Let's see, so I've got school, and about a zillion others things that I've got going in terms of projects.

I've not done photoshop in quite some time, in fact there are days where I can claim I'm quite bored with it. And I'd rather be doing my animation much more. But as I seem to be growing in popularity, and am horrible at saying no to people, I ending up working together with two friends of mine on this one "for school."

Partly inspired by a series of elemental based pictures I can't recall where I saw, I though it'd be nice to do some line of pictures based on similar themes. Therefore here is the first in my hopeful series of dancers each dubbed via their element. Lena Guo here being, the Watery Dancer.

I had quite a time figuring out which pictures to use, being that Lena's quite an attractive girl and certainly didn't want to limit myself to just one image. Oh well.

Most of the process goes without saying, in that It's all stuff I've done before, the only diifference might be the choices I made due to the current influences in my life. On top of which I did have quite a time figuring out which of the hand positions to use in conjunction with, some sort of element for the life of me I spent an eternity figuring out how to represent water. Without being too literal about it.

And so she has a parasol, maybe she's moreso the rain dancer.

Anyhoo,

It actually turned out to be quite fun working on this pic. And I'm thinking of perhaps doing another one.

Technical Info

The concept of the picture ended up being pretty much based on what she wore. The particles you see flowing off of her skirt are infact the same pattern of her skirt texture mapped to vitual cloth and the transmapped for the effect of what I hope comes off as the pattern of her skirt falling off of.

One of the things about studio pictures as opposed to candid shots is the difference in emotion. Lena is a very cute and lighthearted person, she reminds me of the Final Fantasy series' Rikku. I wanted that emotion to be brought forward. But as photoshoots go, the comfort level and experience really does determine the persons emotions for the picture.

The picture I selected ended up being one that was in transition from one pose to the other, and at that moment she has a very natural expression on her face.

Usually I end up worrying a lot about what I should be doing for the background, but opted for a more artistic approach. Pretty high contrast pink, I wonder how it looks on your moniter.

The wings I went shopping for were a pair of earrings that looked pretty good, but as a macro shot it was lacking severely in detail. The solution ended up being, approprietly enough. To spray them with water for a beaded effect. Which came across pretty well despite not using any gylcerine.

Some cherry blossoms I had lying around for months for the background. And finally some simulated reflections for a touch of water.