Oh...one more thing...you can explain away anything with

drugs...or aliens...

I want to thank k10w3 and Jafo for their opinions on my wall. I couldn't quite figure out what the problem was as all this is really new to me. I'm glad I didn't upload it. BTW ... there was no copy/pasting. Those are brushes I downloaded from PStuts while I was checking out their tutorials The smoke was an afterthought and yes it is cut off at the top. I noticed that after I finished it. Again ... thanks for advice. Now you can critique this one.

This is the last of the Halloween walls. Already too late I know but it gives me something to think on till next year and plenty time to practice.lol

The planet was deliberately left partially transparent to take advantage of the stars close to it. They represent moons and marking in the planet's atmosphere.

The idea has potential...the thought of something being projected on a nebula is awesome.

But............you are still making the same mistakes...source images are so blurry you could never fix this.

It still has the look of things just pasted together without considering how they are going to mesh.

I would keep at this idea or maybe wait til you develop better skills.

Change the orientation of the projection and it could be coming from Saturn.Use Nasa images if you need...you would have to credit them for the photos but as far as I'm concerned you shouldnt need permission because taxpayers paid for them...the govt dosnt own them(they might disagree)(I wouldnt give a damn)

Next you would want to study using the displacement techniques to map the image to the nebula.(google tutorials)

As a side question...are you stuck in monochrome land?...all of these have been in the same color palette.

This is exactly what I needed to know. The starfield, the galaxy upper left, the planet are all brushes from Obsidian Dawn. They are deliberately blurred but not by me. Repeated application of the brush makes it looks very bright and somewhat distorted. As for NASA images ... I got tons of those. The nebula is also a brush from Obsidian Dawn but they are geometric images with glows around them. The face is supposed to be a ghost but I'm thinking they really don't work for me. The reason I put up the last two was to get 'your' feedback specifically. I'm really not that much into the whole ghosty/ghoulie thing.

Actually, I had moved on to another project when I started this one, (I'm doing a monster series of Windowblinds--I'm in the middle of a Vampire one) and if you have advice, I'd really like to hear it, because I don't think I'm giving up on this guy yet -- there are other poses of the stock I used.  I could keep going with this, and have one super ready for next year, along with more widgets for my Zombie Outbreak blind, because I'm learning (slowly) DesktopX.

This is true. You do make me laugh. I thank you for the compliment. Sorry I commented about your Angel, I am also learning from this thread. Many of the techniques I will try in future compositions. 

Not necessary to apologize...its only my opinion that its awesome the way it is,haha...your opinion is as valid as mine there...vs. say maybe a technical issue which are more cut and dried.(tho still never absolute...this is art after all.Even technical aspects can be thrown out if done for a reason and done well.

Example...a collage type composition where the elements are rough cut on purpose and even drop shadowed a tiny bit to make them look like they are poorly glued down.

Or simulating a childs artwork...harder to do than you might think.

Karen my critiques would have been mostly just opinions about how I would have done a zombie pic...I'm more of a classic zombie man vs your more modern look...as in he looks too alert and intelligent.I like em' mindless and slow. haha.I would have made the eyes more rheumy looking,if thats the right word,and more expressionless.IMO.(like Karloff in Frankenstein)

The slices on his cheeks are odd...too perfect maybe?If they had continued to the edges of his mouth and been a hair more ragged it would look like he opened his mouth wide to feed and ripped his own flesh apart.hhehheheheh. But thats just OPINION.

The technical issues were pretty minor...some cutout haloing around his head,some blurry parts on his shoulder next to his head,and still some evidence of the cuttout procedure around his right arm.

its real nitpickiness but the blood in some places is just too sharp and looks like brushes rather than really on his clothes.(tho still done really well,I'm just pickin')There isnt a problem with brushes looking like brushes...its artistic...but the zombie himself dosnt look painterly...he looks real.(the wounds have the same quality...they are somehow 'better' than the subject,maybe in sharpness or graininess)

It dosnt look bad at all...just seemingly mixed styles(realism vs. painterly)...there are plenty of reasons to do it that way on purpose so dont think I'm knocking the work for that...more of a question of what you wanted to achieve.

Thanks I.R.  I appreciate your input.  The slices on the cheeks were part of the stock, but I could have cloned them out -- I will do that on the next one, and definitely should have faded the blood brushes, you're totally right on that one, as well as the haloing, and the amount of realism/focus/closeness between the wounds, zombie, and blood.  Excellent advice.

As for the classic vs. modern, we'll have to agree to disagree.  I like him a little intelligent, like George Romero's last Living Dead movie, "Land of the Dead" where they started to evolve, and communicate with each other, or that campy, indie, cult movie, "Fido" where Billy Connolly plays the zombie pet. I LOVED that movie!

This is such an inspiring thread!  I SHOULD be working right now, but I couldn't focus on work, without giving this a try, so here's what I did.  I made another layer of the zombie and put a colored pencil/crosshatch filter on it, then made a second layer of the zombie and put a watercolor filter on it, and then put a canvas texture over the whole wall, and gave it sort of an acrylic, hand-painted effect to it.  What do you think?

just found this thread,

my personal critique is this, i think that wallpapers with images pasted in from other pictures is just a tragedy. it looks pasted in and often looks wrong and out of place and well....looks just cheap and bad.

from my own personal experience as an artist, and growing up around people who begged me to teach them to draw, I only have one answer

and that is, if you werent born with the god given talent of being able to draw, you never will. That is harsh, but thats the truth.

Unless of course you take up donna dewberry one stroke, anyone can do that.

there are so many technical issues when you create a wallpaper, you need to have a focal point (brainiac you have too many focal points, and my eyes go dizzy trying to centre on that picture)

there are so many technical aspects to art that there are too many to mention here, but the main one is focal point, your picture needs a focal point. and be careful of images on the sides of your pictures, you need the viewer to focus on the centre, not run off the edges of the image.

its an instict you need to have (im lucky i was born with it, so i can see things others cant when it comes to art)

colour is another issue, is your picture cool or warm?

i would suggest that people who really want to get into wallpaper art that they really study the technical side of art.

you learn so many things, about lighting, focal points, points of referance ect.

i dont mean to toot my own horn, but my rockgod wallpaper is a perfect example. it has point of reference (the guitar placer) the background

smoke forces your eyes to look up and around the guitar player, but then makes you come back to the guitar player, and the mountain of skulls forces you to also look at the guitar player. the picture also deals with lighting.

i hope this helps and dosent offend anyone.

vamp xxxxx

Karen

I love that you are still trying to make it better after it's been submitted to the contest. I'm not sure about the canvas texture. It shows that it's not hand painted and the sometimes the more you try it has the opposite effect. I read a comment ablout the blood above, I agree for the top his head and his shirt collar tab (our left) I much prefer it without the canvas texture, but that's just me. Someone said it was too scary for their monitor but That's exactly what I like about it. Goes Great with Zombie Outbreak.  

make his blood more darker karen, too vermillion sometimes dosent work......

Looking good, karen!

Sorry I have been missing out. I got called away for the weekend at work. Missing Halloween with the kids and dining in my hotel room alone again. Getting a little tired of the 'road thing'. Maybe I will dress up as skinhit or starkers and freak room service out when they show up.

So sorry to hear you are missing out on Halloween with the kids!

Cut-and-paste "can" work, however there are several MORE steps in doing it.

First is to take EXTREME care with choices....light intensity/quality/source is just one of the issues....getting them to match within the overall composition...and it's typically the first mistake made by most.

Second is to understand [in 3D images] - PERSPECTIVE [and that also includes SCALE].  You "can" have more than one vanishing point...in fact Real-Life [tm] DOES.  The last 'proper' Perspective I did [for work] had somewhere around 17 generated.

Third is BLENDING.  Hide the 'cutting'.

Thanks Jafo for making me not feel quite so cheap. I know I need more practice but I also know I have improved over the last so many years. It was a LOON on Lake Louise!