What else should I do?

[_EX]

After a lesson with Sean, I was trying to make my stocks blend into the picture more, so they didnt looks so cut and pasted.
Am I on the right track with this?
Also, I dont know what else to do. It doesnt look finished.

For some reason, that picture above looks a lot more grainy and pixelated than it does on my computer.

Turns out .gif images are just crap. here is the actual one I wanted to upload.

 

[ChrisP]

Hmm....I think it looks good but if you want to add anything, maybe some text?

 

[_EX]

Hmm....I think it looks good but if you want to add anything, maybe some text?

Thanks. I am not good at text. I can never get a suitable font.
I will give it a try though.

 

[Vayne Mechanics]

More so than blending, you want to focus on size of the stock in relation to the canvas. Ask yourself, "what dimensions would work with this stock?". I personally would reduce the width of the canvas here by a lot and increase the height a little bit more. A good "one-size-fits-all" canvas is approximately 420x120. You can use a large range of stock sizes and allows for easy composition (i.e. rule of thirds). Besides that, you also wanna work creating a sense of "together-ness" between the stock, the effects, lighting (i.e. values), and colours. Most effects will have to formulate some kind of "flow", whether it be in a single direction, multi-directional, wave-like or ordered chaos (this is hard to do but looks nice when done properly). Blending is pretty much a by-product of all these factors. If the colours work well, the lighting from the effects is continuous with the stock, and the flow complements the stock dynamics, it'll start to blend by itself. Of course there are some effects that you can do that further integrates the stock into the background (aka blend) but that comes with practice.

 

[_EX]

Besides that, you also wanna work creating a sense of "together-ness" between the stock, the effects, lighting (i.e. values), and colours.

I tried to do that with the colours (excluding the green). All the colours come from some part of the stock. Purple from the tie, tan from his skin, dark blue/black from his shirt.
That was I could think about to try and mix the stock and the rest. I dont know if it was a good choice though

Most effects will have to formulate some kind of "flow", whether it be in a single direction, multi-directional, wave-like or ordered chaos (this is hard to do but looks nice when done properly). Blending is pretty much a by-product of all these factors. If the colours work well, the lighting from the effects is continuous with the stock, and the flow complements the stock dynamics, it'll start to blend by itself. Of course there are some effects that you can do that further integrates the stock into the background (aka blend) but that comes with practice.

That column of colour that goes through it was supposed to be following the stock. The guy was leaning that way and his arm was in in that direction. Was this what you were talking about?

Sorry guys. I am new to this.

 

[Sparks]

Save it as a .png because .jpg is not as High Quality, it will also make the tag a bit cleaner with edges and get rid of some annoying noise in the tag too.

 

[_EX]

Save it as a .png because .jpg is not as High Quality, it will also make the tag a bit cleaner with edges and get rid of some annoying noise in the tag too.

Yeah thanks. I just tried it and it does make a difference.