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Posted on 02/08/07 12:50:31 PM |
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katew
Virtual Virtuoso Posts: 681 Reply  |
Re: Contest 157: 101 uses for a bald head
A bit rushed this week, I'm afraid.  _________________ Wrinkled was not one of the things I wanted to be when I grew up ... |
Posted on 02/08/07 2:48:38 PM |
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GKB
Magical Montagist Posts: 4002 Reply  |
Re: Contest 157: 101 uses for a bald head
I've only just returned from my hols and was in need of a quick HTCIP fix. Don't have the time for anything more sophisticated so this will have to do for this week  |
Posted on 02/08/07 4:30:55 PM |
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james
Surreal Spoofer Posts: 1194 Reply  |
Re: Contest 157: 101 uses for a bald head
Dave Cox. Hello Dave, Have just come across your reply to a request I made about water movement. Frankly I had forgotten about it, my use of a seascape in this weeks challenge jogged the memory. The request is still pertinent, and I would like to know how you generate those circular ripples, or any other. I do appreciate your response. Thank you. |
Posted on 02/08/07 5:38:50 PM |
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Deborah Morley
Makeover Magician Posts: 1319 Reply  |
Re: Contest 157: 101 uses for a bald head
What a lot of great ideas for a bald head  |
Posted on 03/08/07 08:02:25 AM |
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Steve Caplin
Administrator Posts: 7025 Reply  |
Re: Contest 157: 101 uses for a bald head
So many good uses for a shiny dome this week, it almost makes me feel like tearing my own hair out. (But not quite - you'll have to wait for nature to take its course.) tank172 got in first, with a rather nicely designed fly being swatted off the head. Good jittering, there! And an absolutely wonderful second entry - this looks like it was a lot of work. Excellent technique. A neat reference to last week's puzzle from james, with the shuttle crashed on a planet made of the head - and what a fantastic beastie about to eat it. A great composition, but where's the monster going to get boiling water from? Plenty of water in the second entry - what a good use for the head. The rippling water in the front works particularly well. And, of course, Neal's laying in to GWB again - what are you going to do when he's out of office? A beautifully inserted pate, though, with neatly wispy hair at the sides. A very tasty entry from mc303, the head turning into a cracked-open boiled egg - which, coincidentally, was the subject of the first ever Friday Challenge. I'd like to have seen the edge a little more jagged, though - and perhaps a dribble of yolk down the front? It's not that often we get self portraits here, and a glance at Dirtdoctor23's entry shows why. Heavens! What a smile! And a truly magnificent piece of facial topiary to go with it. And, of course, a totally convincing bald head in there too. And I loved the second entry - what a beautiful scene! Perhaps a slightly deeper reflection, though? A touch of genius from Steve Mac, who's complied an intriguing scene with a truly surreal, painterly quality to it. Is that a brain, or a walnut? The inside of the raised head is perfect, even down to the shadow on the fingers. The position and pose of the girl with the doll, the eye contact of the woman - excellent! A really neat idea from mguyer - I like the subtlety of this one. But is that a touch of back window we can see through the head? Lowering the transparency is not the answer! A better second entry - but I think you could have found a number plate font. Haven't seen Einstein D Kid here for quite a while. What have you been up to? I like this propeller head, especially the way the colours are slightly smudged together. Now make it spin and resubmit as an animated GIF... A really classy animation from tooquilos, with an action-packed scene - excellent smoke, explosion and fire extinguisher effects! Best of all, though, is the way just two images of each car were used to create the sense of them going round the track. Great economy! And the love story in the second entry is simply charming. Very intricate work from Chris Berry: I'd be intrigued to know how you fit the head on the dome, Chris. Was it laboriously done by hand? Or did you use a cunning technique to select the original dome? A gloriously funny image from dave.cox: the pose, the eyes, the suburban background, all combine to make this a really appealing piece of work. And the slight buckling of the head where it's grabbed by the fingers is masterful. The head recast as fly agaric mushrooms from vibeke - most appealing. These are the hallucinogenic ones, right? Have we been sampling our wares, perhaps? A novel use of the head from Meltonian, who's turned it intio a helmet: a good rim on there, and the distortion and blending on the stripes on the side are perfect. Not sure about that pink background, though. He may not have included the head, but Eggbox has come up with the solution: a very tastefully rendered wig shop. Great lettering over the door, and a fine selection of judicial wigs in the window. If I was really nitpicking, though, I'd point out that the shadow of the glazing bars should ripple over the surface of the wigs... Bit of a Benny Hill style gag from jwhite - nicely achieved, and the pause at the beginning of the GIF is just right. What on earth's going on with her hair, though? Only one person could look at a bald head and think it would make a good top for a Mini... yup, Pierre's back with us. The orientation of the head bothers me a little: it's looking straight at us, but we have a three quarter view of the Mini. A touch of Image Warp or Liquify needed here, perhaps? If michael sinclair hadn't animated his elephant's dome, I don't think I'd have spotted it. In the final frame it blends in perfectly - and a big improvement on all that wrinkly skin, I have to say. The zip effect in steve hill's entry is harder to achieve than it looks. It's not just the opening, but the way it appears to wrap around the side of the head - really well achieved. And the choice of pose is intriguing: where others might have gone for a more dramatic expression, the understatement here is unthreatening and very appealing. Even the way the brain is bursting out of the hole, rather than sitting in a cavity, is perfectly achieved. Fantastic work, Steve - and certainly worth a title for you. It just has to be Brain Basher after this week! Another mushroom - and Celosia's has a fairy perched on top. A great treatment, and I like the Cottingley Fairies effect: that dome fits perfectly. When the perfectly round spots are seen on the edge of the dome, though, they need to be compressed horizontally so it appears we're seeing them slightly from the side. And I did enjoy the second and particularly the third entry - subtle indeed! Celosia's treatment of building domes obviously inspired katew's entry - these two clearly discuss the Challenge over the breakfast table. This is a simple but well achieved montage, combining the two elements perfectly. The slight flare on the left of the dome adds sparkle to it - but shouldn't it be flipped horizontally? the shadow on St Paul's is on the other side! I suppose I should have expected something like GKB's entry... but what have you done with my eyebrows, Gordon? Interestingly, when I looked at this on my desktop Mac yesterday it looked as if the head needed a lot of colour correction to make it match the face - but now, writing this on my laptop, I can't see the difference shade. Shows how it's worth investing in a decent monitor! A very classy piece of work from Deborah Morley - that head's beautifully nestling (?) in the nest, the twigs in front of it really making the effect work well. Only slight bone of contention: the shadow beneath the claw is a little too offset to the left. Otherwise, this is great. |
Posted on 03/08/07 09:30:02 AM |
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Eggbox
Ovoid Opportunist Posts: 797 Reply  |
Re: Contest 157: 101 uses for a bald head
Thanks for the comment Steve. Rippling over the wig? Can you do that in today's world?? And how could I not use the head? T'was the inspiration. It's on its own plinth second from the left. Have a good holiday. I shall follow you into France in 12 days. Ted |
Posted on 03/08/07 10:00:50 AM |
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katew
Virtual Virtuoso Posts: 681 Reply |
Re: Contest 157: 101 uses for a bald head
Thanks for the comment, Steve. Believe it or not, I'd done my entry before I saw Helen's. We don't actually discuss it as we live 70 miles apart (other than the Quidditch one, suggested when she was staying with me for a few days!) I take your point on the horizontal flip. I did actually flip it, as the right side of the whole pic was in shadow, but now I look at it again, I see that you're right - the left side of the cathedral is in shadow. That's what comes of rushing it - I've got a brand sparkling new computer and I've spent all this week setting everything up on it, so the challenge was done rather quickly! _________________ Wrinkled was not one of the things I wanted to be when I grew up ... |
Posted on 03/08/07 10:21:12 AM |
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chris berry
Overhead Overlord Posts: 724 Reply  |
Re: Contest 157: 101 uses for a bald head
Hi Steve I used a bit of cunning selection and a bit of laborious too. Started out by copying the red channel and using levels to to hilight the dome. Then painted out what was left in layer mask. |
Posted on 03/08/07 10:21:40 AM |
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chris berry
Overhead Overlord Posts: 724 Reply |
Re: Contest 157: 101 uses for a bald head
Hi Steve I used a bit of cunning selection and a bit of laborious too. Started out by copying the red channel and using levels to to hilight the dome. Then painted out what was left in layer mask. |
Posted on 03/08/07 2:01:12 PM |
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steve hill
Brain Basher Posts: 228 Reply  |
Re: Contest 157: 101 uses for a bald head
Thanks for the comments and title. I struggled with this idea this week nearly gave up several times, glad I did'nt |
Posted on 03/08/07 6:59:04 PM |
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Pierre
Constructional Confabulator Posts: 637 Reply  |
Re: Contest 157: 101 uses for a bald head
Damn... that was bugging me too but I did not find the 3/4 view thing... Thanks Steve! _________________ |
Posted on 03/08/07 11:02:47 PM |
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celosia
Wondrous Woolflower Posts: 58 Reply |
Re: Contest 157: 101 uses for a bald head
Thanks, good point about the spots. I had been working on it for a few hours by that point! I did think about doing the millennium dome but in the end I did a couple of domes that were closer in shape to the head - I was going to do a picture of an observatory too but that was a deeper dome, and I thought 3 entries was enough! And I did mine before I saw Vibeke's entry, by the way. |
Posted on 03/08/07 11:34:51 PM |
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dave.cox
Marquee Master Posts: 518 Reply  |
Re: Contest 157: 101 uses for a bald head
That's for the kind comments Steve. This is the first time in several weeks that I have been able to give sufficient time to the challenge. I really enjoyed it this week.  |
Posted on 04/08/07 05:34:10 AM |
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vibeke
Kreative Kiwi Posts: 2166 Reply  |
Re: Contest 157: 101 uses for a bald head
don't you just hate it when you think you have an original idea, only to find somebody have beaten you to it. Never mind, just shows that great minds thing alike.  |
Posted on 04/08/07 12:58:25 PM |
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tooquilos
Wizard of Oz Posts: 2898 Reply  |
Re: Contest 157: 101 uses for a bald head
Thank you Steve and have a great holiday!! |
Posted on 04/08/07 1:11:33 PM |
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dirtdoctor23
Guest Reply |
Re: Contest 157: 101 uses for a bald head
Thanks Steve. Enjoy your time off. (gives us extra time to refine our FC's!!) LOL  _________________ "I haven't failed.... I've found 10,000 ways that don't work!" Thomas Edison |
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