Quick Answer: Basically: Batman-style & Color is the bar. Beyond that, I'm flexible.

Long Answer:
It's a Batman/Spawn crossover -- so basically anything that falls in the range for either of those characters. Batman obviously provides more range, as there's been lots of interpretation over the years. Spawn is both more limited in style, but also uber detailed, so I would think it would be more Batman based.

I did start a Tumblr way back in the day to collect artwork for the project: http://hellknightproject.tumblr.com/

So that could be used for inspiration, obviously.

My thinking was that the process of using a photo & the limiting factors of what I can do in Photoshop that would be the determining factor on the final product more than a particular type of artwork I'd want to hit. An example would be Lee Bermejo...I love his take on Batman, but I can't fathom there's any way I could take a picture of some guy in Batman Cosplay and make it look like Batman: Noel.

If that's not a safe assumption -- I can post a few pics from the tumblr that I like. Thoughts?

@Squiggly

Huh...I would like color, but that color does look like a comic -- which is more than what I can say for pretty much every tutorial I've attempted so far.

I would like it to be a bit more "painterly", and I am willing to explore plug-ins, even ones I'd have to buy. My computer is having issues with plug-ings, but that's something that I can work out of the final product clears the bar. And I'm totally ok with people knowing it's a processed photo, as long as it doesn't look so bad it's a turnoff. So far every attempt I've done is jarringly bad -- so much so that it'd be difficult to even read it, much less get invested in the story.

I'll have to put in a little time on some of these suggestions to see if I can produce something workable...

If y'all want to give it a try, you could probably just grab a batman cosplay photo off Google and give it a go. I would understand not investing a ton of time, but the hope is to figure out a process that isn't overly time consuming anyways (I'll have several hundred images to do in the end).

Here's my second attempt. (When I do full-on Struzan emulations, there's no filters involved, it's just powering my way through a delicate painting process. This is just filters, for the most part.)

I screen-recorded the entire process on this one, if you like the look I can throw the video online so you can steal the tricks you like.

@Teague

If it's not too much trouble, I'd love to see the video. I'm intellectually curious, so I generally fall into the "more info the better" category. That conversion definitely looks like comic art, which is awesome.

Yeah, I knew the Struzan emulations were labor intensive paint-jobs. They look great, but a bit much for what I'm looking for.

@BigDamnArtist

You're right...those faces creep me the hell out! But the outlining does bring out some inking lines that I might otherwise have to do myself with a brush.

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Thanks all, for the help so far! Please keep it coming if you have any other ideas!

If you're going for a subtle effect, putting on heavy Topaz filters is a good place to start.

What about smoothing it out with levels and then add filter (film grain) and end with a bit of color halftones (adjust the dots for desired look)?

I don't know I was not in front of a computer with PS on it when I wrote that.

This is just quick and crude

Levels on the original level 30/01/200 - too smooth out the colours.

Filter - Artistic - Film Grain (just used the default, probably can fiddle around a bit with them)
Consider cutout on a separate layer with blend modes (did not do that here)
Duplicate the layer and add the color halftone to that (Filter - Pixelate - Color Halftone)
- Use default settings, maybe a bit lower for max radius
- Change the blending mode (darken works fine, but play around with it and also the opacy of the layer)

Here is the Batman pic from above

It did not quite come out as I saw in my minds eye. Maybe a image with less "scope" and details would work better.
I took this image:

And did the same thing to it... except the levels were 60/03/200 the with this results.

So maybe it's not what you had in mind. It worked a lot better in my head than when I threw the filters on the image. I'm guessing spending a few hours on it in stead of five minutes might come up with something useable.

edit:
This one was done with an cutout layer on screen between the main layers.

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I made a series of images long time ago of my friends... is this style something you could use?

Last edited by AshDigital (2013-02-20 21:09:31)

Topaz is great stuff indeed.

But, in reality, to the original inspiration files linked to; no, there's no quick way. You can cheat it, sure, but it won't look halfway as awesome, I'm afraid. Teague's onto something, though.

I'm pretty sure(although not 100%) After Effects has a Cartoon effect. Tried playing with it? You should obviously make sure your footage is over-saturated and tinted first.

@Tomahawk: I don't have After Effects...but I'd be curious to see how the "Cartoon" effect works on an image. I obviously will only have stills, though.

@Lamer: Not bad! What process/steps did you use?

I used a sculpture effect on the bottom layer, desaturated, with the original on top at 65% opacity and cranked up the saturation to get some color back. You can soften the faces by selecting them with lots of feathering and then deleting them from the sculpture layer, leaving a soft hole.

For Cap, I also pulled the curves down on the sculpture layer to bring back contrast.