Fanart: Elisabeth Marquis (Warning: Big-ass pic inside)

[Shurikane]

Here we go! This is the first version of Elisabeth Marquis, photomanipped from a full-body picture of Rei Ayanami in her plugsuit. Here are the steps that allowed such an oddity to happen.

STEP 1 - REMOVING THE BACKGROUND
This is, to me, the longest and most annoying procedure of all. But, it has to be done. Had to carefully follow the outlines with the soft-tipped eraser, and then, with my guide done, I could proceed to delete whatever remaining background was left. To help me get an idea of the final result, I made Rei into a layer and turned the background to black.

STEP 2 - REMOVING THE ACCESSORIES
Some things had to be fixed on Rei before she could become a generic character to work on. First, I had to take off the head plugs, which was an easy talk using the ever lovely clone tool. Then, there were the bracelets near the beginning of her hands. I had passed over them while working on Step 1, and I completed the job by removing any outline of the bracelets. Now, the next part was another easy one: the two lines going from the rump to the side. Because the result had jagged edges, I went ahead with the smear tool to smoothen the lines. Also, since some parts were rigid android plates, I had to do away with some of the lines showing folds in the fabric. I thus removed many of the finer details to reduce the resemblance to Rei's plugsuit as much as possible. This is another one of those pain-in-the-ass steps, but it has to be done too in order to make the rest of the job faster and easier. Of course, some bigger details, like the mini-backpack, couldn't be completely removed since I was running the risk of ruining the perspective and outlines of the picture.

STEP 3 - MODIFYING THE FACE
Elise has semi-translucid white simu-skin. Therefore the natural skin color must go away! ^.^ I selected everything except the eye (you'll see why later) and removed the coloring. Then I increased the contrast by 40%. Since her lips had been cut into a little during Step 1, I redid the mouth line and gave her a little mischievous smirk. Next came the upper eyelid. I took off the triangle-shaped interrogative line and made it into a straight diagonal for a more aggressive gaze. Next came the eyebrow. Though barely visible, it was in the way. I thus erased it and made a new one, to accentuate the aggressiveness of the look. Before, she was a girl with an awkward "Yes, waddya want?" face. Good for Rei, not good for Elise. Now, she's got a much more appropriate "I don't take no shit." attitude. There's still the red eye, but I'll come back to it later.

STEP 4 - THE ARMS
Though they don't really need that much of a change, I still need to remove all hints of color. Notice the blue-grayish kind of shades applied to it. Blue is a no-no. Therefore, all colors off.

STEP 5 - MECHANIZING THE HANDS
Rei wears a pair of gloves, which need to be converted to mechanical hands. Those who recall the RAcaseal androids in Phantasy Star Online should remember how the hands were made: each part of each finger was a small block, and each part was separated from each other to allow moment. Elise has the same kind of configuration, except that she has pieces of waterproof cloth - similar to what's on rain jackets - to cover the gaps. I couldn't use black because it gave the effect of those parts disappearing. I thus opted for a deep navy blue to convey the presence of said cloth. Before starting everything though, I removed all traces of color as usual, decreased the brightness and increased the contrast to make the hands shine more like real metal.

STEP 6 - COLORING THE TORSO
This step is remarkably easy. Simply select the torso part, and then I told Photopaint to replace all the white by pink, with the range to a 100%. This has for effect - bonus! - that everything selected will be converted to pink, while keeping the shading. Thus, there were some orange and blue parts in there. Now they are medium and dark pink.

STEP 7 - LEG SEPARATION
Now, I must lengthen the girl's legs to exactly 250% their normal size. To do this, I will first have to separate each leg into workable parts, as some parts - knees, rump and feet - will not be modified, while the upper and lower legs will. On top of that, I must also consider the fixed contribution made by the knees. If I lengthen upper and lower legs to 250%, the result will be something more like 235% because the knees are in the middle and not contributing to the lengthening. Thus, I will have to give something like 260% to each leg part to be flush with the intended design. I can also check out the height in pixels to help me out. The other consideration is that I must have the parts in flush horizontal or vertical position. If I attempt to lengthen a diagonal piece, it will be impossible, since it will widen too! Since the legs are already more or less in a vertical position, my only concern is to make the upper and lower edges of my cuts fully horizontal. I will thus have each leg separated into five parts: rump cheek, upper leg, knee, lower leg, and foot. The reason I don't want to lengthen the knee (despite it being not so visible) is because of the characteristic folds in the skin to know the presence of the knee. Lengthening those lines would give a rather ugly result! For the feet, I must make sure I start at the ankles in order not to make the side bones look elongated.

STEP 8 - LENGTHENING THE LEGS
I had reserved myself a lot of space on my worksheet to allow the legs to get to their size without any moving around. Before I can begin though, I need to know how long the legs are right now. To do so, I must temporarily re-combine the upper legs, lower legs and knees. The left leg measured 435 pixels, the right one 429. The left and right upper legs were 151 and 156 respectively, the knees were 44 and 40, and the lower legs were 240 and 233. The new total length must be 1088 and 1073 pixels. Thus, the upper legs must get to 409 and 419, and the lower legs must be 637 and 617 pixels long. Let's see how it goes...

STEP 9 - CONFIRMATION
Now, was I gonna have any trouble with the right lower leg, considering it was at an angle? Ah-ha! Nope, I didn't need to rotate it. The transition went very smoothly. Now, I'm a little off here... The left leg is longer than the right leg. Why is that? The original picture shows Rei with both feet at an equal distance from the camera. Well, previous experience tells me that changins the size of the legs also changes their position. Now, I notice her right leg is slightly forward into the perspective. This is not a big deal.

STEP 10 - THE FEET
Elisabeth can grow some high heels and I believe these would be a great add-on. It will also give me an excuse to leave the shaded undersoles on. They will look like shoes. First, I need to cut the feet in three part: ankle, foot, and toes. The foot part will be skewed downward, and the toes stuck back on at the end with some corrections for the size. Afterwards, I add the underside of the shoes to stay within perspective, and also add a spike heel to the shoes. How can Elise stand and walk with pointed heels like that? Secret of the pros. She wouldn't even tell ME. -.-

STEP 11 - LEG SHIELDS
Since Elise can't go out in the open without a minimum of protection, she also features a set of organic shields placed on her legs as a series of dots, above each of which is a tiny force field.

STEP 12 - RETURN TO THE EYE
I had left the eye untouched, remember? Well, now that Elise is almost complete, I simply combine all my layers together. First, I apply a dab of soft-edged pink on her eye to make an orb out of it. Then, it's lens flare time. This is why I kept it for the end. This way, the flare's effects take up whatever needed space with no restriction.

FINAL STEP - THE PRESENTATION
Now that Elise is complete, I gift her with a nice pink glow to outline her shape. A little bit of text for the sake of presentation...

...And voila. Meet Elisabeth Marquis, the Insa Type android crossbreed.


STATS

Hours spent doing it: 3:30 hours straight
Size of original final Corel PhotoPaint file: 3.74 MB
JPG size at Compression number 10: 341 KB
0wnage factor: To be decided upon by the public

[BWS-1]

I can see a wallpaper being made outa that! O yeah, I can see it! ... or maybe I'll just make it fit into my screen which will inevitably make her look like Ginette Reno
>_>;;

[Minosheep]

Holy freaking CRAP.

You have too much talent... a great writer and a great artist! Bah! You make me sick...

...with envy...

[Lewis Black]

Who's Elisabeth Marquis? If you don't mind me asking.

[Shurikane]

That's the chick on the big-ass pic in this thread.

[Tobias]

well obviously!!

Dude, thats some amazin art work there. Kudos to shuri *pulls out glass of wine, and drinks*

BOOYAHH!!!!

That is all

[Lewis Black]

What i meant was is she from any game/anime? Or is she an original idea. Because that artwork is really good.

[Shurikane]

Original idea. But I used a pic of someone else to transform it into my character.

[Shandriz]

And I was sitting here all excited about -my- progress in Photoshopping pictures..well, until my Photoshop died and I have to start from scratch with PSP XDDD. But that's really lovely. It obviously took a -lot- of work.

What program did you say you used for it?

[Shurikane]

Corel PhotoPaint. The essence of rebellion against all Photoshop owners. HOOH-HAH!!