Where are the sources, author? SBS?

Great work!

Fabulous work with the water reflection!

How beautiful!

Stunning - yowser!

LoveLoveLove. How much? Let me say I saved this into a folder called "Genius of Others."

Funny - and remarkable photo of the meerkat!

Perspective and the perception of depth or distance can be tricky to achieve. If the reflectors next to the meerkat are resting on a table, they would appear a little more skewed (shorter and wider) instead of perfectly round. Consider playing a bit with their shapes under Perspective or Distort or Skew options under the Edit > Transform menu in Photoshop. If not for this contest, perhaps for future works. To me, right now, the objects appear to be hanging on a wall, not resting a table. And if it is a wall, then the meerkat is suspended mid-air. Does that make sense to you?

Nice job, author!

*sigh* a cornucopia of talent and memorable art.

This is terrific. : )

Gorgeous!

Author, although challenging and certainly old, perhaps your chosen source is too lined and too gritty-looking to effectively convert the face to a younger age without over-processing it beyond human appearance. The overly-illustrative quality of your work is too jarring to be against the real photo, split-screen style. In addition to benefiting from skin textures with shadows and light, the drawn character should (but does not even) retain the original eye color, and the entire drawing raised up a few pixels to provide more symmetry with the physical features on the photo side. Although I say basically the same thing as CMYK46, hope you are not as sensitive to this comment.

Very believable. Just wish you'd made the wheel round.

I'd be happy with a round rotted tire. Love your background, don't care for the soft cut / mask around the car part. The background is clear and sharp around the car part. It would be nice to have a better match.

Seems some links to your sources are broken?

This is beautifully done, author. The dial is amazing work.

(And not what I thought it was at all, LOL. With the USA election results still fresh in my mind, when I first saw this at a distance, it REALLY looked like President Obama and a dispenser of birth control pills. But that's not a movie - that's reality.)

Great job and good luck!

Congratulations!

If the bottom of the sweater were done differently, this would have gotten a higher score from me - I like this concept.

Congratulations!

No, you came in third. That earns you a blinky "TOP THREE" award.

Congratulations!

Congratulations!

Congratulations!

Congratulations!

Congratulations!

Congratulations!

Congratulations!

Beautiful, excellently executed and blended. Your perfect masking work can be fully appreciated in high resolution! If anyone wonders what a perfect extraction looks like, look here. Here is your goal.

Now here's my challenge, author, LOL: let the sky show through that softly sheer lace edge.

Nice water effect! (Guess I need to get myself one of those programs!!) Perhaps you would consider matching the color of the water to the rest of the sky. Notice the blue (from the original sky) in the reflection, like a halo around the boat, and how it ends rather abruptly. There is nothing in the sky that would cause the water to change color.

You've got the makings of a beautiful piece here. Couple of points: 1. Ditto CMYK. Either find a real one, or make this one look more real. 2. Masking of the model could use some improving to soften sharp points. 3. The sky would not pass in front of the tree, so you might want to erase the sky there. Good luck!

I'm sorry this entry came in so late; with a little tweak of lighting it might have been even better than it is. Your model choices are great (love the expression on the standing model) and the background is nicely colored. However, your characters do not have any of that beautiful light on them. The table/slab is bright, but the dead princess's body doesn't cast a shadow onto it nor do her clothes (nor the standing queen) have any golden highlights from the bright center light. Good luck, author!

I really like the owl (left ear could have used a little more color blending), but I think the stretched/smeared sections of tree detract from the rest of the work on the tree. Good luck!

Ugh! The dreaded "flatten layers" Oh well. You're welcome.

Yes, shadows. Using a regular Photoshop drop shadow effect is a good place to start, but does not work well to cast realistic shadows on different level surfaces. :\

The shadow under the left foot would "fall off" the edge of the wall and bend downward and curve a little to conform to the shape of the surface. That particular shadow would be darker and "sharper" at the foot and be a little blurrier or softer toward the toe because of the distance from the source/foot.

For the right foot, see how the original jug's shadow starts underneath the jug itself before stretching left. The right foot, too, needs a very close/narrow shadow under the boot itself, then stretch left, like the jug's shadow. Be careful not to make the shadow too "tall" or too far under the bottom of the boot or it will look like it's floating.

Hope this helps.

Nice blend. However, this character is simply way too gigantic for the scene. There is not enough distance - implied or actual - between her and the closest car in the background, or balance between the size of "yellow lines" in the street compared to her shoe next to them, to justify the degree of disproportion. I'm not suggesting she should be humanly proportionate, just not so gigantic for the surroundings. A very easy fix would be to re-size the background larger.

That may be taste, but this is technical: the shadows are cast in the wrong direction for the light pattern on the legs - all you have to do is look at the real shadows in the original to see that the light on the legs is coming from the front, not the back, as your added shadows imply. To fix this, you can darken the front of the legs and brighten the back of the legs. Or you can try flipping that background.

Congratulations, spaceranger! Great job, it was my favorite!

There is something very appealing or intriguing about this. But I have some issues: I find the car on the surface inappropriate considering they do not float and we can see the water is very deep (and you already have one submerged - great job!) The submerged person is too "bright" and sharp compared to the underwater scene. The waterfall implies two levels of water, with the rush coming toward the us; if true, that would require a large corresponding splash on farthest part of the left building, too, to show that forward movement.

It appears to me that the ground shadow does not quite match the girl. We see one of her arms but not the toy head or her other arm. What am I missing? I can't mentally picture how that shadow could be cast...

eeeeew , LOL! I realized that's not a very helpful comment, so here's the critique: Great blending, author!

Oh I am lovin' this!

Congratulations!

This was my favorite. Congratulations for top 3 win!

Congratulations!

Congratulations!

Congratulations!

I like this, but I might have tried to blend out the same sand spatter pattern - that's the giveaway that it's a copy and flip - and perhaps add more of the bright light reflection on the bottom half, like the original. Good luck!

This is very well done - the blurs, the shadows. Good luck!

I like the style that's used.

Yahoo! Congratulations!

Congratulations!