Blog Post 24 - Stage 1 - Completed Design: Rear Cover - Ford Capri

My finished design for Stage One: DVD Amaray Case Cover

As mentioned in Blog Post 11, the third and final element of the DVD Case Warp that I will explaining and evaluating is that of the Rear Cover. In a similar vein to that of the Front Cover, the Rear Cover also features a large range of elements which when brought together will form the Rear Cover. For reference, my finished design is posted here. In regards to the different elements of the Rear Cover, these include the following which will be discussed and explained; Background; DVD Information; Gene Hunt; Ford Capri; DVD Summary Information; Actors and Music Information. Having just completed the element of Gene Hunt the next stage would be that of the Ford Capri.

Ford Capri

As well as having the Trio of Cars on the Front Cover (covered in Blog Post 13), I decided that I wanted to have another photo on the Rear Cover of the Ford Capri too. Harking back to my original Design Ideas on Blog Post 10 I was going to have another line up of the three cars however I decided against this at the last minute in regards to design. This was because as there was already the three cars on the Front Cover I decided that another three on the Rear would be too much, and thus I opted for just the single photo. To begin with, this time I did not have to search on the internet for an image as I could quite simply navigate to my computer hard drive and find an image that I had already taken of the Ford Capri myself. This was particularly useful as I could therefore get the exact angle and photograph that I wanted.

Original base image prior to editing that I photographed myself.

For this element of the Rear Cover I wanted do something different and above that of simply just a side on image of the Capri. Therefore after some thinking and research on the internet I stumbled across some Tutorials to replicate that of smoking tyres and emulating that of a large wheel spin and burnout of the rear tyres. One of the main parts of the previous series' of Ashes to Ashes and also Life on Mars was that of the tyre smoking car chases through the streets of Manchester and London, and therefore thought this would be a nice addition to the Rear Cover. The video tutorial that I found was actually on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8tES_PiBoM and after watching it for the first time I felt that I was able to carry out this tutorial and that it would add a nice effect to my Rear Cover. It was also good that the YouTube user also provided a download for the smoke effect which meant that I could easily add it to my base image of the Capri. With this in mind I first had to get my base image ready which was that of the Capri. 

YouTube Tutorial 

To do this, I opted for the Quick Selection Tool. To begin with, I decided on a 75 Point and 100% hardness which allowed me to swiftly select the majority of the car, and I once again went over the edges very slightly. Then, I decreased the point size to 25 Point and altered the settings to subtract selection. This meant that I could then precisely select the areas of the Capri that I did and did not want. Once again I also used to the Polygonal Lasso Tool to carefully and intricately keep the areas of important such as the tyres. Once I was happy with the selection that I had made then navigated to Refine Edge, whereby some settings were tweaked, namely the Smooth Edge to 17, which gives a less obvious "cut-out" appearance to the image. Also, the Shift Edge was set to +6, which ever so slightly adjusts the edge of selection. In this case the edge of selection was increased by 6, which I felt benefited the end result. Finally, the selection was going to be output to that of a New Document. Once in the new document, I could then revert back to the Video Tutorial whereas I could begin editing and creating the effect of the wheels spinning. However, before this I decided I wanted the Capri to be facing the other way, so I flipped the canvas horizontally which meant that the entire car was now facing the other way which was what I was looking for.

To begin with, I decided to use the Elliptical Marquee Tool which allowed me to draw and select around the rear wheel. With the impression of motion being portrayed it was important that the effect was continued to the wheel itself, so by selecting the wheel I was then able to navigate to Filter -> Blur -> Radial Blur and then select Spin Blur. By selecting this, this allowed for the wheel to be blurred in a circular motion from the centre and due to the wheel being circular this meant it gave the impression of speed and motion and if it was spinning. 

Completed Effects added to the Capri on the Rear Cover

Once this had been completed, I was ready to move onto the actual smoke elements. To begin with, the main smoke file was duplicated into the New Document whereas the Capri had been exported to. Once the smoke had been duplicated into this document, the Blending Mode was changed to Screen which allowed for a better looking effect as opposed to some smoke that was too thick and would not look natural at all. Next, the Move Tool was used to move and resize the smoke so that it was correctly in place around the wheel too. Once again using the Shift Key mean that the aspect ratio was kept as to not skew the image. Once it was in place, the smoke layer was duplicated again on top of the other smoke layer and that was because I wanted to add more smoke around the tyres to increase the effect. However, I did not want there to be more smoke around the back of the car so a Layer Mask was going to be used. Once added, by using the Brush Tool with black selected and hardness to this allowed me to remove this extra layer of smoke that was not needed. The use of the Layer Mask meant that I could accurately select what areas I did and also did not want to be included of the smoke that I had duplicated. Once this had been completed, this was actually all that was needed to be completed for this effect, and then I headed back to my DVDAmarayCover Photoshop File and added a new Layer Group called TyreSmoke under the Rear Cover Layer Group. Then, I duplicated all four layers into the DVDAmarayCover which allowed the swiftest movement of the layers into my file and added them to the TyreSmoke group. Finally, the Move Tool was used including the shift key to ensure that the aspect ratio of the image was kept when moving and resizing the Capri to the location that I wanted. The penultimate part to the Ford Capri was firstly adding a filter which I decided to add some Motion Blur to the car itself to make it look like it was starting to move as opposed to sitting still, and some effects in the form of a Drop Shadow. Finally, linked into the Drop Shadow, I also I utilised the Burn Tool on the Background, which was set to 75 Point Size with a Exposure of 50% - this is so that I could subtly darken the areas underneath the Capri (in the form of shadows) as to make it look as realistic as possible.

With the effects added to the Capri and it added to the Rear Cover this meant that I could now move onto the DVD Summary Information.