Exploring Pandora

•

I recommend you to immerse yourself with the help of music throughout the tour

How I captured the essence of Avatar in my latest work

Hello everyone! In this post I want to show you my latest photomontage and creative retouching project inspired by the movie Avatar.

For this project I used Photoshop as the main tool and I started from a basic real photo I found on unsplash. The choice of this photo was key, as the model reflected the essence of the characters and culture of the fantasy world of Avatar.

I love my facet of Concept Artist and doing photomontages and creative retouching is putting my brain in FLOW (everything around me disappears) and I am very happy to be able to share the creative process of this project with you.

FREE
If you like the result of my work you can have this wallpaper on your devices, just
click on the download link that you will find at the end of this post.

My interpretation of Avatar world

A dream come true

My Pandora creative process

How I used Photoshop to create a fantasy world.

I was inspired by the characters, scenery and visual elements of the film to create an image that conveyed the beauty and magic of Pandora without losing its identity. It was an interesting challenge, as I had to make creative decisions throughout the process and use my knowledge of photomontage and creative retouching to achieve a result that looks organic, realistic and accurate to the universe inside Pandora.

In the following, on the left side I show the original and real photo with which I started the project, and on the right side the final result.

The creative journey of fantasy

I invite you to discover the creative process in detail

Slide the middle bar on each image to discover each stage.

1st change of anatomy and separation of the person from his background

2nd I finished defining the metamorphosis of the model's body and gave the characteristic color to the skin of the Avatar's race.

3rd In this phase I added texture to the skin and then made up the model to contextualize her side as Pandora's warrior caretaker.

4th at this stage I felt that there was a lack of weight where the model visually supports the head, so I decided to create an arrangement to give her more beauty and subtlety using several feathers.

It is always good to play with contrasts, she is a warrior but delicate for her beauty.

On the other hand I noticed that they have bigger eyes, so I decided to change them to get closer to that aspect of her nature.

5th At this stage I continued with the corrections of lights, shadows and contrasts throughout the work. Added the characteristic braid of his race and a background that is as faithful as possible to their culture and biodiversity and thus be able to finish contextualizing the work.

6th in this phase I started to illustrate by hand the finer details, like the hairs of all the feathers and all the dreadlocks on her head. I continued to give atmospheric depth to all her parts. On his original jean clothing, I decided to bring her closer to her culture with some more natural textures.

7th the most fun stage, where I apply a final atmosphere correction and then I include on top everything related to special effects in postproduction (VFX), in this case I designed my own seed of the sacred tree giving a different shape than the original AVATAR, then I replicated it in specific places where the light was present in the original work, so that everything is in harmony.

Where everything makes sense

8th we reach the last stage of this creative process, the digital development, lens correction, blur effects, dust particles and hair, atmospheric lighting and flashes, an arsenal of elements that finish giving life to the work, achieving in this final stage a photorealistic image ready for its application.