[Filthy Slider]

Hi everyone.
As some of you may know from my recent posts, I've become quite obsessed with the hobby of combining the tools of FaceGen and Photoshop into creating fictional players and seeing what I can do to make them as lifelike as I am able.

I've become so occupied with this hobby that I haven't even opened my ootp6 game or its related programs in almost a week now.

Well, just as many of you have enjoyed sharing your dynasties at the dynasties thread, I find myself wanting to share my creations too.
And, it occurred to me to do the following (as long as it turns out to be ok with the board moderators that I do a thread like this):
I'll use this thread to post what I've been working on.
If you happen to be someone who stops in here, sees something I've done and thinks: "I would like a fictional player or two of my league done to that level of realism" or "I would like a few of my historical players to have a change of uniform in the style that these photos are done"...then, and I can't promise anything in advance...but, if you let me know: either here in the thread or in pm, I can try to apply this current obsession with these image editting tools toward something that someone out there might enjoy having for their league.

As it is now, I haven't developed a bunch of templates, so I am currently focusing on low volume high detail type of projects.

Also, I'm only one person with limited time resources so...like I said, I can't promise anything in advance...but, I would enjoy seeing what I could do based on requests.

And, that seems to me that this would make this thread be a symbiosis of me displaying my 'fictional player "art" (if you could call it that)' and of people getting to request stuff. And, it would keep me from thinking up excuses for reasons to post new player photos in other threads thus filling them up unnecessarily.

In a way, this idea for this thread does seem a little bit crazy to me...but so does the idea of spending hours and hours working on a photo in such a way as to try to fool my eyes into thinking that he was and or is an existing person. And, I'll try to keep uploads to a relatively small amount and just replace ones that have been there for a couple of days with new results and thereby just cycle the displayed pics through maybe like 5-6 photo spots keeping those there that demonstrate a new technique or something of that sort.

Oh yeah, also...a third use for this forum is for the sharing of 'tricks of the 'trade'" of turning fictional photos into lifelike images...
For example, just this evening I figured out how to make a more realistic looking neck on a player than FaceGen provides (it involves a texture neck layer copy/pasted over from a real MLB player then adjusting a few properties of that layer so that the texture and lighting effects of the new neck is what comes through and still leaves untouched a skin tone that is consistent with the fictional player's face)...that method--my first excursion into using it--is used in the photo below...its only a slight effect this time but with practice and further experience it should be able to make for more of an effect.

Another technique I'm experimenting with is to use those shadows in the background to create a 3-D effect..

[Oh yeah, also, I started off with a two-tone background: an off-white and a strip of offer-white above that...then, when I did adjust levels, adust color, adjust brightness it somehow seemed to help that process in a way I hadn't experienced before....what that means, why it works, i don't know...i discovered it by accident]

So, taking a deep breath, here goes: exhibit #1: