I wanted to share my Cyberpunk 2077 image and talk about what I did to create it. This isn't a tutorial, but I did want to share the process. I by no means think of any of this as advanced Photoshop work. I did however enjoy the challenge, played around with what I know and learned some steps along the way.
Here is the final image.
Concept I am really psyched about Cyberpunk 2077 by the same development team as the group that brought us the Witcher 3. I am excited, even now after hearing just yesterday that they are delaying the game till December 10. I per-ordered Cyberpunk so when it gets here expect me to jump right in. I was looking at the one of the Cyberpunk 2077 wallpapers and said to myself.. "self I'd really like to have my avi in the game." That is where the decision was made to go for it.
This is the original wallpaper.
So what do I do first?
Well... pick out what I am wearing of course.
I wanted to have a cyberpunk feel, but nothing too overboard like we can do so often in SL. So far it looks like in this game characters are futuristic, with today's style clothing, and all of the "cyber" in the "punk" is internal and not visible till it's necessary for use. Some clothing does show some signs of the future. So i went with mostly regular clothing and with the
:::SOLE::: SA - Glasses Tweaky (Orange) cyberpunk glasses. The rest of the outfit is HEVO - Keith Leather Jacket Mocha B. (bought during a weekend sale) L&B Swear Remnant Ripped Jeans - Noir @ManCave
Bleich - Aloy - Green sneakers which I think were also bought at a weekend sale.
The pose & background
Now not only did I have to come up with a pose but I had to come up with the right angle for that pose. Otherwise I could really make it look like I didn't belong in the pic. Imagine seeing the top of my head or an angle looking up from my feet. Where would I go? Would I sit in V's place, sit next to V, stand at the edge, or lean on the pole. I chose to lean on the pole because that would keep all of the other elements on the page. I later realized that a lean would be more forgiving, if I had the angle in my pic off by a bit the lean would make the angle work.
In most cases, we would us a green screen but there is so much green in my outfit that decided on a blue screen behind me instead. I created a box on my land, made it large and change the color to blue. That would be my background. I didn't worry about the floor because I knew that the pose I chose would allow me to be perfectly still in flight, (or you could use hover if you'd like) and I just made sure I was high enough up that my feet would have the same background as the rest of me without any awkward lines where a floor meets a wall.
So I tried a couple of poses before I decide on the pose below. I used AnyPose basic to move my right arm closer to me and my right hand under my jacket. Then in I moved my head around till I decide on the final pose (far right pose) and angle which you can see is a different from the far left pose. I moved my foot up because i realized fly was making me look like I was in the air and the flatter foot would help simulate standing on the train.
Photoshop
All of the work going forward was in Adobe Photoshop.
Remove the "Green Screen" Next remove the blue screen.
There are different methods to use for "green screen" like background eraser, or using a mask to remove whatever you'd like. I've done a few of them, this time I chose the Quick Selection tool. Usually I used Quick Selection Tool and then add a mask. I decided this time, since the background and my pose were two different pics, to do a higher risk but quicker option of using Quick Select and then copy and paste to another layer over the original wallpaper. This would haunt me later.
1st Layer
So I layered my cutout onto the image. Then I spend time resizing (Free Transform) and moving me around till I get perfect. I was way too short at first. I have to position my body right so that my feet are not on top of the newspaper, that would be bad.
Shadows
Once I get myself in position I needed to add shadows. Off to the internet I went. I learned about about contact shadows, ambient shadow and main shadows from my man Nemanja Sekulic https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4Sdg_x-jnk&t=303s .
I add the contact shadow and ambient shadow and decided that since the light is coming from above that the shadow beneath me is both ambient and main shadow. I set the ambient layer opacity to 10% and the main layer to 21%. Of course I did the shadows on each layer while the background was visible but I will show it to you without the background so you can see the effect.
Blue Screen / Quick Select comes back to bite me
Since I removed my avi from the blue screen the quick and dirty way, I rejoiced with quick... but then realized dirty really meant dirty.
I found blue all around the avi when I was working on the shadows by the foot, then I found them completely around the entire body. So yeah I removed the blue pixel by pixel with the eraser tool.
Hue, Saturation and more
I needed to lighten my skin tone a bit to match the tome in the image so I changed the hue by +8 . The pants were too black for the pic so I used Quick Select and a mask to show just the pants and I played with the lighting, saturation, colors, curve and whatever I could till I made the pants look the way I wanted them to. Then I put Humpty Dumpty back together again.
Finalized
I removed the Cyberpunk 2077 logo using the Spot Healing Brush Tool and put my Signature in that spot instead. Save... Post it!!!
Alternate pic
I cropped the pic to a 16*9 image.
Comments