This is my entry to the LMAC let's make a collage competition. This fantastic community initiative has been on my radar for so long as I've enjoyed viewing my long-time friend @agmoore's collages. Although I have been making collage art for a while to enhance my creative writing posts, this is my first entry to this awesome competition.
I love writing fantasy fiction, and have been working on a fantasy novel for some time off-chain. If you're interested in reading some of my recent fantasy work check out this short story I wrote yesterday, The Tale of the Mersey Mermaid... or one of the many stories I have written catalogued in My Hive Bookstore.
I've always found that fantasy fiction short stories are enhanced with a carefully selected title image to entice the reader and hint at what the narrative entails. I have been using images from Pixabay to do this from my earliest days on steem/hive in 2017... saying that makes me feel like an old Hivian š
It's the many fantasy collage images I have seen over the years that inspired this post.
Creative Process:
First I created a basic idea plan on my notepad (as you can see the idea evolved as I hunted down images to make the collage a reality):
I found a variety of images on both LMAC Image Library and pixabay to make the collage:
 |  Contributed to the #LIL by @quantumg. |
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N.B. 2% beneficiary set to the @quantumg account from this posts rewards for using their image :)
After which the real work began:
First I flipped the title image, and then used both the fuzzy select and the eraser tools in GIMP to cut out the sky in @shaka's image so that it could more easily fit in the bottle. I removed everything to the horizon, including the trees, to allow for an easier fade between the magical background in the bottle and the scene of the dwarf's cottage.
Then I added the stock image of the dwarf from pixabay, resized him and spent some time using the 3d transform tool in GIMP to change how he was standing. Next I added the swirly patterned background as the lowest layer and used the eraser tool place the image only in the bottle.
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After studying the image for a while I decided the edges of the image of the dwarf's cottage and land inside the bottle didn't blend well enough with the magical bottle background. So I duplicated several of the cottage layers and adjusted the opacity to varying degrees. Then I noticed that the eraser tool had an opacity setting and that I was doing all this the long way round š
I used the eraser tool with a medium 'hardness' to erase the edges of the cottage transparent image and then adjusted the opacity to create a merge.
Finally, I added the bottle with transparent background into the main night-time seashore image, flipped and resized it to cover up the skull in the original.
Next, I added a bloom light filter to the bottle, and then spent some time experimenting with the supernova filter. After discarding a few images where I was trying to place a supernova on the bottle layer, I decided to place the supernova behind that image on the main seashore image.
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This gave a better effect of light emanating from the magical bottle imprisoning the dwarf.
I hope you have enjoyed this trip into the world fantastic and reading about the process.
Thanks š
All image sources in this post are CC licence made using GIMP Photo Editing Suit. I have set @lmac as 20% beneficiary of this post's rewards to help support the community.
If you have enjoyed this creative post, please check out my homepage @raj808 for similar content.
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