I like the idea but I think the two elements used could be made to look a lot more natural. Just a bit more blending and colour matching.

I can't tell whether or not the shell invaders are meant to be massive or relatively small.

The light and shadows in this are kind of all over the place, though I can appreciate the difficulty. I really like the concept, but otherwise I'm not quite sure what to make of it.

Maybe you could've moved the model slightly to the right then made the bottom left mushroom bigger, therefore making it cast more light. I find if I'm having trouble lighting a scene it helps to have a dominant light source to fool the eye.

It also helps to selectively blur/sharpen parts of the image to mimic the way humans perceive things i.e. I know the dude is the focus of the image but while I'm looking at him my brain is still noticing how sharp the background and buildings are and therefore it feels as if something is a bit wrong. Hope that makes sense!

I think this is well put together and a good idea

Cool! One thing though, as far as I know laser beams lose energy and dissipate, not come to a sudden stop!

I think the issue isn't sharpness it's the levels of darkness/shadow

better!

Great job I really like the lighting and the blimp is really inventive. It's the sort of thing I hoped to see when I suggested this comp.

Nice. I would make the rings in the shadow a touch brighter...it might not be physically accurate but at the moment it's very hard to see that they're there at all.

My two cents: nice work, my eye is disturbed by the fact that the blimp seems to line up with the bridge in such a way that, at first glance, it almost looks as if it's part of it.

Nice idea! The bowl wouldn't be casting a shadow backwards though.

You need to remove some shadows where they shouldn't be

Not sure why you added the extra light dappling at the end? I mean it's not necessarily superfluous but I might have toned it back a bit.

I thought all entries were meant to be anonymous?

congrats

...that's not his light saber...

For my tastes, this needs a more interesting environment

Great stuff!

re the SBS, I asked the mods a while ago about using images from my own (purchased) stock image library, and received the answer
"you need to provide a copy of the receipt of purchase (excluding details like card numbers etc) to the moderators, also a link to the site where the information can be seen. You will need to
provide this every time you use an image from this stock"

PS to get an idea of the effect that ocean water has on colour compare pics of coral both in and out of the water.

Real water dulls colours a lot [I think it's something to do with light refraction and impurities in the medium] but it's always tempting to ignore that rule so your subject stands out

578 votes, score 55.7. Interesting

I really like this image. The light coming fro the car's left headlight seems a bit not quite right to me, but it's a small thing...good job

Such a nice job on the integration of the dino, this deserves better realism of the biscuit holding

Nice image

Author, I got burned by DA rules recently when I used a pic and contacted the author for permission but they never got back to me; so I've started a bookmark folder of DA stock suppliers who only require a credit, not permission, to use any of their work.

Ah! I think I've figured out what doesn't look right to me..the actual position of the machine...I think that, from the viewer's point of view, it might look more natural moved left and rotated clockwise slightly.

Nice!
Did you try moving the prosthetic further up her arm? Also to me, at least, the machinery seems to be sort-of just stuck there; I can't quite put my finger on why...maybe attaching the straps further back would give it a more cohesive feel?

Congrats!

Very cool. I hope you've done a longer version than allowed by the contest because it looks great and I'd love to see more.

That must have taken Quite Some Time!

Great idea by the way

If you use your own pics you need to show then in an SBS

great idea

it was definitely the resolution, or at least the overall quality, of the background.

Regarding the light, yep I figured that's where the light was coming from but as you say the eyes should've been quite a bit brighter brighter, to throw that much light on her face.

lol at everything to do with this entry! I dig the surrealism though

How the hell did this get ANY votes?

Author, I agree with both you and Wazowski. You because yes what you're saying is possible, but Wazowski because despite that it still doesn't look quite right, and also because I agree that deleting at least some feathers would help the illusion.

You could perhaps have subtly perspective-transformed both bird and warrior in opposite directions to match up a bit better...anything that fools the eye helps!

If you're lighting one source with the light source of another, try to use only the light colour. In this case the only part of the sunset light affecting the archway would be the brightest yellow; and considering the archway is generally lighter in colour than the sunset to begin with it wouldn't be affected by it very much.

Nice idea btw.

I like the overall concept but the added light on her and the vulture's face, and the low-res background ruin this for me. Could do with some more masking too.

interesting usage

Extra votes for concept and humour

Needs a bit of extra masking and shadows etc, and some matching of sharpness, but cute!

I like the owl more from a technical point of view than artistic; I mean I appreciate the quality of the work you did to manipulate the source image in such a way that it looks like it belongs, though I'm not convinced it needs to be there in the first place

BTW everyone else, check out the high-res version.

Nice effort to basically create the car rather than painting over a real one

This would work a lot better I think if the tulip dress was sharper in places. At the moment you can tell it's just an enlarged flower. You need a source image of a model that's bigger to begin with so when you match the two the sharpness is similar

Nice clean work

Ah! Didn't notice that. As you were

Nicely done...you're missing some sources though

Awesome! Maybe just a tiny bit more smudge tool here and there? But I'm being really picky for the sake of it, this is great.