I was asked to write a tutorial on this image: Big Ben.First of all let me say, that it was inspired by this great tutorial, 'Destroying New York' by BlairHillen. Most of the things I did you can find in here as well, so Ill mainly concentrate on the differences.[Edited by User on 3/17/2011 5:50:30 AM]
So I had this idea of Big Ben with the broken clock face in the street in front of it. It has a nice story to it: The broken clock beneath the destroyed tower; time has stopped, everything is in ruins, and so on.I found this image of Big Ben, which has a good view of the clock-tower, and has a piece of road in front of it where I can put my destroyed clock-face.
[Edited by User on 3/17/2011 6:40:19 AM][Edited by User on 3/17/2011 1:33:16 PM]
It doesn't quite have the dramatic atmosphere that I need, but we'll fix that later. The good thing about this, is that the street is almost empty, so in getting rid of the people there won't be too much cloning-work. (See Destroying New York.)
I cloned out everyone on the street, but decided to keep the car, and just break it up instead. We'll get back to that later.[Edited by User on 3/17/2011 5:58:34 AM]
Now, I need another image of Big Ben: A close-up of the clock-face and top of the tower. Since the tower and clock-face will be in the foreground, theyll be much larger than the ones in the original image, and to enlarge the originals clock & tower will blur them out too much.Luckily there are lots of close-ups of Big Ben to be found on the net. I need something big enough for me to twist around without it getting too blurred, like this:
[Edited by User on 3/17/2011 5:54:58 AM]
With the pen tool I cut out the clock-face and the frame around it separately. Then I go to Edit>Transform>distort to give the face the right perspective, and then Warp to bend it into shape. Then I do the same with the frame. It needs to look as if they were hurled from the tower, and crashed into the street.It needs some rubble, and some parts of the clockwork too, a few cogs or something.
Then I cut out the top of the tower, also from a separate, larger source pic, and placed it at a dramatic angle beside the clock-face.
[Edited by User on 3/17/2011 6:42:18 AM]
So now I can begin to imagine what is supposed to have happened in my image: There probably was a war, a bomb or explosion of some kind took out the very top of the tower, entirely smashed the back and left side, partly broke the clock-face on the right side and hurled the front side clock into the street together with the top of the tower. So I make a selection around the pieces I need to get rid of.
(Somebody very certain of themselves would just delete the selection, but I'm an insecure type, so I right-click and hit 'Layer via Cut'. Then I can always put the piece back in if I change my mind.) [Edited by User on 3/17/2011 6:43:59 AM]
I use the pen tool to create a sharp-edged selection on the clock-face on the right, and again 'Layer via Cut.' Then I copy a piece of the wall for the inside wall to the left, and darken it, and another piece behind the broken clock-face.
[Edited by User on 3/17/2011 6:44:44 AM]
Another explosion made a hole in the wall and roof of the houses of parliament. (I need this to let the sun shine through; more about that later.) Same thing, selection and Layer via Cut. I mask out most of the windows, since they probably were broken in the explosion. This makes the wall look like a set-piece; there's nothing behind it. What I can do now is either copy a piece of the front wall, put it where it will be visible through the hole and windows, and then darken it to fit. Or I can just a draw a piece of wall with the pen tool. It's very dark and small so it'll be okay to just draw it. I like the two ledges sticking out like that.
[Edited by User on 3/17/2011 6:45:47 AM]
Now, the overall atmosphere is kind of bland and dull; I want something more dramatic, like a sunset with nice shadows. I cut out the foreground, and get rid of the sky, as described in Destroying New York, and find a nice picture of a sunset to replace it. This kind of gives the image a ray of hope - the sun is still shining. I decide to keep the leaves in the foreground of the original for the same reason - there still is life somewhere. So I need to mask away at the tiny spaces between the leaves to let the sky shine through. This takes about forever.
This sure looks dramatic; it isn't entirely logical, as somebody pointed out to me, that remaining piece of roof on the tower would certainly have fallen, if not instantly, then with time. Maybe so; but I need this to be recognizable as Big Ben, so I don't care too much about logic.[Edited by User on 3/17/2011 6:47:23 AM]
Now, this kind of light will of course make a strong shadow; I make a selection and Layer via Copy of the front of the building, and darken it. For the tower in the street, I copy the layer, darken the copy, and then mask it till it looks about right. I also darken the clock frame to make it a bit more rusty.
The tower needs a long drop-shadow, too. I go to Blending Options and apply a drop-shadow. Of course its impossible to make the drop shadow behave the way I want it just like this, so after clicking OK I go to Layer>Layer Style>Create Layer. This puts the drop shadow on a layer by itself, so I can twist and turn it the way I want it, using the Distort and Warp tools.
I decide that some time has passed since the destruction. The rest of London was probably destroyed too, and people abandoned it. So Im going to need to break up the asphalt in the street, and have moss or grass growing everywhere. This part has been well described in Destroying New York, so just quickly: Find images of broken asphalt, distort/warp them into place. Do the same thing with moss/grass images. For blend mode, well, some of the sections look better in overlay, some in multiply and others in soft light, it all depends on the eye.
I found it a good idea (for this image) not to have too much moss on the building and pieces of the building - again, it's recognition, not logic. So I decide to cover only the sides of the building that are facing the viewer, and not cover them entirely. Blend mode as looks best.
On the rooftop I put some extra growth, just because it looks good.Also, a bit different image of grass looks good on the clock-face.
[Edited by User on 3/17/2011 6:49:12 AM]
Now for some extra details: On a new layer I paint black on the car, making it look old and decrepit. A bit more rubble in the street, covering the car, and for a finishing touch I paint black with a 30 % opacity soft brush in strategic spots, making the shadows a bit deeper. Then a nice image of birds gives a little more hope to the entire image.
I finally put a Color Balance - adjustment layer on top of all the other layers, tweaking the colour more towards a yellow/red sunset-colour, and there you have the final image: