never quite found a sharp brush to make a photo shatter, but did find some good spatter brushes to make the image splatter out. I had to clean it up some more in my poster, and will still be looking around to find or make a sharper shatter brush. I used the flood fill on the background photo so I could shrink the picture to have the sunglasses a decent size, which made the actual background photo too small.

Looks great 2-ton!

Thanks, it actually took me a long time to get this far with the tutorial...I had to practice it quite a few times to get it to this point.

Gimp Know How has a tutorial here that results in pretty much this same effect.

An excellent result 2-ton.

That video is one of the video tutorials I watched to figure it out. I think there were 3 videos I watched. It's not perfect but it's ok for a 400 px poster....which is the width I need in order for the whole thing to fit into my blogger page.

Very nice job 2-ton.

Wow! Nice result 2-ton.

is there a method to make renders look more natural and integrated into the background? I don't want them to look like they are just slapped onto a background even though that is exactly what I did.

i think the explosion looks really good in that scale, but the lighting stops in the middle of the picture.
Is the non-spatter-part of the brush tranaparent ?

Also the context of the picture is unclear.
Where is that guy standing and why is there another pair of sunglasses on that table thing, that again, stops existing in the middle ?

I think if you would change these elements so that they seem more logical, the picture would look more realistic.

There is nothing that explains why the guy is actually blown away.
Does it come from an audience ? A speaker ? Wind ?

Could you add something that would explain the whole picture ?

It is just an interpretation of song lyrics, so it needs to be as uncluttered as possible in order to have the text be the main focus.

i see, so how about the sun ?

the summer comes from the sun...can you make the picture look like the explosion of the guy comes somehow from the sun ?

that would be cool...I had thought to look for a sun, but just didn't get around to it. I find that I am impatient and when I can't find the pictures I want, I just go ahead and use what I already have....and I wanted to try this whole effect out. I will probably be looking to do another one and now that I know I can do the effect, I can take my time to find better pictures.

i think your picture is too small
its looks cramped

the text would benefit from more space

maybe you could tilt the head, so that it appears as if the guy looks up to the sun
and then create some rays that go through the guy

i will try do make a little sketch, to demonstrate what i mean
hang on, pls

I think that would be beyond my capabilities...I am not sure I would be able to remove his head and put it back on at a different angle without it looking very strange! I do like the idea of a person with rays burning holes right through him. Funny you should suggest that for the person, he is the guy who was the vampire that blew up in the old Ray Ban Vampires advertisement.

sketch

Sketch 2

cool idea...I like the sketch up, will have to hunt around for a sun that I like, plus I really should make the background stretch all the way across before I flood fill....thanks for the input.

glad you like my suggestions

maybe you could use my dilemma from this thread to make a sun

viewtopic.php?f=9&t=4851&p=60331#p60331

"Where is that guy standing and why is there another pair of sunglasses on that table thing, that again, stops existing in the middle ?"

I laughed when I read that. That's how cool he is. He needs two pair of sunglasses.

You did come up with some nice results 2-Ton, just take it further. Esper has brought up some very good points.

Also, that guy is wearing a Dogtown shirt.