Behind the Scenes at Fetal's Lab
I've had like two people ask me how I make my wallpapers, so I thought I'd explain with this one, 'cause the Kulik one is a bit more complicated.
Here are the three images I started out with, keep in mind I shrunk them all down immensely and not to scale to give you an idea what they looked like (the cloud one was even bigger than the wallpaper, so I had to do the shrinking):
<img src="
http://jesusmuseum.com/02mb.jpg" style="border:0;"/><img src="
http://jesusmuseum.com/landing_1.jpg" style="border:0;"/><img src="
http://jesusmuseum.com/clouds1659.jpg" style="border:0;"/>
Perhaps the trickiest part to my wallpapers is finding the right images. First, I have to find an image of the skater I like. I have several requirements: A) It must inspire me in some intangible way. B) There must be a striking facial expression. C) There must be a feel of being in motion. D) The resolution must be high enough. E) The costume has to look decent (I can't work with ugly costumes, it just bugs me). This is the real crucial part, everything else comes afterwards.
Then I develope a concept. When I looked at Kulik's picture, something reminded me of the big goofy bird in "For the Birds," I just saw in my head a picture of the snooty birds glaring at him. To realize that, I found a decent pictures of El Snooty Birdies from the Pixar (studio who made the film) website. Then I settled on one cloud picture to use as the background.
This is where the work begins. I begin by very carefully working on Kulik's image, I cut out all the bits not of his body. Then I isolate the birdies in the same way, with the additional twist that I had to erase the big goofy bird and fill in the wires plus missing snooty bird parts. Then I copy and paste both those images onto the big cloud image. I didn't like how the colors looked in the clouds, so I tampered with that and shifted the picture around to get the perfect puffs in place. Then I put Kulik on top of the birds, and deleted just the right parts in both the bird picture and the Kulik picture to make it look like he was standing on the wire. The last part is extending the wires. Which I admit I could've done a better job with, if you look closely there are minor flaws, but I did this early morning and I'd already posted it when I noticed the mistakes. I could fix 'em but I decided not to be so obsessive. The last and final part is saving the wallpaper and posting it, and voila!