The Aliens Are Coming
Alien invasion week starts on Monday
This week I’m launching a five-day alien invasion story line, or, as is known to abductees, Gray Humor.
On Monday Dr. Vargas will announce: “I believe the aliens come in peace,” And they will, but not the aliens who are chasing them. Including alien barbecues, human faux pas, and spicy alien wings. So prepare for five days of out-of-this-world humor.
Image creation
If you’re curious, I’ll walk you through the process of creating one of the story illustrations with stock images (courtesy of Freepik.com). If you think I spent more time on the images than I do on the stories, you’d be close.
For the image to feature in the story “For the Want of a Book…” I found three images, two of which I’ve used before (bottom). Fortunately the gas station image is vector, which means all of the objects are in layers so I don’t have to make any selections. Unfortunately the saucer image is also vector, with a number of lighting effects that would interfere with the background.
Which required me to adjust the individual elements to change the color and transparency of the lights to blend with the background better.
The individual alien was easier to isolate, although I did have to mask the shadows at the bottom.
I assembled the image in Illustrator and exported it to Photoshop where I applied the final comic book effects using Topaz Studio, and comic line screen effects that I customized with Photoshop actions. I finished by adding a new product from Retro Supply Co. called Phantom Paper.
FYI: This image wasn’t nearly as difficult as the image for Friday’s story:
