Step 1 – Choosing the Subject Matter

For this exercise i chose Kristanna Loken, which some of you may remember as the TX from Terminator 3 fame. Personally i always thought she would be just perfect as an older version Supergirl.

Step 2 – Removing Excess Material

Although there are many elegant ways to cut out images depending on the program you’re using but for this part, I just used a combination of channel mask mapping and a little free hand selection when it was required. Then it was just a simple matter of placing her onto a nice space background.

Step 3 – Creating a Base Costume

Ok most people just paint by hand over the top of a separate copy layer. However I figured for speed, it was just as easy to color grade the whole layer to the color of my choosing. In this case a kind of Iridium Blue tone for the costume. Then it was just a simple matter of roughly painting over the areas of her original clothing that I didn’t need.

Step 4 – Adding Costume Accessories

This part just involved roughly painting in parts of the cape and belt onto separate layers once again. For easy positioning but not only that, it’s just good practice to create new layers when adding new elements. Especially if you make a mistake, its much easier to remove that layer section without ruining the rest of what you have created thus far.

Step 5 – Adding  More Features

Here I just added a new layer of the face cut out of the original layer in step 1. So that I could overlay her image over the top of the cape and newly added S shield logo.

Step 6 – Adding Additional Tonality

This part just involves painting in more shaded areas to simulate the direction of the light shining on her face. It also makes the suit look more believable and less painted on. Again this step is also done on separate layers for each area of the costume to avoid mistakes, you can of course merge all shaded areas once your happy with the results.

Step 7 – Adding Background Material

So by now if you have done it right, you will have a whole bunch of separate layers to create your masterpiece thus far. However we still need to add some images into the background to make our picture look more complete. Here I added a city scene and planet earth into the backdrop and using the city scene, I just changed its layer mode to Hard Light so that I could use a faded edge eraser to blend the city into the space background. Then using another color grade layer and setting its mode to Burn, so that i could better match my model into the added scenery. You may also need to play around with light and contrast as I have done here to make it work.

Step 8 – Adding Titles and Overlays

Now the final stage is probably the most easiest but is still no less easier to stuff up, so again making sure you add new layer when adding your overlay effects such as titles, color grades or even electro energy as I have done here. This stage is of course not always necessary but for this image, I felt it needed a more complete look to properly sell her as being part of the image. (Click image below to see a larger view)

Ok so obviously there are some things I’m not quite happy with in this image but, it at least gives you a good idea of the kind of process involved when creating digital works such as these.  However this is just like anything else! Quality takes real-time and practice.

All Artwork remain the properties of NSG Productions.
For Personal Use Only, No Copying, Editing Or Redistribution of Images.
Copyright © North Star Genesis

Here is my little foray into the realms of Machinima, I did it during my final exams of my Media Studies. The idea for this video came about during a funny and quite random conversation with one of my friends, where at the time we were laughing about many online players in such games as Halo, whom try to hide and snipe other players from a far. Well of course most cases this tactic hardly ever works but despite this fact, it remains a most popular technique among many a new gamer.

Hence, we had named them DeckChair gamers, on the account of that their seemingly similar nature to some idiot sitting in a deck chair and beer in hand trying to use a scope weapon to shoot other players. However, the main concept with this video was more to do with the editing, titles and voice overs. As I wanted to do something I hadn’t done before but also something i could have a little bit of fun with and this was the final result.

Characters relating to Codename Deckchair
Copyright © North Star Genesis Productions.

The main purpose of this video was to demonstrate the simplicity of using Linux and debunk some of the common myths most newbies complain about when using Linux. So the video is obviously aimed at those new to the system and explains how to both install applications and customize your new Linux Operating System, using nothing but the graphic tools provided. Now because the video ended up being about 40 minutes long, I have split it up into the 4 segments that you see below. So hopefully by the end of this video series, you will see that Linux can be and truly is a user-friendly system.

No copying, editing in whole or in part
Copyright © North Star Genesis Productions

Hello and welcome to the new Official Home of NSG Productions.

It’s taken a while but we are finally back online, with a new domain and new look page! You’ll no doubt immediately notice a few changes from the old format. Due to feedback or rather lack there off, I have decided to go for more of a blog type look as opposed to the sometimes confusing portfolio page that I used to have. Don’t worry all the old stuff is still here, I have just organized and categorized all the content into a more manageable way, hopefully you will agree that this is a much better format!

For those who are new to the site, well I started North Star Genesis about three years ago, while working freelance back then but this page represents part of my work in the field of Digital Media, I generally like to post about my 3D Graphics, Writing, Film and Video Making. So this is what you will primarily find here, however on occasion I also like to write the odd rant or two about other things which interest me..

For now the bulk of the revamp is completed, I just have one or two more sections to put up but these will be added over the course of the next week or so. In the mean time you can look around the different areas and let me know what you think..

Hope you enjoy your visit to my world of North Star Genesis.

Cheers
Mark M.

Now I’m sure I don’t need to tell you guys that this means real problems for a WordPress based website. As this would effectively mean that I would have to try to find every single IP address, for every plugin and service that WordPress uses. Well of course I said stuff this!  But of course I was not aware of this fact until I had already gone and transferred everything over. They even go far as to claim that they have an easy WordPress install. So i figured this host would be a  good place to set up shop as it were. Hah! Boy was I sure as hell wrong. Setting it wasn’t the problem but trying to use it properly sure was, this also meant that I was effectively screwed to transfer my domain again to another host because of having just moved there.  So to cut a long story short, I was not willing to pay them another dime. Just for the luxury of not being able to use my WordPress site properly…

Anyways I feel as though I was royally Punk’d but live and learn as they say and watch out for what you pay for! As you too could end up buying a whole lot of trouble. So this is basically why I have decided to move my site here because I am done with web hosts for the time being. I had a look around this place and really liked what I had seen. So I plan to just register a new domain upgrade after I finish transferring all my stuff here. Currently I’m still trying to shift  everything before they go and delete my old site. So you can expect to see things updating very quickly around here over the next day or so.

Cheers

Mark

Over the course of a month, I tested the latest and greatest offerings from some of my favorite operating systems. Including windows and some others which I was not so familiar with. What follows was an exercise in what happened during the course of this trial period. using the exact same computer specs, internet connection and general programs which I use on a day-to-day basis. The results found were very mixed to say the least, leaving two easy winners, namely both Ubuntu and Debian. Although I have to say that in the end, Debian, was the very clear winner for me over all. As this was the only system which I tested that not only worked, but also out performed the others for its sheer stability in its use and quality of selected programs.

The video includes a small glimpse into some of the problems I ran into. However for time reasons, I have not included all of the systems I had tested. First up was the new Windows 7 RC1, I was not able to properly test this at all due to it being incredibly slow and unresponsive. The damn thing took a full five minutes to load from boot screen to the desktop regardless of what I did. This was in stark contrast to my previous experience with the Vista Beta which ran on my machine really smoothly without a problem. It was not exactly the new and improved example from Microsoft, that I had been lead to believe.

Now remember for the purpose of this exercise, I was approaching this from a new users point of view. So needless to say that I very promptly moved on, the next one I tested was the new Ubuntu Jaunty Jackolope 9.04 Linux Desktop OS. I got to say that I am largely impressed with one, with the exception of a couple of issues with non starter programs and ATI graphics drivers. However, this is a system that still rates very highly with me, especially because its suitability for new users to Linux. The next one I tried out was the KDE based distro Mandriva One, this is generally a really easy to use system and I think really deserves the title of being User Friendly. But this too proved to be short-lived when I discovered that the use of their graphical RPM installer application is not exactly a user-friendly experience. I ran into nothing but dependency issues as well as some weird and random graphics issues with my video card.

So once again, I decided to move on to the last distro on my list, Debian 5.0. This was to my surprise, an outstanding performer on my desktop computer. Not only was the system fast but the graphics driver as well as the usual desktop effects, were both simple and very easy to set up and install. Also all the programs which I normally use ran without a hitch and with no dependency problems in sight. This was as close a virtual utopia desktop experience as I could possibly get. Over all I have to say I’m very impressed with this OS, it’s painfully obvious that the time, which the Debian developers take to ensure they have a very stable release shows. With Debian, my desktop experience became a relatively painless one. So much so that I have permanently installed it to my computer. One thing my desktop trial did prove was, you really do need to try out a few shoes to see which one fits best. Having said that, I definitely recommend you check out either Ubuntu or Debian…

This video was also a great chance for me to play around with some blue screen effects, Where by I had set a challenge for myself to make a video with multiple color backgrounds while trying to maintain an even look throughout the video.. For the most part I’m pretty happy with the exercise, although now I’m maybe thinking that I am better off behind the camera than standing in front of it. lol