This is my entry to the LMAC let's make a collage competition 105.
Don't ask me why, but as I looked at the competition image I started to wonder what it would be like if Santa emigrated from the North Pole to another planet 😂 not so farfetched with rising sea temperatures and continued coral bleaching.
Also, various scientific institutions have looked at the idea of theoretically terraforming Mars
But what would Santa need specifically to settle, relocate the elves and keep the reindeer happy?
The answer is Snow.
So I started to pull together elements to make a scene where the first snows are falling on Mars and the planet is at least in a state where the atmosphere is breathable… maybe I was over thinking this a little.
Resources Used:
I found a variety of images on both LMAC Image Library and pixabay to make the collage:

Contributed to the #LIL by @quantumg.
Process and Fiddly Stuff
To be honest a huge amount of time creating this collage was spent on Shaka’s original image removing any of the blue of the sky, and white/blue areas in-between the branches of the trees.
I first took out a chunk of the sky using the fuzzy select tool, but found a lot of small areas left between branches in trees etc. Some of the larger of these I could isolate again with the fuzzy select tool to delete to transparent, but well over 30 smaller areas had to be done using the eraser tool in varying sizes, all the way down to three pixels at a time. I have a problem with being a perfectionist once I get started on a project.
Many extra sections of tree/sky crossover were removed once I had added the Mars background, but the only other major design elements I had to change to create the composition were to monk that I wanted to represent as Buddha.
To give the monk a sort of glowing quality I tried using the patterning effect with the fuzzy select tool and the bucket fill tool, but that also filled the shadow with the pattern.
Back to the drawing board; I opted on cutting the shadow to transparent on a duplicate layer and then just adding the pattern on that layer filling only Mars Buddha with blue patterning.
Finally, I used a supernova effect behind the altered Buddha near to where the 3rd eye is, to give it the impression of a kind of magical beam of light illuminating the new Christmas landscape. The rest of the effects with the Buddha were achieved by positioning the layers right, adding a small amount of Gaussian blur to his outline, and messing with the opacity of the blue Buddha with no shadow layer.
I then added the various other elements in a way that didn’t look too crowded, making everything looked mighty festive.
When I really think about it I do wonder why Buddha living on Mars would take the time to bring the snow down to help Santa? Then I think… why wouldn’t he 🤣
I hope you have enjoyed this trip into an alternative Christmas, one where Santa would have one hell of a commute 😂
Thanks 🎅
All image sources in this post are CC licence made using GIMP Photo Editing Suit all from CC licence sources. I have set as 20% beneficiary of this post's rewards to help support the community, as well as both
and
2% beneficiary for using their images.
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