Introduction

Okay so for this week we experimented with photobashing which is when you take one or more photos and put them together to make something else, this tend to be used to make low budget versions for early concept art for a meeting or as most will know it, it is the main format that memes only are made. This is because all you need to do it is an idea, images which are abundant on the internet on most topics for free, then something to edit them together with, such as Photoshop.

I did this in the labs with my teachers on their machines, however due to this I didn’t actually record any screenshots, which means all I have is the images I used and the final product. However I also have the knowledge of how I did it, so the next best thing would be to explain how I did it, which I do here, just incase you were confused why there are no screenshots showing how it was made, this is why

Plan

Okay so I quite like Monster Hunter World, which is a game where you hunt monsters, however I mainly like the Elder Recess as it’s a crystal covered volcano area where you fight elder dragons which are basically the biggest of the big bads in the base game. Meaning that this area not only looks stunning but has the fact it has the biggest threat under its belt too.

Having said that, what am I getting onto? Well what if in this wasteland you could find ruins? Because we know that the Gajalaka live on the Elder Recess at present despite the constant danger and it being a literal volcano, leading to the idea of maybe finding something that lived there before them, just as something cool to come across randomly and to further this sense of you not being safe here.

So let’s get a ruin, add something to make it seem more volcanic and maybe even add some monsters from the Elder Recess to further send this home

Main Island

Ruin

Okay so first let’s get the images that we will need for this, firstly I got a image of a ruin on a island as I thought it was perfect, with the ruin in the middle of the frame and plenty of space to add extra details if I wanted, the image being this:

Sky

However, as a challenge in the lab they wanted me to try changing the sky, which is why I got a sunset image, as this fades warm light would fit perfectly with a different type of red sky. But why a red sky? Well you see, warm colors makes you think of hot stuff and that something bad is going down, like the blood moon in many games for example, so lets add one to make this seem more ominous, using this sky:

Due to how it is aswell this means we can just tuck the sun and such under the island which helped further this immersion, but how did I merge the two? Well all you need to do it get the Eraser tool, put the island layer on top (or the one you want to replace the sky on) then just starts erasing, this seems hard and tedious but given the Eraser can be both massive and tiny with the burhs size means it can easily do large areas and also get the smallest details to make a seamless fit.

Adding Details

Crystals

Okay so now let’s actually make the inspiration abit more clear, but how? Well Elder Recess is covered in these massive white crystals, so why don’t we take those and put them on our little island here? This is actually quite easy as we can just get a image with the crystals such as this:

We can then use the magnetic version of the lasso tool, but how do we access this? Well we click on the lasso tool, selecting it, then we left click it which brings up the other versions of the tool if any, we then pick the one with the magnet. This is because this just goes to the closest edge which makes cutting crystals out and pasting them so much easier and cleaner than if we used the normal lasso.

So yes we just surround a crystal, I used a different crystal for each taken just to help make each one seem unique, then copy and paste it onto our image (have the crystal image on another photoshop document as we only want to take the crystals from it). Then we just move it to where we want it and if it is too big or small we use the transform tool to fix that.

Monsters

Now that we have crystals around how about let’s add those monsters I mentioned before? But which ones? Well there are two that immediately come to my mind as most people know them and conveniently they both live in the Elder Recess, this being Bazelgeuse, known for being a destructive living bomber plane, then Dodogama, known for being so weak that is is just cute and loved by the community due to this.

So lets firstly get images for these, so let’s do Bazelgeuse first as that is the easier of the two for what I have planned, so firstly we get a image, being this:

Then obviously we only want the actual Bazelgeuse so we again use the magnetic lasso to surround and cut them out, pasting them on our island in the distant sky as another thing they are known for is coming out of nowhere, so obviously they are here, just not where you would be looking, ready to screw you over on demand.

Then for Dodogama because they are the big cute lets just have them sleeping, however we can’t have them just sleeping on the cold ground, we can’t have our boy being treated like that, so firstly let’s make him a blanket out of moss, as this makes sense to actually be there, and we can get moss from Monster Hunter to do this as well, being this:

Okay so again we lasso it and cut it out, however to make it look better we make it smaller and put multiple to make a blanket of multiple of them, giving it more texture and making it make sense, since this image is very zoomed in on the moss, so to make it fit with the scale it should be much smaller, hence why we are making it as so.

Now that we have his bed we just need to get Dodogama himself, which I got from this image:

So then we again lasso around them and put them on our nice little bed, making him abit smaller like Bazelgeuse just so they aren’t the main subject as that needs to be the actual island. Now with that done we are almost done.

UI Element

Okay so I couldn’t help myself and added a meme from the game most players will know, especially with this elder dragon as in a expedition if a monster has been there for like 40 minutes they leave. This means if you’re fighting them or not, so yes if you’ve almost killed something but it hits that limit it can just leave, giving you a nice slap across the face and a participation trophy. This is even worse as yes Kirin has quests but most first fight them in a expedition, meaning yes they just end up wasting their time.

Anyways so I got a message of Kirin leaving from this image:

Then we again lasso it, cut it and paste it in our main piece, just putting it in the top left like they appear in the game and so it doesn’t take too much attention away from the main centerpiece.

Final Touches

Okay so you might realize that all this stuff doesn’t exactly all fit together with the sky and in general together, so let’s fix that, firstly hide our sky and the kirin UI as we don’t want to edit them at all, do this by just pressing the eye to have it crossed out. We do this not because it will hide it from the effect but we need to put the effect on ourself, so we will know not to touch these ones, then we go to next to Opacity where it should say “Normal” in a slider, click it and go down to overlay, then change the color on the palette to suit our sky, which after that should give you this:

Because they are all different you want to change each one to a different degree with this as some will be lighter and some will be darker, needing more or less depending on that. After you should get something like mine after you unhide all the layers we did before

Conclusion

I can definitely see why people use this method, it was easy to do and made great results, especially see why it is used to make jokes online as all you basically need is an idea and some images for great results. Although I will probably stick to making my own art this definitely will stay in the back of my mind and might even use it in my own time for my own jokes online