Ugh.

[uberniftacular]

So. That fanmix?

The music part is DONE. :D

Only problem is that now I have to do cover art, and I want it to look good, but I can tell already it's going to be terrible. There are NO GOOD CAPS of Clint that I've managed to find. I've got a bunch of Coulson caps, but not a lot of good stuff with Clint. Particularly, I wanted to use something where he's NOT holding a weapon, and...well...those don't exist, apparently.

Know what else doesn't exist? A single shot in which Clint and Coulson are in the same frame.

Plus, I don't understand how people do such pretty blending and stuff. Like, I don't know, this one. Or this one. Or, oh man, do you guys remember any of the mixes veronicasleeps made before she deleted her journal? Those are like...my ultimate ideal. (THIS ONE! It's still on tumblr! And this one. God. HOW DOES ONE EDIT LIKE THIS?!)

Yeah. I genuinely don't understand how to do this blending thing. And tutorials on youtube are supremely unhelpful. YES I KNOW HOW TO CUT THINGS OUT OF THE BACKGROUND USING THE PEN TOOL. WHAT I WANT TO KNOW IS HOW TO STICK MULTIPLE IMAGES TOGETHER WITHOUT THEM LOOKING LIKE THE FUCKING RANCOR BEAST.

(As kind of an aside, my brain is a strange place. So you know how in the minimalist Avengers art that's going around, Clint is represented by his bow, and Coulson is represented by a tie? So does that mean I can represent the ship by a bowtie?

...I am a MASSIVE DORK.)

...Yeah, this has been me bitching. Sorry.

On the up side, I keep listening to my mix over and over and I quite like it?

Comments

[everythingshiny.livejournal.com]

I am not a big fan of blending, occasionally i'll pull it off, but most of the time i just make a mess. I think there are a lot of things like screen layers and stuff used.

I usually google-image search for clint pictures, to be honest, there are some that aren't from screencaps and are nice like
http://cdn.screenrant.com/wp-content/uploads/clint-barton-avengers.jpg
and
http://cdn.d23.disney.go.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/030512_NF_FS_MeetTheCharactersOfJohnCarter_gallery_5.jpg
unf.

I could probably go through how to do something with particular caps, but i'm not that good

[uberniftacular]

I just...have vague ideas in my head of how I want this to look, but haven't the faintest idea how to actually make them look like that? It's problematic. And I can't even describe what the heck I want to do to try to make it look that way, either. ugh.

I've actually got that first cap already, which I would love to use except he looks a bit pissed off, and I'm trying to make a happy love fanmix, lol. DAMN YOU JEREMY RENNER AND YOUR SCARY ANGRY RESTING FACE. XD I was looking on google images to find stuff too, and I feel like there wasn't much out there?

That second one is kind of awesome, though, I don't know how I missed that one.

[black_sluggard]

If you're talking graphics I could maybe talk shop with you. Just finishing up a class in image manipulation this quarter, so I know a few tricks maybe.

[uberniftacular]

Part of my problem, I think, is that I'm using GIMP because photoshop is expensive. And there aren't as many resources out there? Or something?

But yeah. I just want to learn how blend images together so they don't have those weird sharp edges that you get when you cut a person out from the background. And...I dunno, I don't think I'll ever manage to be as fancy as the examples I linked to, but those are the kinds of things I'd love to be able to figure out how to do.

...rambling. Sorry.

[black_sluggard]

GIMP? *big grin* The class is for photoshop, but I do most of my personal stuff with GIMP. Photoshop makes a lot of things easier, but you can do most of the same stuff with GIMP if you know how.

These were all done in gimp:
1
2
3
4

Do you know how to use layers, masks, and blending modes? Because just those three things can do so much.

(even when you're not cheating like I am by using a black background all the time, lol)

[uberniftacular]

I'm good at layers, familiar with how layer masks work (in that I use them to selectively color one part of a layer) but don't use them too much, and don't know anything about blending modes.

[black_sluggard]

I like to use masks rather than cutting images out directly, because you can always change your mind with them. One thing I do often is create a mask, then use the ellipse tool to "picture frame" the person, then invert the selection in the selection menu and just fill the mask with black. Then I go to filters and use a high-setting "Gaussian Blur" on the mask to make the sharp borders of visibility soft and semi-transparent. But if you use it to cut out just the figure you can use a smaller value of blur to manage the hard edges.

Blending modes (which I've only recently learned how to use) are really best learned by playing with. Get two photos on top of each other on separate layers, and on the top layer flip through the different modes in the dropdown box on the layers window that's set on "Normal". Each mode mixes the layers together a little differently.

(edited twice for brain fail)

[uberniftacular]

Oooh, I'll have to try that sometime. Never actually used the ellipse tool, to be honest. (Or, frankly, most of the tools besides the pen tool. I'm such a noob.)

Oh! I didn't know they were called blending modes, I've always seen them referred to as just "layer modes." I use those for coloring, actually. (I love the "screen" setting, because dark caps SUCK.)

[black_sluggard]

You can get some dramatic effects using them with photos.

Deviantart has a lot of GIMP-specific tutorials:
GIMP resources

There's a lot of repeats of stupid things, and a lot of shitty ones, but if you shop around you can learn some neat tricks from people.

[uberniftacular]

Sweet, thanks!

[everythingshiny.livejournal.com]

Yeah fair enough. I've never used Gimp, either so i dunnooooooooo

[entwashian.livejournal.com]

I think you should totally go with the minimalist thing, if you want to. It sounds cool, especially if you can get across in graphic form what the bowtie represents.

[uberniftacular]

Haha, um. I was mostly joking about that. XD Plus, I REALLY have no idea how to actually create shapes that look like things in GIMP, lol.

...I mean, I guess I could make the back cover a minimalist thing? Track listing, with a bowtie at the bottom in the middle, and a bow on one side and a tie on the other? (I'm playing around with the idea of doing something with the track listing where the Clint-POV songs are on one side and the Coulson-POV songs are on the other, to match what I'm doing with the lyric snippets... I guess if I could figure out how to do little graphics of a bow and a tie and a bowtie, that would uh...make the spatial representation a little clearer? Or something?)

[entwashian.livejournal.com]

It's your art, bb! Do what you want! :D

[uberniftacular]

I might go with something like that just because I'm having a hard enough time trying to work out something pretty for the front cover. So I might make the back something simple.

...Maybe. I don't really know. I AM HAVING AN INDECISION!

[entwashian.livejournal.com]

Flip a coin?

[uberniftacular]

I FIGURED IT OUT! Um. By which I mean I cheated a little: took the image I used for the front cover, threw a couple textures over it, added the tracklisting, and called it good. XD

BUT IT'S DONE!

[entwashian.livejournal.com]

Hahaha, good!

[uberniftacular]

Yeah. It was kind of a cop-out, but honestly, it was either that or just text on some sort of texture as a background, so I figured I'd make it look at least a bit relevant.

And the way I did the cover art, it made it so I could arrange the song titles so it's (relatively) obvious which songs are from whose POV.

(It looks a little uneven. The real reason is because Coulson-POV songs are hard to come by in ska. The reason I'm going to give to the public is that there are more Clint-POV songs because Clint talks too much. XD Or, at the very least, is more talkative than Coulson. [Which is an assumption I'm making based on all the fic I've read where Clint is shit at maintaining comm silence during operations. Yeah, IDEK anymore.])