Photoshop took a major role in this artwork, this part covers it.
The first step was obviously to put all the geometry renders together, flatten the layers and add the effects layers. once I did it, I had a better view on the entire composition and I could start doing the final color correction. This is something I do with every artwork I make, I start with levels or curves and then I go through color balance to make the general adjustments. after that, I like to use selective color. I like selective color because it gives control over every color separately. and allows to make some changes to a smaller range of colors without changing others. Another trick I like to use often, is to add another layer on top of everything and paint the general colors I want in each part of the image, then set it to soft-light and lower it's opacity. This is usually among the last tweaks I do to an artwork.
There's quite a bit of paint over work in this piece. The main things I painted over the renders were additions to the skies, the raging lightning effects, the birds and the additional cracks on the tower. I did the paint overs using edited photos and custom brushes. Ultimately, the skies needed to justify the lighting, being cold on the left and warm on the right which also symbolize the two sides of god. The additional cracks that were added are meant to suggest that the tower is just about to crumble into a bit pile of bricks and dust, same goes for the birds who fly away to the warmer side.
This concludes my coverage of this project and you can see below, the final image.
I would like to thank all the great mates over at the forums who supported me in those two months of free-time working on this (you can checkout the WIP thread over at CGSociety). The hard work sure paid off, besides the CGS grand prize, this artwork has also been on the cover of CADDESIGNER and PIXEL magazines, It was selected to be shortlisted on 2006's CGOVERDRIVE, and won rank one in Animago, among other things.
