therebel's flaming wallpaper

[The Rebel]

Okay, now this is the second attempt at this wallpaper. The first one I didn't bother fading the background. This time I decided to redo it and drop the backgound flames opacity. Hope you all like it.

Oh, the car was extracted by Yoshi of Xeronix.net
The girl by R of animerender.com

[Kitanoru]

Whoa therebel! That wallpaper is superb! I love it! The colours go well together, and it seems sort of cozy actually, with the warmth of the flames radiating from the background. Great job on the design! Keep up the great work!

~Viper Soul

[elfenstein]

Hmm, to be honest, I don't like it that much. By all means, it is not bad, but also not perfect imo.

What doesn't work in it is the combination of anime parts (the girl) and real life photo parts (the fire). Or at least a real realistic filter - I don't know what you used. For my taste, those styles simply never work together. I tried the combination often, when I tried to create wp myself, but I never achieved a result I liked. At least not without heavily distorting the real life picture. For this I usually use a combination of filters (mostly artist filters like watercolor, sketch or paper collage, but also blurring and structure for example). Granted, this is not an option here, as this would totally destroy the effect you want to achieve with the fire.
What I'd try is to add more elements to draw the focus a bit away from the flames. I think along the line of maybe some borders at the top and bottom, some unobtrusive patterns or brushes. I'd also slightly increase the size of girl and car, making both more noticable.

Anyway, that's just what I'd try. If you like the way your wp turned out, than by all means, disregard my comments. :)

Have fun,
Elfenstein.

[Thornwillow]

I'm really excited seeing you branch out into wallpapers therebel. =D And they definitely are hard to do, trust me, I know. >_> But let's talk about your wallpaper for a minute.

I like what you're trying to achieve here. And I can see what you're aiming for, but it's not exactly right where it needs to be. And here are a few touches I think you could do to improve. ^_^

I see you have black bars on the top and bottom? How about you increase the size of those by a little bit. Not too much, but make more of a focus on the fire in the center of the wallpaper. Also when you do that, try it shrink the fire picture and hide it behind the black bars and not so faded. I can see you did a little fade and that's cool, just lighten it up a little and bring the flames out. And possibly, even do some color adjustments to make it more intense. Fires are intense! ^_^

Also, I like the girl and car, I don't think it's bad, but if you do decide to implement the large black bars, bring both, car and girl, up and towards the right a little. Not in the center of the flames, but maybe alittle overlapping the flames. And as far as the text goes, I would line it up with the black bars, if you implement them, and above them.

Of course, these suggested changes are all based on making the black bars larger. lol And if at all possible, if you can make the car and girl any bigger, please do. They're kinda tiny for a wallpaper, but not too much bigger. :)

Good luck therebel, and I'm excited to see you expanding your abilities. ^_^

[The Rebel]

Actually, I appreciate the comments. I'll try and work on it as soon as I can to see how the tips work out.
Artistic filters? Where are they at? Like I've mentioned in my siggy thread,, I'm still learning the basics, lol. And constantly having to refer back to my Dummies book or tuts to recall what I thought I had down pat, lol.

Oh, and you are so right Thornwillow. WPs are quite hard. Not so much the creative part, but actually the major need for balancing things in it. No wonder I been doing sigs, they seem easier to do. BUT! Fear not, I shall keep trying to sharpen my WP skills.

[MistressPookyChan]

Thorny said most of what I would have said. So my main suggestions are:

- increase the size of the images
- fix up the text a bit (maybe a different text for hot and for cute?)
- clean up the fire (there is a random black box in the bottom right

good luck!

[The Rebel]

Okay, lets see if this looks any better. Now I don't know much bout the artistic filters yet, so I just went with the basic modifications.

[elfenstein]

That looks much better already. The resizing and the black borders worked wonders. It gives the whole thing a much more harmonic look.

Hmm, about the artistic filters, I'm not that sure what they are called in english, since I use the german version of my graphic software. But I think they are usually under filter->artistic in most graphic programs, at least they are in gimp and I think in Photoshop too. There you can choose from different filters that apply a certain graphic style to your image, like an oil-painting, aquarell or cartoon look. Naturally PS has a bit more filters than gimp, but then again, it costs a tad more than the free gimp.

The fire still looks a bit off to me, I'd try tinkering a bit more with it. Actually, in your new version, it looks somehow like a bad source image (low jpeg quality). That wasn't observable in your first version.

Have fun,
Elfenstein.

[DarkMoonPrince]

this one looks alot better. but still, the flame is awsome. good work

[The Rebel]

That looks much better already. The resizing and the black borders worked wonders. It gives the whole thing a much more harmonic look.

The fire still looks a bit off to me, I'd try tinkering a bit more with it. Actually, in your new version, it looks somehow like a bad source image (low jpeg quality). That wasn't observable in your first version.

Have fun,
Elfenstein.
Yeah, for one the fire started out at a 800X600, I enlarged it, cropped it some, and then the second time I tried sharpening it. I think I should have skipped the sharpening. Plus I think the first one had a lower opacity than the second one.

[Light Buster]

These are nice and very cool walls you got, really nice. (Saves it)

[The Rebel]

Saves it? LOL Feel free. I wouldn't post it if I didn't mind someone wanting to use it for their desktop, or something. And thank you for the comment. Hopefully, I'll get around to another wallie some day, lol.

[Light Buster]

That reminds me, what kind of car is that the girl is sitting on? It looks like it came from Need For Speed Most Wanted or Carbon...but it's probaly just me.

[My Dark Magic]

I love it, great effects and its also different than all of the rest around here mostly. I really like the car, but I think ive seen it somewhere? Maybe on a movie or something...::Sighs:: Oh well I still like it. ^^ Keep more coming.

[The Rebel]

I'm not really sure where the car came from. I found it on the net while looking for extracts for projects. I actually only have like one or two extracts of the NFS MW. Although I do have some pics of real cars found in the game. But I haven't done anything with them yet.