composite in the thing that i want to create again too many elements can make it distracting so you can't focus on that a bad setup from the composition can make it unclear on what is going on who is the hero what is the task the hero is doing or the heroine is doing um what what is the stake all these kind of things maybe right um it doesn't have to be a story with an end and a start and everything like if you look at this picture here it has only a story in the sense that you have this kind of astronaut and he's standing in front of the gate so you know it's kind of a sci-fi thing and also he has a cable so he's in his kind of little suit here and he has a cable with him to get some air and also probably power which kind of gives you a hint that this guy is probably trying to get into the wormhole because otherwise he wouldn't need that kind of cable and gear and stuff if he was just standing there right so already you have kind of a connection on on what is going on a little bit of the setup a little bit of the thing okay this is sci-fi stuff like that right um so it's a very basic story but at the same time you get what is going on so um who is the hero and and um what is the scenery and what is the next action that is going to happen right okay uh let me go to the list again oh yeah this brings me to the next point and that is the three elements rule so if possible try to reduce it to just three elements and cut out everything else so the three elements that you need is you need a hero uh it doesn't have to yeah like it doesn't have to be a good guy can also be a bad guy hero is just like it has to have the main character something a focus point it doesn't even have to be a person it can be an element like a statue or an author or a a car or something else right so you have to have a clear main element that people need to look at right because that's the main point of that and then the second one is um there has to be some kind of interest that is connected to the hero to the main element so what is what is the connection between these two right so let's say for example let's let's go a little bit uh one second let's have a look at the art station maybe we find some interesting things here i can't promise it because the searching today was a little bit of a mess can you see everything i hope so yes okay let's go for sci-fi here okay so we can see a little bit of okay here we have a um an element that we can look at um there we have something here let's let's just just pick out two or three pictures to look at um what else um do we find something interesting here come on oh yeah there we go okay good let's take these three that's good enough oh this is more than the one that i wanted to look at um this one okay cool so we have this one and then we have this one and then we have this one okay cool good so um as you can see we have a main character in this case we can see it's the main character because he's the biggest in the whole picture and he's in the foreground so this has to be this is the first thing you're looking at in the picture right here you have this main uh character the the woman here or the android whatever it is this is the main character for us right in this one probably the children in the foreground could also be the robot but it's probably the children here um okay and then where's the interest so in here um the interest is basically not visible in the picture but you see that they are going into war they are moving their troops in that kind of direction so the interest is out side of our vision field but we see in the background that there is some fighting and some ruins and stuff like that so this is what's going on they are going to into war right so that's the interest that's going on she's looking at that ball here um intensely so this is the interest here and here the interest is that these kids here they are controlling that robot in the background and then it's also a police car but there is a little bit of like a connection between the main character and then that the second element the secondary element basically right in all of these pictures right and then um the last point is you have to make it very clear what is the connection or what is the action between them right um so how do they uh relate to each other in a sense full way and and something that that makes it obvious and senseful and you can follow it without having too much questions about what is going on because people want to have a kind of a clear impression and not like being unclear about ma could be this could be that is he afraid is he happy is he is that the mother or is it like a monster or what is it i don't know you know you don't know what's going on it's not very satisfying right okay um so in this one of course we know the interest is going into war again uh here um the interest is i mean there's a connection between these two so she is befriending this thing or analyzing this is a little bit unclear so here you don't really know what is going on so maybe there could be a little bit more idea of what the interest is but basically she has this kind of globe here basically right but there is a clear connection between these two and in this one you can see that these children clearly control that robot and um you can also see the connection here uh let's let's also talk about that real quick so here you can see the connection between the kit and the robot because first of all this backpack has the same design and color pattern as the robot right it's different from the police car only the robot and the kit have this color in the image and then also he's reaching out towards the robot with this kind of glove that also has the same colors and the same design as the robot so you know that he's controlling that and not something else if you imagine this guy gone in the picture and there's just this kid here on the left side in the green suit and he would like hold out the arm and there would be the robot and the police car you wouldn't know what is going on right at that situation because is he warning is his dad a police guy in the car and he's warning him from the robot or is he controlling the robot or i don't know there could be a thousand reasons why he's doing that but here you can clearly see that the kit is controlling the robot so this is a very nice and clear connection right we don't know why they are doing it but we know there is a connection between them right um here the connection is just a stare at that object also you have a little bit of an idea of a connection because you can see there's a hint of red light here and then we have the red light here which is probably the reflection but both of them on their face side have that red as it is connecting the two and here basically everything is looking and moving into that correct uh direction on the right side so we have also connection between the war area and the um and the soldiers right if they would point all in different kind of directions and stuff you would again be confused right so that's is very like helpful also for your composition and also to get the story across uh these um things right okay i hope that was useful as an explanation i'm shari hi shari from wisconsin um again you use the chat room to ask questions or to give me feedback or if you want to know something else okay let's go and by the way i'm using these because it's much easier to explain it on these pictures rather than on photo composites right let's go for the next point okay this is a good one a lot of people have a lot of problems with combining things in the right colors so they just don't look like they fit into the image together and the color the ambient light the atmosphere all of that can have a huge im