For this piece, I wanted to create inevitable effect time has upon everything. From time, I thought of something trapping, inescapable. I used a hole that would be modeled after the shape of a black hole to create a sense of unavoidability. For the actual substance, I decided upon sand because of the "sands of time" thing, and the hole would also look like an hourglass. Representations would be placed around the sand being pulled into the endless trap of time.
The sand and its textures were created using different textures and paintbrushes. For the main ground, I used background of brown on a layer, then generated light brown clouds from the render filter. Then, I smashed the sand down about 3/4 its size. To create a rounded edge for the horizon, I used the pen tool to make a selection and delete. From there, I decided the best way to make the hole would be to use a gradient and mask. This I did, then I 'paintbrush'ed and blended a few spots to make the hole more dynamic and realistic. Blending the far side, I created a sense of focus and gave the sand more detail. I then laid a clock into the image and 'magicwand'ed the numerals to place them on the sand. With warp and adjusting, I split the layers into two horizontally and laid them into the sand in correct proportion. I lowered the opacity of both, and blurred the far size numerals while darkening the closer numerals. The sun was placed in the top right basically right in line with the hole. The sand where the sun hit was lighted on a new layer to give some reality.
Next, I decided to start the first object lying in the sand. The army soldier was the first and largest object I decided to work on because it had the most emotion. Starting with the image of the soldier in the mud, I cut him out with the pen tool and erased the little blips and edges. Next I placed him where I wanted him and warped him slightly to go with the curve of the slope. I wanted him to be "unknown" so I found an army helmet and paintbrushed it to match the sun's light and his coat. I blacked out his eyes and the shade of the helmet with the brush as well. The foreshortened hand was a little bit trickier. I found an image of the correct expression of hand, but the lighting and placement was backwards. I intensely airbrushed, blended, and erased to create a hand that had grime and matched the correct lighting and color. I then used the clone tool to create the rest of the jacket leading up to his arm. To eventually place him in the sand and create pouring sand, I erased the parts of him covered by sand and brushed in sand. To create the sand "airbrush", I used an image of falling sand on a blue background and cut out a circle of it. Then I used the threshold filter to create white sand on black. A gradient was used to fade the circle to black., then the brush was created from 'Define a brush preset.' I used this brush to brush different shades of sand falling from his hand. His shadow was created from multiple copies of him just blackened out and lowered opacity. I traced this combined shape to create a new simplified shape that was easier to warp and change the transparency. To create a more committed image, I used the color-mixer filter to increase his reds and yellows to convey anger and frustration. Curves was used to make the image darker and increase color through saturation. The lighting was created from lighting in the render filters and placed where the sun was positioned. To finish the man off, I used the blur tool to match the sharpness of his helmet, and correct some of the image damage.
After the man, the car was next to be thrown into the pit. I cut the car out via pen tool and positioned, slendered, and warped the car to fit the physics of the image. The lighting was terribly off, so I duplicated the layer to create lighting effects via render. Then I darkened the other car from the other side and erased away the lighter car to correct the lighting. The sand around the tires was paintbrushed (with the 'sandbrush')in with a darker shade than usual since the shadows would be on that side. I then used a lighter brush to create a texture. The track of the tire was done the same way just with the brush. Then to finalize the image, the shadow was placed. The shadow was created from a copy of the car with a color over lay and transparency turned down. The rest of the shadow was airbrushed.
To create a sense of disorder, the political buildings and statue were placed in under the sand. For Big Ben, I used the color range tool to select the blue background as best I could and delete it. Erasing the rest of the blips, I finished the image with color effects(hue/saturation/curves) and set it where I needed it. Then I cut the top of the tower off with the lasso tool using jagged strokes. It was placed on a new layer and repositioned and rotated. I made sand pour out of the cracks and holes with the paintbrush, and created a impact bump in the sand with the brush. Deciding duplicating layers was too hard, I just paintbrushed the shadow of the tower onto the ground. To work on the building, the bottom was erased to look as if in the sand, and the lighting was done via previous methods. The lighting in the sand was done with the paintbrush and burn/dodge tool. I wanted to create an explosion or fire to show the building was destroyed and give the picture some action. The fire was placed in with screen blending and color corrections. I duplicated the layer multiple times to make the fire realistic(wind). I wanted to make another time reference with the addition of black and white. I copied the layers and made them black and white by turning down the saturation. To create a blend, the images in B&W were erased with a low opacity eraser. The clock was another reference to time, so I decided to 'melt' the hands with a paintbrush and eraser to blend.
After, I placed the statue of liberty in the sand quite a ways under the surface. I did not do the lighting on the statue because it seemed adequate. I used a replicated image and the color overlay as well as opacity and the transform tools to create the shadow. The arm was created by duplicating the original image and making the color bronze/copper with the color mixer filter. I did this because when the statue was first born it was brown before it tarnished. Then the top is black and white by using the same process.
For the background of the image, I wanted to use a picture of mountains. This represented the immutable stay of the mountains as we see it, but they will also be consumed by time. I used the filters like color-mixer to make the whole image black and white. The sand was decided to be flowing out from the trees to tie in the image with the sand.
The money piles were put into the picture to create a feeling of loss and worthlessness. The piles were already on transparency, so I just placed them and color corrected as well as warp and reposition. Taking the pen tool, a bill was cut out of the pile, and copied to a new layer. Then I copied this layer multiple times and spread them out in a random pattern, merging them into a group. These groups were easier to flip, copy , paste, reposition, and shrink quickly. I darkened the smallest and deepest dollar and faded upwards to create a depth.
Then, to create a whole blend feel, I duplicated the whole sand layer and made it black and white with the color-mixer filters. Erasing the layer, I created a blend with the black and white with the color to create a past to present look.
The whole image was then color corrected and a vignette was added. I used the curves adjustment above all the layers to make the image a bit darker and saturate it a little. Then the vibrance adjustment was added for some color, and a red warming adjustment created a anger/danger/rustic feeling. The vignette was created with the rounded rectangle tool, then a inner glow was added with black fading to transparent. Some noise was added to the inner glow to give it some texture and roughness. The vignette finalized the image to create a focus and get rid of extra space within the image.
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