Anna Banana
BanaBatGirl

It's now the end of June, and you know what that means--a brand new "Author Spotlight" brought to you by the Madame Malkin's mods! I'm so excited to be able to interview this month's spotlight! I really look up to her in the world of graphic making and wish my work was even half as great as hers! Please welcome the amazingly talented... *pauses while Batman theme begins playing* ... BANABATGIRL!

Hahahaha I got the Batman theme! All riiiiiiiiiight.... thanks for that kind introduction, Bonana.

*taps foot patiently as Batman theme fades out and stops playing* Ahem. Now then. Hiii, Roro! So seeing as this is an interview for the graphics portion of our lovely site, let's jump right in to talking about...GRAPHICS! What else? lol Did you get your start here on SnitchSeeker? If so, do you remember how that came about?

I sure did! I guess that came about in part to complaining to my SS BFF (Kelvin) about not having Photoshop. Once I was able to get Photoshop, I took cues from the awesome graphic geniuses of SS, and I haven't stopped learning new tricks yet! I used to be so bad at Photoshop though. You guys should look at my Badger Den stuff... and stuff buried at the bottom of my Photobucket.... lol

That's funny--Kelvin played a part in me getting started with graphics, as well! He probably doesn't remember this, but I IMed him with a TON of questions that he so graciously answered. Does this mean SS owes Kelvin for helping all of us get started in making such pretty graphics? Haha. Anyway, I know you told me before that you stopped cutting out pictures and started blending them instead. What caused you to change to that method?

I think we DO all owe Kelvin. ROUND OF APPLAUSE FOR CAKE.NINJAK, everybody! lol I was never really a COB (cut-out background) kind of graphicer anyway... I just didn't think that style worked for me, besides the little transparent background avvies I made of peoples' characters. It's just a lot easier to blend with the background/match up backgrounds. I think it gives the graphics a more realistic or natural look? Just my personal preference.

*pauses interview to give Kelvin a random round of applause* Oh my goodness, I remember those avvies! They were so cute and so popular! I still have mine of Anna Greingoth (now Newell). I love the blending look, too, but I'm just not very good at it. It's super easy when the background is a solid color, but when you have those busy backgrounds, it just falls apart for me. Is there an easy way to do those at all?

Hmm it depends on what you mean by busy background. There's really only two ways, I've found, to blend a background. It either has to be a lighter colored background so you can set it to darken, or it has to be a very very dark background, which you can set to 'lighten.' If the background is like... a house with windows, you can sometimes copy and flip sections of the background, then set it to darken to make it merge. Hopefully that makes sense. I think I'm going to try to explain this blending thing better in my tutorial, lol. Adding textures, lens/light flares, text, and gradients can all hide merge-y photoshoppy effects. *and I want to add that I am in no way a trained graphic artist, so I probably do things very inefficiently and with the wrong terminology. LOL

Ohh, I've never tried the whole 'darken or lighten' effect to help blend! I'll have to try that! Thanks for that tip! And I would love for you to explain how to do that in your tutorial! I've never been very good at that, and I'm sure our other graphics makers would love to try that, as well! With terminology, I think we SSers have developed vocabulary all of our own. Don't worry--we can talk your talk and have the same vocabulary, as well, I'll bet! You were talking about textures, flares, etc. up there which brings me to the next question I wanted to ask. Besides a good blending, what's your favorite Photoshop features to work with? I'm assuming you still have Photoshop?

Yessssss lol I still have Photoshop. Oh what a question lol. I LOVE selective coloring. I think that's pretty obvious to anyone who looks at my graphics. xD

That's true! You also have a School RPG charrie with gorgeous red hair, so I bet selective coloring is a lot of fun when making stuff for her! What's your favorite type of graphic to make and why? I personally like signatures, because I have way more luck with them than any other type. I'm not good at getting a good angle on avvies.

Haha yeah, Amy Adams is just a pretty person. All my RPG characters are pretty. Too pretty. I like making signatures as well. I just think that ratio of horizontal to vertical is easiest to manipulate. Avvies are my second favorite, because I think they don't take themselves too seriously. Profile pictures are the hardest. I've never really been good at those.

So let's talk about your graphics competition, 1w1p, for a moment. What brings you the most joy out of hosting a competition like this? Also, what advice do you have for people that want to enter your competition or really any competition here on SS?

Hmm... I like seeing the pro tips everybody sends in. They're always so different and yet so useful! It just goes to show that we really can learn something new every day. The advice I have is to think outside the avvy box. Brainstorm a little before you select an image to use in an icon. I always like seeing the people who are the most creative, and yet still on topic, win, because I think that's the point of these competitions? Not so much to win, but to stretch yourself creatively in the process of entering. Andddd that was my one deep thought for the day.

LOL! Well, it's really good advice and something I have the most trouble on. I'll work really hard and THINK I'm outside the box, and then when all the other avvies are posted, I'm just like, "Ohhh..." I still love to try, though, because I won't get better and improve if I don't try, ya know? Also, I think somewhere in this interview this needs to be said, and I think I'll squeeze it in now since you're giving advice. When I was choosing the Artist Spotlight this month, more than just your graphics skills came to mind. The other thing that came to mind was how encouraging you are to other graphics makers. I'm always seeing you in various threads telling others how much you enjoy their work and just being so encouraging overall. I was so happy and excited that day you poked in my request thread and complimented a set I'd made!

Awww! That's like, a compliment on a compliment! *blushes* Thanks, Anna, I try. It's either the Hufflepuff or the teacher in me or both. I mean, I sure wouldn't be making graphics still if people hadn't taken a chance on me and been encouraging and patient with me! <33

Well, I just thought you might want to know that your compliments and encouraging words are noticed and appreciated! You're right in that we all start off with work that we might cringe about years down the road, but if it weren't for people encouraging us along the way, we might not continue to try and therefore get better and better! Do you have a favorite resource site, such as one to get new textures or brushes?

N'aww well thanks again! It is nice to be noticed... for being nice. Hahahaa. Oh tough questions here though. I used to go to Deviantart for textures quite a bit... now I just use Google if there's a specific kind/type of texture I'm looking for. I don't use them as much anymore.

Thanks for sharing a bit of your expertise, Roro! I know I can speak on behalf of all of SS when I say your graphics and competition are thoroughly enjoyed! Of course, I focus on that part, because this is a graphics interview, lol. We love having you with us on ALL parts of the site! So that sadly brings our interview to an end. Anything else you'd like to shout out before we close? If not, you can stroll out, cartwheel out, fly out...however you chose! It's YOUR interview!

Thanks again for interviewing me, Anna! I was so honored and excited to hear from you. A shout out to ALL of SS' current, former, and aspiring graphics makers! We're all in this together! And now, iBatgirl. *grapple hooks onto a nearby building, swoooooooooooooshing out the window*

Hi! So I don't know how everybody else does backgrounds and blending images, but here are at least two ways to try merging images together.

Most of what I'm going to show you is done by adjusting the mode of your layer (normal, darken, soft light, lighten, screen, etc.). And I also use the eraser tool. Like, a lot.

For a blending example, I'm starting with this beautiful image of Amy Adams. In Photoshop (I have CS3), I pasted it into a blank 450 x 150 canvas. Then I shrank it down; I usually do this the lazy/easy way, which means I hold down shift to keep the picture in proportion and I drag from the corners until the portion on the canvas is what I want to see!



Now, to blend, I paste another copy of the same image on the canvas and shrink it down too. I shrank it A LOT and set the layer mode to lighten. I set this small Amy Adams in the corner just because that layout seemed to work with the original image. ALSO, this is important: Setting your mode to lighten will only work if the background is dark black or gray. So you can see that in the original image (look under the first spoiler tag), there's a lot of photographers on the right side with dark clothing and dark cameras. The image I pasted into that corner then shows up with the lighten mode because of the darkness of the photogs behind it. Make sense?

The next thing I did was erase the left side of this mini-Amy because a key to blending is making the puzzle pieces all look like they fit.



You can erase by adjusting the opacity and fill of the two layers on top of/below each other. Also, click the eye on or off to view or not view the images as you erase. This takes time to learn but just play with your layers and you'll get the hang of it!

So that's really all there is to blending two images together. Now, I also added textures to this image and a pinkish gradient, with selective erasing on those layers as well. Here's what my final layers looked like.



I think I put a copy of layer one on top and set the mode to soft light to really make that layer more in focus/closer than the second layer. I think. I also did a little selective blurring and sharpening on the photographers' faces and cameras.



That's my tutorial on blending using the lighten mode. Here a few examples of setting the layers to darken. I typically use lighten mode for black/white photos, or images with a lot of VERY dark background. Darken works best with images that have the same color background or a lighter background in general.



Few more examples using the mode darken to blend:



Okay, one more example of two different models, similarly colored backgrounds. I try to be as picky as possible when blending images. I look for images where the models have a similar background, where the light is coming in from the same angle/side, where the models are looking in the same direction, etc. Things like that.



I also do tricks like adjusting the color balance on each layer to make sure skin tones look similar before I selective color both layers merged together. If you're not confident in your blending, easy ways to start include using a dark background and textures to hide your little mistakes, or to use the same image only reflected or in two different sizes or blended via the model's pretty hair.

Here are some things I've made more recently that I think are particularly good examples of blending without losing too much of the image's real background.



So that's it for me! I hope all this makes sense and helps you out. If you need clarification on anything, please IM or PM me!