A little stroll through "Aucassin & Nicolette"

   This image started in Photoshop 3.0 as a Terrazzo pattern of a random doodle that I used to create the background.  You will notice that there is a slightly "curtained" effect to this background "wall."  This was simply achieved by floating (Cmnd. J) and de-floating various sections of the wall and slightly modifying the brightness and strength of the edge.

   There are three objects "hanging" on that wall created by floating a section of the background, making it a layer, and applying KPT Glass Lens Bright to the entire layer.  Doing this made the selection appear to be a small part of a large curved surface. Drop shadows were created by duplicating the layer, filling it with black, blurring it and offsetting it, and making sure that the transparency of the shadow is in relation to the distance between the object casting the shadow and the surface being cast upon.  This is very important when creating a scene that conveys a three-dimensional sense.  Shadows are not often noticed, by they convey critical information regarding depth!

   Now we come to the two "Figures."  Again, I floated a section of the background, this time an oval shape.  In KPT Gradient Designer I applied a translucent gradient to the oval shape, making sure that the colors bore some relation to the colors already existing in the background. Next I used KPT Glass Lens Normal on the oval after the application of the gradient to wrap the gradient into the form of the newly created egg shape.  

   At this point I want to duplicate the eggs and differentiate them from each other.  Each egg is made a layer and I go to the wave filter under the distort submenu in Photoshop.  This filter is quite a ride.  If you can learn to control it you can really create some great 3-D effects.  I selectively apply the wave filter to sections of the eggs, tweaking and undoing till I have given them the right amount of "character."  Note the small and large "tails" on each figure.  These elements were created separately from the eggs, using the same process of floating a section of background-KPTGradient-KPT Glass Lens-wave filter, only with more extreme settings in the wave filter.

   Shadows for the two figures were created as with the previous objects, with special care in creating a separate shadow for the "tail" on the left figure.  This shadow must make the tail jump out from the figure, and is closer to the figure than is the figure from the background; therefore it must be a darker shadow, but must not show up with the same strength on the background layer.  In fact, it doesn't show up in the background layer at all, because I used the figure's layer to mask the shadow by option-clicking the line between the shadow layer and the figure layer.

   The floor is created by flattening the picture, so that all the objects and shadows are together, duplicating that flattened layer, flipping it vertically and offsetting it so that the objects mirror each other.  This new layer is then stretched with the perspective tool and made translucent to give the floor that "just waxed" look.  

   That's pretty much it.  I spent a long time fiddling with the positions of the figures at various points throughout the assemblage, trying to make the whole scene "hang together" and create a whole greater than the sum of the parts.  I may or may not have been wholly successful, but I learned a lot and I could create in a few hours something that I probably would never even have attempted with traditional media.  

-Bill Ellsworth