Last night, I had the idea to make a PSA urging people to not stay glued to the telly and work themselves up to a panic over the Coronavirus coverage. This is how I did it.
First, I sketched the general idea (I usually don't need to do this as I keep it all in my head, but it was late and I didn't want to forget)
Next, I determine what elements I'm going to need to make the picture:
Then I go ahead and get the various art assets I will need and drop them in layers:
Now the fun starts. I isolate the elements from their background:
Then I go ahead and resize / reposition them as required to rough out the general layout of the picture:
Next, I adjust the color tinting of the objects / add shadows / highlights as needed to match up with my inner vision of this being a dark room. I also make a gradiented background for everything to live in - the newspaper will come in later. I also crop a bit from the woman's arm area to make it look like she's in the chair.
Now some special effects work- I put something more relevant in the computer screen, make the virus "pop" a bit and add some light from the monitor to really draw of line of sight from it to the seated woman.
I add in the header / footer test, which is different than my initial vision just a bit:
Now, because I want this to look like it was pulled from a magazine, I reduce the opacity of the gradiented background to show a bit of the newspaper article (because this is cheap, thin paper, see?) and then fiddle with brightness / contrast a bit. Et viola, the final product!
A hater of Active voice, Lady Peinforte is titled nobility of the nation of Sealand. Having successfully invaded both America and Canada from her home base in Windsor, she has become horribly corrupted by the world, and is dedicated to "creating the greatest 'Ship of them all". She ponders horribly terrible, idiotic things for your amusement.