Illustration Friday 'Aquatic'

This week's Illustration Friday topic is 'Aquatic'. Well, I did have an illustration that fit that topic perfectly but I went with this one instead just to be on topic yet kinda off topic. I initially did this to depict an original take on the whole 'Titan' theme to show Strength (which I hope Illustration Friday doesn't chose anytime soon, since I just used this). I wanted to do an alien interpretation (not flying saucers alien, rather a non human looking Titan) so that it wouldn't look like a super-sized version of a statuesqe human wearing a Greek loincloth or toga ( such as most illustrators would do ). So forget Lucy Lawless, forget Kevin Sorbo, this misshapen odylic wonder is probably what a real 'Titan lifting an island in the middle of the ocean' would look like.

For this image I did the usual start up routine. Sketch, scan, save. Then the fun starts in Photoshop. I cleaned it up, changed the mode from grayscale to RGB, create layers. Bottom layer is totally a warm yellow (to give it the feel of the tropics) with the help of the paint bucket tool. Intervening layers contain the airbushings of the ocean swirls and the dawning clouds in the sky. The top layer is where I did most of the work. First, use the magic wand tool to select interior areas of each object (Titan, island, mountains) and filling in the proper color (I was lazy so the selected areas are imperfect, but that's ok as you will see later) then outline the objects quickly with a paintbrush (chose an appropriate size from the toolbox menu) using the same color as filler but a darker version so the object stands out from the background but I also used a softer brush instead of a harder brush to allow a lil' blending with the background so the objects wont look like they are floating on top of the other layers. The Titan is the main focus of this illustation so I wanted it to look like animated stone. So an grey/lichen color popped in my head followed by some filter choices (the Noise filter worked nicely, don't forget to alternate the foreground and background colors before using this filter otherwise you'll get that warning pop up window, just alter the color a lil' to the darker portion of the color selection window for one of them (back or foreground) Add a lil' dark airbrush color for each area where I thought the objects needed to be shadowed (use low pressure on your airbrush for this so you don't go overboard, I generally use a pressure of 9 for most work). Use the rubber stamp (clone) tool for the clumps of dirt to repeat the filtering of sand for the island itself (same technique as the Titan). Add detail to birds, trees, mountains, then flatten image.

You know the rest. Talk back to me. Hate it or luv it, it's your opinion now. P.S. read all the previous posts if you show up late to get a feel for what has already been covered, sometimes I explain things I missed mentioning in the original post.
Me shut up now.