Hey folks! How have you been!?
Guys, I just saw this post from the Alien Art Hive Mothership account (
This got me very excited because even though I don't have much time to make a new one on the fly, I did have this one I'm gonna post which fits the criteria of the community AND the challenge.
It was also an entry in the Concepart.org back in 2003-ish when the website forums existed.
I made this illustration A LONG TIME AGO for a Weekly challenge set up at another community called Concepart.org (which is long gone now). The community was amazing, and being part of it marked the start of my career as an illustrator! (Let me know if you were part of that too back in the day! I love talking about it!).
The challenge of course was making a self-portrait depicting you as a Victorian character in a highly technological futuristic world. Being a fantasy artist, I was super drawn to that and went to my living room, grabbed plates and cups, and asked my mom to take a picture of me as a hi-tech Mad the Hatter. 😜 I'm afraid I don't have the process to share with you since it was so long ago!! 😅 But hey, maybe we can give it a shot after 20 years and see how that would compare, right!? Hehe
I can give you a few pointers on how I did it:
- I used Photoshop and my Wacom Intuos 3 back in the day.
- Back then I didn't have any formal art study so I traced over my own picture in Photoshop (keeping the tracing and the picture in two different layers).
- I then proceeded to draw a square which would be my magic panel (just clicking with the mouse while pressing SHIFT, so that Photoshop would give me straight lines with my brush).
- I then used the lasso tool to make a triangular shape for the projector lights and used a gradient tool to make it blue and green. I also added some white lines and used motion blur to make them blend well giving that nice projector effect.
- I then moved on to painting the clothes using some Google references from Mad the Hatter (Disney) but trying to give my own twist to it.
- Finally, I grabbed some playing cards I had at home and scanned their backs to make my background. used some gradient tool to make them black behind me and voila!
HOA, Damn!! It seems I only have half an hour to post it before the deadline!! So there you go!!
Hope I make the cut!! Talk to you soon, guys! Wish me luck! 🙏😉
Yours truly,
Galiant.