*Transcription Disclaimer: the following transcription was automatically generated, and may have errors, or lack context.*
Alex Lazaris:
Welcome, everybody from wherever you're tuning in from. We have a very, very exciting show today. I know yesterday we had some internet issues, so David wasn't able to join us. But today we have an action packed stream. I'm really, really excited. I've admired David's work for a while. I think it's super cool. So I know you guys, if you're not familiar with it, you'll learn really quickly about who he is and what he's up to. And you're going to learn some of the ticks and tricks from the man himself. So I am super pumped for today. Yeah. So wherever you guys are tuning in from all over the world, let us know in Chat. We'd love to hear from you throughout this whole process. If you have questions for David or myself, we'll be reading them, interacting with it. If you're watching on YouTube or anywhere else, come on over to Behance. You can come to be.net/adobelive and you can hang out with us and chat and we'll read everything. We'll hang out with you. It's going to be a great time. With that being said hello, David. Welcome. I'm super excited.
David Alabo:
Hey, Alex. Thanks for having me. This is such a cool opportunity and I'm just so excited to share some tips, tricks and yeah, that stuff.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, I'm super excited. So, for people who are not as familiar with your work, do you mind just kind of showing kind of your website and kind of some of the cool things that you've been up to?
David Alabo:
Yeah, definitely. So my name is David Alabo. I call myself an Afrofuturist, which is like, I recontextualize the black experience or sort of being a black person and create these sort of utopias or envision people in these alternate realities. So I'm a big sci-fi guy. I like all that kind of jazz. So this is a little bit of a preview of some of my work. I do illustration. I do three D. I do collage work. I've been lucky enough to work with some pretty cool agencies, companies. I did something for Lovecraft Country, which was an Afro futuristic show, actually. So we did something in virtual reality for them. And I also did some work for Daily Paper, which is also another African sort of forward thinking fashion brand. And I've also done some work for Allure and Wired magazine. So I've been lucky enough to sort of have a career that sort of makes me work with all these big agencies. But I also love to work with local Ghanaian brands. I'm from Ghana. Shout out my Ghanaians. Just a little bit of work I wanted to show you. I think you would enjoy it.
Alex Lazaris:
Alex, I love skateboards.
David Alabo:
Yeah, I knew you loved skateboards. So I did this crowdfunding campaign for Surf Ghana Collective, which is a skate and surf collective, and their goal is to create Freedom Park, which is like Ghana's first skate park. So I created this kind of limited edition skateboard deck, which I don't have yet, but it's on its way. So I love to work with international and local brands, but I have a very distinct vision, and hopefully on this stream, you're going to get a little bit of a taste of that.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, I'm super excited. But first question is, can I get one of those skateboards? Where do I go to purchase one? Or is it already too late that I miss the boat?
David Alabo:
I'll see what I can do for you.
Alex Lazaris:
I want to buy one of those. They're so cool.
David Alabo:
I got you. Thank you so much.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, that was awesome. Anybody who can do skateboard. Graphics for me is a huge win, but your art style literally looks so good on posters, t shirts, just Instagram stories. You have kind of that really distinct style that I think is just incredible and it just works on everything. So I love that you can blend the realm between a marketing or a editorial design with something that's more just purely art as well. So you have the ability to kind of bridge communication and art really nicely.
David Alabo:
Thank you so much. Yeah, I think I like to push myself to sort of gather skills and learn new things. And I'm sure everyone here is also keen on learning new things, and I think that's kind of what sets us apart as creatives, is, like, we always have that kind of hunger to learn new things.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, absolutely. And Wade said you had me at Sci-Fi and skateboards heart, emoji, eye face, so yeah, it's great.
David Alabo:
Thank you.
Alex Lazaris:
So let's get to know what we're going to be working on today. What is your vision for what we can accomplish in this condensed one day stream?
David Alabo:
Okay, so we're short of time, so I'm going to make this as quick as possible. What we're going to do is sort of like a poster, surreal, Sci-Fi landscape, and I'm just going to sort of explain how anybody can sort of recreate their vision with Photoshop. And I'm going to set myself a little bit of a challenge today in that I'm going to do this entirely using Adobe stock.
Alex Lazaris:
Nice.
David Alabo:
So, yeah, I mean, this should just be sort of a motivation that you can really do it with all the amazing images videos that the wonderful people at Adobe were kind enough to give.
Alex Lazaris:
Me for so no, we're big fans of Adobe stock. Yesterday while you were out, we were doing all the free Adobe stock assets. So Chat, if you haven't used Adobe stock yet, you can play along while David's working on this. But go to the free section of it. There's tons of great assets you can search and find a bunch of really cool things. Project so, highly recommend.
David Alabo:
Exactly. So I'm just going to kick off by opening Photoshop, and I just go right to this art and Illustration tab up here. I click that and I see poster here. That's good enough for me. Right now, I'm going to turn down the resolution to 150, because 300 is ideally what you want, but it's quite big. Exactly. Just for today, we're going to set that to 150. Okay. So now that we're here, I'm just going to double click this layer here and just name that background or blank. So now I'm going to go to some of the stock images that I downloaded, have them over here. Actually, before that, I want to sort of talk about something that I like to work with colors. Colors are kind of my thing. So before I go in, I sort of pick a color palette that I feel like is my vibe for today, basically. So I'm feeling this kind of yellow, red, purplish and a little bit of blue in there. So that's kind of like a little bit of a foundation to start with.
Alex Lazaris:
And where did you get this color palette from? How do you typically go about finding that mood for today?
David Alabo:
So basically what I do is, again, I go on Adobe, I think color Adobe.com, and there's just, like, so many amazing tools to sort of so what I did was just I went to explore, and I just picked out a color palette that I kind of was digging at the time. So you get a bunch here, and what's really also cool is that you can input a picture, and it's going to give you a palette. So I think I just went here extract theme, and I put in one of my older artworks or something that I liked the vibe of, and then it gives me all the colors straight away.
Alex Lazaris:
Nice.
David Alabo:
Yeah, I already did that, but that's kind of how you're going to go about it. So what I'm also going to open up is Adobe stock, just to show you sort of quickly how I sort of went about picking these. I have them all in my library already, but I love it.
Alex Lazaris:
Chat is already going crazy for your color palette. Everybody's saying, oh, I love those colors, that color palette, that color palette, dough. Everybody's going crazy.
David Alabo:
Yeah. Honestly, people have different ways of starting. I have sort of a special relationship with colors, so I can almost get an idea from a palette, which is really cool. So what I have here is just a couple of pictures I went about finding on Adobe stock just to give me a vibe. So I was already thinking deserts, if you know my work. I love deserts. So one thing about me you might not know is that I'm half Ghanaian and half Moroccan, so my mother is Moroccan, but I basically grew up in Ghana. But I've always had that love for the Sahara, the desert. That kind of culture is still strong in me, and I'm actually planning on going to Morocco soon, which is pretty dope. So what I did was I found this amazing dunescape right here or this desert, and I immediately just I licensed know, I was like, this is a great starting point. So I have that already here. I'm going to go to Photoshop, and I'm just going to put my stock images over here. I already neatly labeled them. Guys, labeling is very important, especially for someone kind of unorganized. I make sure when I'm in Photoshop, I'm on my stuff. So I just quickly drag this into Photoshop here, and already I'm seeing in my poster sort of frame that this is a bit too small. So what I'm going to do is just hold alt and sort of drag this out. And I'm not too worried about these going out of the frame. That's actually a good thing. So I'm liking this little curve that's going on over here in this middle part. So what I'm going to do is just put this here and hit enter. So that's going to lock it in for me. But now I want to get rid of this sky. So I'm just going to quickly hit W, which is my quick select tool. Also, knowing your shortcuts are very important, as you may know.
Alex Lazaris:
Yes, it saves a lot of time.
David Alabo:
So I'm just going to click this desert, and it does this amazing job of already just selecting it for me. And I'm going to hit this right at the top here. Okay, I can't see it, but right at the top here, I'm going to hit select and mask just to give me an idea of exactly what I'm going to be doing here. Yeah. So we have this, and already I can tell some of these creases are just not working for me right now. So what I'm going to do is go down to my I know this is important, this edge detection, but I just ignore it. I go straight for, like, a bit of feathering just to kind of brush it out. I hit the smooth. Just a rough idea. You don't really need any specific numbers. And this is the magic right here, this contrast, it's going to give me that bit of that hard edge that I'm looking for. It's taking a little bit to load okay here. So already I think this is way better. And then the final step is I hit the shift edge, which is kind of like taking the boundaries of the selection, and then I'm reducing it, so it's going to actually take more away from it. And if I do that enough, hopefully some of these little ridges and stuff. It's good. It's actually natural for me, so I don't want it too clean. So I'm just going to hit okay. And you're going to like, where did everything go? It's all just selected, and I'm going to hit my mask button over here, and then boom, I have this. So already this doesn't seem like a lot but this is a good starting point for anything.
Alex Lazaris:
That's a great starting point.
David Alabo:
So what I'm going to do, I'm not feeling this white screen, so what I'm going to do is just create another panel, go to my gradient. And what's amazing about this gradient is that Adobe has all of these wonderful color palettes already there for you. So I'm just going to go out. Skies are blue, but blue is a little bit expected. When I go all the way down, I see iridescent. That's already a vibe for me because that's kind of like reflections and all that stuff coming up from my 3D background. I love this stuff. I'm just going to pick this one over here or let's see. Yeah, this one's fine. So the gradient tool is kind of a really cool tool because depending on where you're clicking, that's where the colors are going to sort of start from. So boom. Already this is feeling nice. And the longer I sort of pull it down, the further this gradient goes. So I'm liking this already just for a starting point. And we're doing surreal, guys. We're doing surrealism. So you got to take yourself a little bit out of reality. And what I'm going to do is just go to my effects and hit color overlay over this desert one. And it's going to give me a bunch of settings. Not sure which one I want right now. Okay, darken seems pretty good. Okay, so I've picked yellow already. That's kind of already why it was but I'm feeling more blue. Say blue, maybe a little bit lighter and okay, this is all coming a little bit funny, but I think that's because of my blending mode, I'm just going to go to color. Wow, wonderful. So when I hit the color blending mode already, I'm getting those kind of nice blues I want. So already we're getting a bit of a nice starting point for this piece. And from now what I'm going to do because I kind of did most of the job already with selecting the mask on this desert, I'm just going to hit command J or hold alt and duplicate this. So now I have another desert. And what I like doing with kind of stock images is just you want to make it your own. So I'm just going to hold the alt and hit this transform and flip it. Flip it. Just because I'm not really I don't want to be too okay, flip the outside down. It's not what we want. Let's go back. Another nice tool I like to do is just go to edit, transform, and flip horizontals. That one works. If nothing else is working, that's going to work. So what we have here is just another copy of this desert. I'm just going to scale it up a little bit and bring it down to the foreground right about, let's say here. And it doesn't seem like a lot now, but as we're working, you're going to realize that it's all adding to the piece. So now I'm like, I don't want two blue deserts. I want something a little different because I've done most of the work with my first desert. It's simple now. We're going to keep things nice and simple. I'm going to make it. What do you guys think? Purple? Yeah, purple.
Alex Lazaris:
Chat, if you have any colors that you want to see in there, Chat, let us know. We'll see if we can.
David Alabo:
Okay. Boom. I'm liking this. So this is already kind of a nice vibe, and if I'm still a bit like, yeah, this is a duplicate. I can just hold command whilst hitting this and kind of just twist it around a little bit.
Alex Lazaris:
Just try to get the perspectives to line up a little bit.
David Alabo:
Exactly like lining up perspectives. For me, it's not the prettiest job, but it's necessary.
Alex Lazaris:
Well, especially with your artwork, it's okay to not have it be perfect because it kind of adds to the look and feel. Like if it was too photorealistic, then it's not going to be super surrealistic. So I think you have plenty of room to play with it fully.
David Alabo:
Exactly. We're going for a quick kind of rough vibe. We try to get the main picture down. And like I said, guys, naming your layers is very important. Desert. Blue Desert purpose. And for the fine, I'm going to do one more desert, guys. Okay. Just till we're done with this desert thing. I'm going to hit Alt, copy it again, and this time I'm going to remove this mask because I want to see the whole thing now. Okay, wait, hold on. This is the one I kind of modified a little bit, so I'm going to copy the blue one. Oops. And I'm going to make this one just a little bit darker than the other blue. And so this is behind it, but I'm going to move it behind this blue one's. Okay. I'm not really filling this, so I'm just going to leave what I did before, and it's okay, guys. Nothing is ever stuck to the plan. You have to be sort of open for things to change. I'm going to bring in my next element, which is I'm feeling this cool checkerboard thing that I picked up from the stock.
Alex Lazaris:
That's cool.
David Alabo:
So what I'm going to use that for is kind of like a stage. When you're thinking about these pieces, you really try to envision yourself as the person watching this or as the main character. So I'm just going to line this up right around here. So this white border thing, I mean, this white background, we're going to have to remove it. So quick way to remove things that are just kind of, like, straight edged. I'll just use the pen tool. Just going to hit each sort of section there and just make sure we have the perfect I know there's probably quicker ways to do everything, but this is the way I know it.
Alex Lazaris:
You're good? Yeah. The pencil used to be how I used to mask out everything and it got so tedious, but for something like this, it's super easy with just four points really quick.
David Alabo:
And I'm just going to hit this mask over here. Or sometimes selection depends on which mask should be fine. And boom. Look at what we have here. Nice. Already we have kind of another element that I like is kind of checkerboard checkboard pieces just because they give off that surreal vibe, but also they speak a lot to sort of being in a game or being sort of in a challenge or something like that. So then I have this masked out. I'm just going to hold alt and scale it a bit just so it fits a bit more. Yeah. And already now we have a nice sort of levels to this art piece. You're looking from the top down. We haven't touched anything up here, but we're just focused on what's down here. And don't forget guys, I'm still sort of keeping to that palette that we have. We got a little bit of purple here, that blue. We have the sky a little bit red. But now I'm missing my standout pieces, sort of my strong contrasting colors. So I'm going to go back to the stock. And now we need a main character. We need somebody the audience can put themselves in. So I got some really cool pictures of messiah warriors from Kenya. I absolutely love sort of the messiah culture and all that. But before that, I picked this guy over here sort of looking like he's a bit down or whatever, but I like his hands on his hips and sort of the broad back. So already when I see this, I'm like, okay, this is going to be the perspective. So we're going to have a guy sort of standing here with his back turned to us. And I think that's cool because we're looking from behind from his perspective. So I'm just going to sort of fit him into this for now. And another amazing quick way to get rid of this background I'll show you is just when you hit this sorry, I'm just trying to see this boom. This select subject, it does all the work for me. I mean, it's going to see what happens when I click that. Let's see. It's taking a little time. Boom. We have that here already. It's done most of the hard work of just selecting this guy. And after I hit select subject, I'm going to hit select and mask just so I can really fine print the edges and stuff like that. Okay, so we have that. I'm going to zoom in a little.
Alex Lazaris:
Pretty clean.
David Alabo:
It's really clean. I mean, it even got the detail hair, which is amazing. We won't be needing his head today. Unfortunately, but this is already good enough for me. I mean, if we want to sort of take it further later, that's fine. But what we want to do right now is just get all the concepts sort of quickly laid down, and I hit my mask button to get rid of that. And what I'm going to do is just quickly take off his head here. I'm sorry. My man.
Alex Lazaris:
Nine is really going to be down.
David Alabo:
Yeah, right. And I'm not looking for anything perfect, guys, my pen skills are not the greatest, but we're just looking for a rough and cut right here. Okay. So sadly, my man has to go, but it's for a good cause. And I'm just going to hit selection, feather, radius, antialias checked. That's fine with me. Okay, working. Don't forget, guys, I'm working in the mask of the guy. No, I'm not working on his actual image. I'm going to hit g, which is my paint bucket or gradient. Make sure that's selected, and I'm going to make sure it's on the color black so I can quickly boom. Sometimes it leaves a bit of edge. Can just use a brush and sort of quickly do that. And now boom, I have that. So what I'm thinking with this main piece here is I don't want this white color. I want one of the main palette colors that we had just so that we can have a bit of a visual contrast. What I'm going to do is just hit color overlay again. We're here at Color, and let's see. I'm going to pick yellow, something nice and golden.
Alex Lazaris:
Mercusio also said, I also apologize to my photos when I cut them.
David Alabo:
Got. You got to pay respect to the original pictures. Okay, guys, it's important. Okay, so this color isn't exactly my vibe right now, but we're going to go through a couple of blending modes. Darkens. Okay, this multiply is good color burn, darker color. Okay, let's jump to these. Okay, this is nice. This is very kind of that kind of poppish feel I want for it. I'm going to hit. Okay. And now I still want my man's arms in there, but I don't want to mess about with any of the other coloring I got. I'm just really liking this color right now. So what I'm going to do is go to the color overlay effect. I just hit laid on. I'm going to right click and hit create layer. So what that's going to do is form a layer out of that effect, because before you couldn't really work on it, but now I can work on it, and it's amazing. And what I can do is I can put another mask. Guys, we're getting pretty deep into the inception now. The mask on math, but trust me, just stick with me. We're going to make it work. And now boom. So we have this mask here. So that means that the whole point of masks and all what I'm doing is so that I don't work destructively, because the thing about collage is that you don't want to be, like I said, too stuck into something. You want to always be open to switching things around. So with my brush selected, I have it on the color black. See, as I hit that already, it's removing that color fill I already did before. So what I want to do is just quickly brush out my man's arms over here. We're not going to do something too perfect right now. Like I said, we just want to get the concept down, probably use a smaller brush and just sort of quickly get this. Okay, we're going to fix this later once everything is set. But like you're painting on a canvas, you don't want to get too caught up in the details too quickly. You just want the vibe set already. Okay, great. So now I have his arms. I wanted the black skin. I really like that. I wanted that to stay, but I wanted his shirt, like, a very bright yellow. So I have that now. But now we just have a floating body. It's surreal, but it's a bit too surreal for me right now. What I'm going to do is go back to my stocks, and I have these two amazing images here. One is of sort of a guy sitting chilling by the ocean with his spear. You don't want to mess with this guy. And this guy's sort of on his journey here. I'm going to pick this guy over here just because he has more information here for me. And I'm just going to drop that in, and before I even hit enter, I'm just going to sort of roughly guess where that bottom half is going to be, and boom, I have that here. Let's not worry too much about it. I'm going to hit enter to lock it in. And the opacity thing is your friend, so I'm just going to lower it a little bit where I can see him, so I can line up his hips with it even. You could sort of use his whole body as sort of a way to fit him in if his head was kind of there, but not exactly a little bit bigger.
Alex Lazaris:
Anika asks, can you tell us a bit more about your journey? How did you get started? How did you develop your style?
David Alabo:
Okay, so thank you for that, Anika. Like, how I started my journey would be I was always a bit of a creative person. I was always someone who liked drawing in class, sketching, the typical thing, but I never thought that that could be something I do for a living. So long story short, let's say cut to when I was 21 and I was in business school in New York, and I went to Baruch College, which is like, a really good business school, and I graduated. All right, everything was smooth, but I kind of had, like, a bit of an identity crisis because I was like, either go and do this Wall Street thing and make big bucks or try to find something that you're truly passionate about. So my dad was like, what are you going to do now? And I was like, oh, I don't know. Maybe I want to make music. Maybe I want to do this. And he was like, you're not serious. I need you to be serious. So he's like, Pack your things. You're going back to Ghana. So I packed my things. I came back to know with my business degree, not really wanting to use it, even though I learned so many great things living in New York and going to business school. I just really didn't think this was for me. So I came back here, just sort of, like, messing around a little bit, trying to find something new to do. And I found this art. I threw myself into this world of Photoshop and graphic design, and I started just doing these cool collages and stuff as sort of like a therapy or sort of like a way to just deal with boredom and sort of all those kind of self doubt, not really show what you want to do. And I was like, whoa, this is amazing. So I kind of was just getting more and more into it, like putting all my time in. And three, four years down the line, I'm not only doing Photoshop, I do, like, 3D work. I do illustration. I do stuff with virtual reality, like I said for HBO. So I'm really not really tied down to any medium per se, but I always like learning things, exploring things. So that's kind of a short summary of how I got here. It's really just self taught, learning many mistakes. But what I am appreciative about my journey is that I always was like, damn, I really wasted my time going to business school. But I was actually the opposite. Like going to business school and sort of putting myself with people who really knew how to market themselves, knew how to sort of brand themselves and really helped me along my way and also taught me how to be a bit of an entrepreneur, how to make things happen, a bit of that hustle. So a bit of a winded journey to get here and not your usual, but I'm just grateful to be here, doing waking up every day, doing what I love. It's a blessing and something I don't take for granted.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, that's a great story. And Bull Six says that's crazy because I'm 21, and that's exactly the situation I'm in too. Wow. And Shauna says this looks amazing. Or awesome. So everybody's loving your work and your journey is awesome.
David Alabo:
I appreciate all of you.
Alex Lazaris:
I think the one thing that designers could use more training on is the business side of things. So I think you've got a jump start already, which is awesome, definitely.
David Alabo:
And it's like, now I'm doing things vice versa. I'm like, I'm learning things I should have been learning in art school. But then, like you said, I have a bit of a head start. But it really shouldn't be demoralizing if you haven't gone a certain way or what's considered the right way. If anything, doing things different is only going to lend to the uniqueness of your story.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, exactly. Especially looking at your artwork is a great example of that.
David Alabo:
Right.
Alex Lazaris:
Like, taking all those different experiences or images and throwing them all into one. It's like a really powerful metaphor for even your own career and your life. Wow. I made that way too meta.
David Alabo:
But no, we're here for the meta, bro. Okay, so now I'm like, I love big cats. If you know me, you know, that's my thing. I'm really into lions, panthers. I could spend all day on National Geographic just watching them. So for me, I'm like, we don't need a man's head. We want a panther head. That sounds more like more badass. Yeah, badass, right?
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah.
David Alabo:
So I already just started messing around with this head here. If you saw me, I just did the same thing. Quick, select the subject. And now working with the fur is a little bit trickier, but obviously this guy cannot be looking this way. I mean, it's just ridiculous. So I'm going to hit edit again. Flip transform and flip horizontal. Where did he go? Okay, no worries. He's right here. And so because when you looked at the first guy let me show you. And this is, again, the beauty of working nondestructively. You can see a bit of where his head was. So I'm going to match that a little bit with the panther. And what I want to do is just line his neck right with the collar, with the sleeve, his neck collar over here. That's going to, I think, guide the eye a little bit more and make it a little bit more believable that this is a panther head. Okay. So with my brush tool on the mask, I'm just going to this isn't probably the best way, but again, we don't want to get bogged down with too many details right now. Okay. This is too much.
Alex Lazaris:
Trusiel is like, I'm here for more cats, which is awesome, because yesterday we did a lot of cats.
David Alabo:
Oh, yeah, I saw that. I was like, I was with that. I mean, I couldn't make it to the stream, but when I watched it after, I was like, you guys held it down. You're stealing my ideas already.
Alex Lazaris:
I was trying to get as surreal as possible to try to channel my inner David. But you're the expert here. I'm just playing around.
David Alabo:
It was fun watching it.
Alex Lazaris:
I'm glad.
David Alabo:
Okay, so just a rough guys, we're not looking for anything perfect right now. Like I said, we're just getting the vibe. Set and okay, look already. Boom. When you look back a bit, it's looking good. I'm just going to unenable this mask again and boom. Maybe we can make his head a bit smaller. But I'm liking this already. So what I do is, when I hit the panther, I hold alt, which kind of like enlargens and reduces it within its same position. I'm not sure if that's what it does. Is it shift? Alt shift, but just to make his head a bit smaller and then line it up more. And we're not looking, like I said, for perfect lines. Just the idea.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah.
David Alabo:
Okay. So fine tune it a little bit more.
Alex Lazaris:
Shauna says the business side is hard. My school basically told me, don't freelance, and I did not listen. Shauna is a freelance illustrator. She's really talented as well.
David Alabo:
Awesome. Nice to meet you, Shauna. So you're saying they told you not to freelance and you ended up doing yeah, big ups. That's what I did. Honestly, you have to start out freelancing and just to sort of throw yourself into the world of design and that commercial side and presenting ideas to clients and all that stuff, you have to learn, you have to make mistakes. I've made mistakes down the line, but I'm always kind of like telling myself, okay, you made this mistake, next time that's not going to happen, or Next time it's not going to be like that. So just learning I feel like the business side is a little bit for you to learn. I mean, someone can teach you as much as they want, don't do this. But it's really those painful lessons we learn. That's what really teaches us, right? Yeah, absolutely. So now I'm putting this planet here because we need a bit of visual information on the top. It's getting a bit too lonely up there. What I'm going to do is same thing we always do. We could hit W and just quickly do this. Boom. Photoshop does that for us. Already hit the mask and we have a nice planet over here. So what I like about this planet is right now, it's giving a bit of a background for this guy's head and it's setting the scene a little bit. And so now I'm just going to take a view because it's always nice to go back and sort of look at how things are happening from a wider perspective. Okay. So I'm thinking this red is a little too bright for me. First of all, I'm thinking, okay, if you're looking at a planet in the background, surely it's going to be very far away from you, right? So when things are like a bit that far away from you, you don't see as much, there's not as much detail as opposed to something right in front of you. So I'm just going to reduce the opacity just a little bit to give us that fade, and it's going to make it a bit more believable. Yeah.
Alex Lazaris:
By doing that, you kind of color grade it on accident so that it feels like it's still part of the composition 100%.
David Alabo:
You're saving yourself time later that you could be. And so now I'm going to do I haven't touched this adjustment section here so far because I'm just gathering all my assets and stuff. I'm going to hit this saturation button over here and just play around and see what I like. Okay. So I'm liking this dark red a bit more than this orangey red cover. Something a little bit yeah, it's getting into that palette that we like, and I always try to just mess around a little bit with the settings, even if you don't think you're going to use it. Never know what you're going to find or how it's going to affect the image itself. But this lightness section over here in this saturation control is also super cool. It can also add that fade effect that we were looking for. So I'm just going to give it a bit more lightness, maybe not too much, then compensate with more saturation here so you get that red, but it looks a bit more of a faded red. Okay, let me sign back. Okay. So now I'm like, okay, this guy's back is yellow, and that's all nice and nice and gray, but we need a bit more visual information. So I'm going to go and find our man sitting by the beach over here. I'm a sigh man. Bring him over here. And it's important where you are when you import these because sometimes it just takes you all the way down when you really want to just be up here. So again, I'm going to reduce the Opacity just so I can see a little bit inside through him. And I'm just going to line this man's back with our first man's back over here. And you're going to see in a second why I'm doing that. At the end of the day, we're aiming for visual interest, maximum visual interest for our viewer, for the eyes of the person. So what I'm going to do is just I've kind of lined their heads up a little bit. Their shoulders are a little bit lined up. And what I'm going to do is just boom. Okay. And I'm going to put the Opacity back. Hit select subjects. Your favorite friend, guys. Especially with these kind of things, it just does most of the work for you rather than Tediously going to mask everything. It's not perfect, but we'll take it. Okay. We're just going to load, wait for.
Alex Lazaris:
It to fairy asks, does becoming an apprentice is becoming apprentice a good idea?
David Alabo:
Becoming an apprentice? I don't have a mentor or a master, per se, so I wouldn't know exactly the benefits. But it doesn't help to get information from people that have done it before. You even if you don't listen to. Okay, so it feels like there's a little too much information for select subject to do. So what I'm going to do is just use the W and just the quick select tool and just quickly take out his back here. And I like his little waist thing going on here. I think that's so cool as well. And all these beads and this beautiful maasai jewelry and fashion is just so fascinating to me. Someone from West Africa, I have a deep respect for East African culture as well. Shout out my East Africans on the stream. So I know, guys, I really want to use this spear and stuff, but let's just stick to his back for now, make sure everything is sort of selected. And I'm going to hit mask. So okay, this looks like a lot right now, but hang with me. We're going to get through it. And now I'm seeing like, I want the beads of this guy on his back. So how am I going to get that done? Well, I don't need this arm here because we already have an arm here. I'm just going to quick select it and holding Alt, that kind of like removes the selection. I'm just going to go along here and make sure it's taken in. All this information here that's good with me.
Alex Lazaris:
Says, this is so cool. So interested in how someone can learn all this on their own. I would assume it's a lot of trial and error.
David Alabo:
Yeah. Honestly, YouTube's your friend. YouTube university. I'm still a student there, still learning. You can learn not only YouTube but anywhere on the Internet. And I would advise not to pigeonhole on one tutorial. Try to get like two, three going, try to see what steps are these guys doing. That's common to all. Because sometimes, like what I'm doing right now, I'm telling you there's a better way to do this. But this is how everyone has their own style. Everyone is comfortable their way. So don't think that maybe what you're doing is necessarily wrong, but I would just say trial error. And even the funniest thing about working like this is that you actually learn things that you didn't expect or you find something new that you, Danny, weren't even looking for, let's be honest. And because of that trial and experimenting, you've suddenly unlocked something like maybe nobody has done yet. And then that could take you down the rabbit hole into doing something completely different. So a lot of the times I end up just completely going on a tangent to what I came for, but in a good way. So now I added a bit more visual interest. I didn't just give him a flat yellow back. I wanted to give him a bit more of a skin. So you're melding the panther skin with our Messiah Man skin, which I think is so cool. Just going to go to the bottom here, remove all these harsh edges here, and even we haven't perfected it, per se, but already it's looking like a real character or somebody living in a real world, which I'm already loving, by the way. And he's got all this kind of gear, and he looks a bit like a Nomad, somebody who's traveling the desert. Again, back to my love for sort of the desert culture. And Nomad is that you do with what you have, you make do. Okay, so now I'm just going to leave this for a second. I'll get back to it. What I'm going to do later is sort of maybe color match his back with the color of the panther and so that everything is sort of speaking well with each other. But I don't want to get too carried away. I want to make sure all my elements are on there. So what I want to do now because what we have here is a lot of blank space on these edges here, so I want to do something about that. What I'm going to do is just palm trees, guys. I'm in West Africa. Don't forget, we have so many palm trees. It's just a part of the visual language here. You know what I mean? It is what I would say. A big part of that tropical feeling is the trees here, over here in Ghana. I don't know about you, Alex, but I bet you got some palm trees over on your side, too.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, I literally am living in springs.
David Alabo:
So there we go.
Alex Lazaris:
Lots of palms around me.
David Alabo:
That's what yeah, adding nature to your scenes is always a good thing. It always grounds it, even though we're doing something surreal. Surreal is kind of building on reality. That's kind of the very direct translation of surreal is on top of reality, so you always want to make sure that it is a little bit grounded. So now, I brought this image right from Adobe stock. Unfortunately, it's just the JPEG. So all this transparent information is actually not transparent, but we can work a way around that. Don't worry, guys. So what I'm going to do here is I need to find a way to get just the green going.
Alex Lazaris:
Is that file originally an Illustrator file that they left the background in?
David Alabo:
I believe so. I believe so.
Alex Lazaris:
If you wanted to open an Illustrator, you can just remove it easily.
David Alabo:
All right, but let me just say, in case, let's just pretend this wasn't quickly. This wasn't an Illustrator, and you were just stuck with these annoying deceiving images that they look like they're transparent. When you bring them, you're like, oh, no, don't worry, guys. We're going to fix it. So what I'm going to do is just double click this image here, right? Or no, not double click it. Make sure it's just okay. So it's a smart object now, but I'm just going to rasterize it, which means just kind of make it flat or it's not the exact definition, but I'm just going to double click it now. And what's going to bring is this blending option, which I really think is cool. And if you're kind of strapped for time and you have this what I like to do is just slide back this white thing, this white button, and look. See, I have all that transparent information suddenly going away and boom, you have that. So if you're not lucky enough to have the Illustrator file, sometimes you can just sort of go about a quick, dirty way to get it done. And like, look, guys, it's not perfect. Yeah, maybe there's some edges, but this is pretty good.
Alex Lazaris:
That's really good.
David Alabo:
So I'm just going to hit okay. And what I'm going to do now is take my lasso tool and pick out sort of the tree that I like in this image, which is this one right here. I'm just going to do a rough lassoing over here. Okay, good. And what I'm going to do is hit Command J, which is Duplicating, what I've selected, or Control J if you're on Windows. And now when I go to the one before, I could remove that, and I just have this perfect, and it's already in a lovely angle for me, what I'm going to do is just put this right around here. And my thinking is just that if you were standing a little bit more to the left, you would see the tree, but we can't see the trunk of the tree. Right. So I'm just going to put this and in my mind, I'm thinking, like, this area here is where the tree is. So palm trees are obviously tall, so they're going to be taller than our character. And what it's doing is just filling that visual space there. And what's really cool about it is that it's leading your eyes towards our main character. Whether subconsciously or know, these curved lines are just leading back to our main panther man over here. Black panther. Should really hit me up for one.
Alex Lazaris:
We're already making the poster for the next.
David Alabo:
Exactly. Like, I'm still waiting on the call. Marvel, if you're on here, make it happen.
Alex Lazaris:
I'll tweet at them after this. Narush asked, have you ever been blocked by the imposter syndrome and how did you tackle it?
David Alabo:
Oh, that imposter syndrome. It is a pain, guys, and it's something that we all as creatives, I'm sure, Alex, you've dealt with that. Know, in this age where we see so many artists all the time, so much new work, it can sometimes feel like, man, am I ever going to be this good? Or am I ever going to make work that is on this level? And I think that is just something you have to go it's like a feeling. You have to accept that you're going to feel imposter syndrome or you're going to feel like maybe your work. You're not deserving of maybe what you've achieved, but it's just kind of I see it as like, your brain trying to play games with you or trying to test you a little bit, see if you really feel it in your heart that you deserve it. So I just like to accept the feelings, and they're not great, don't get me wrong. I just accept them and be like, this is natural. This is normal. After the 50th time of feeling it, you're kind of like, okay, maybe a day will pass. Go take some fresh air. Go step outside, play with your dog or cat or whatever pet you have, and you're going to come back the next day or next week, however long. Sometimes they take a while, and those feelings are not there anymore. Maybe you have a new thing you want to or look up or this new thing. So I acknowledge the feelings, and I just sort of let them pass by and let them sort of go through me. And I find myself feeling much better than sort of beating myself down, like, oh, why can't you do this or this? Sometimes I let it fuel sort of the direction I'm going at if I see, like, a really amazing 3D artist or something. I remember when I first started getting into Three D, I was like, I'm never going to make anything this good. But then I was like, let me just try. Let me just start doing. And then I started learning, start making bad things. And then maybe a year of struggling, and I was finally able to make something I was happy with. And just as we let those feelings sort of pass and acknowledge them, what I like to do is just be grateful as well for the little things. I know it sounds cliche, but really taking time to be like, damn, I've come so far, or I've done this, I've done that. That's also kind of the reversal of impostor. You're battling your brain. You're teaching your brain that, listen, I deserve this, or I deserve what's coming for me, or stuff like that. So I just always try to stay positive with my inner voice or the voice in my head just because it's so powerful. It's really, I think, the root of all our creativity is that inner voice. So you got to treat it with kindness. That's why I like to think about it.
Alex Lazaris:
And I think imposter syndrome comes in a lot of different forms, but I found that most of the time it's a sign that I'm doing something correct. I'm sure with you getting the Wired Work or Lovecraft Country, those are like moments where you can be like, I'm not good enough for this. Why are they coming to me? I'm just me. I don't deserve that work or that praise or whatever, but it means that something's going right. You're working really hard. You're getting those moments and exactly. Being uncomfortable is a good thing if you can lean into it and use that as a driving force fully.
David Alabo:
Fully. I 100% agree with that. Sometimes it's good to feel nervous. When I was preparing for this stream today, my girlfriend was asking me, are you nervous? And I was like, yeah, I'm nervous, but it's okay. Like, I'm not going to be like, no, I'm not nervous, and I'm lying to myself. But I was just like, yeah, I am, but it's going to be great. And she's very supportive as well, so it helps to have people around you as well that understand you and also lift you up when you're down.
Alex Lazaris:
Absolutely, yeah.
David Alabo:
So I'm just going back to my desert, and I realized I just needed a bit more visual interest with my desert. So sticking to that same palette that I had before, I'm going to go with a darker purple. Let's see. Make sure my blending mode is set to color so we did before, and just make sure it's a little bit okay. So I'm going to stick this desert darker back to the bottom. I'm being a hypocrite right now. I haven't renamed my layers, but I'm going to do that right away. Okay, good. Perfect. So what's this doing for me is I know we have his tail sticking around here, but don't worry, we're going to fix that right away. And there's a reason I left that there. So now we're just sort of laying a bit more depth to the piece right now. Desert darker. Okay, let me just go back and make sure everything is named Palm. Palm. I'll say right, and then the other one says palm left. This is tedious, but guys, trust me, if we had time to animate this and take it to another program, trust me, you'll want everything nice and seamless.
Alex Lazaris:
That's absolutely correct.
David Alabo:
So palm. I'll put palm. Right. Top. Give me a bit more of a difference. Okay, so now I'm going to go to the panther, and you can't see out here, but I'm just going to take his tail using the Lasso tool. I don't know where it is, but it looks like I need to they.
Alex Lazaris:
Might have to duplicate it again.
David Alabo:
I might have to duplicate it, but that's fine. Guys, duplicating things is the best thing you can do. Okay. So what it has is just it kind of cut off our visual information a little bit, but that's okay. We can work with this. What I'm going to do is just use the brush tool, remove our head here, and I'm just going to gently try to taper this guy's tail down a little bit. And what I'm going to do is just rotate it around so we still have a bit more information that we haven't gotten rid of yet, but that's okay. And obviously, this guy has a head for a panther. He should have a tail as well, I think that's only fair.
Alex Lazaris:
That was one of my biggest questions. I was wondering if we were going to bring the tail back.
David Alabo:
I feel you. Don't worry, we're here. Okay. So it's telling me I need to rasterize this. Okay, no problem. Let's rasterize that. And what I'm going to do is just sort of look already we have a lot more we've given to this guy. The sun is a bit bright on my end. Hopefully you can still see me, guys.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah.
David Alabo:
You're good? I'm good. Okay, so his tail is hanging down a little bit. He's a bit confused, he's a bit worried. So his tail is not going to be up. So we have this. Okay, so now we have a good sort of foundation. But personally, I'm not feeling this guy too much. I think we could do better with this guy. I don't know about you guys, but we had a color palette. Let's stick to that palette a bit. So I'm just going to hit a new layer over here above that first one I did still here. And even this white one is kind of nice here. But what we're going to do is just go back to our gradient tool over here. Where is it? Gradient. Gradient. There you go. Next to the paint bucket. I'm just going to go to that same preset we had. And I'm going to go and look for something red. I don't know about red or yellow, something like that. Okay. Liking these. Okay, these are nice. I'm liking this one over here. This has got most of the color information that we wanted. So I'm just going to use this and looking at our again. Where's our palette again? Boom. Okay. So maybe I want the top to be I want the top to be red and then kind of going down into yellow. So I'm just going to hit this, bring all the way down here, see how much more vibrant and put together. This is looking already, and depending on how far I sort of go down, that's kind of how deep the gradient goes. But I want this little orange section here to really be at the bottom of the desert. So I'm going to go all the way down.
Alex Lazaris:
Omicron said that they used that gradient last night. Awesome.
David Alabo:
Yeah. Great minds think alike, right?
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, it's a great one.
David Alabo:
So I just want to mess around a little bit more with where I want this palette is where I want this gradient to be. I'm just going to enlarge it a little bit and then bring it down a little bit. You see that? Now we're getting that nice bit of yellow at the top. We're still getting I'm just going to play around a little more, see which one I like. Okay. So I want the gradient to kind of end down here.
Alex Lazaris:
What I like is that orange contrasting that green there looks really nice from the palms.
David Alabo:
Exactly, yes. So you're looking for harmony as much as you can in the piece. This is nice here. And guys, what we've done here is just assemble everything together. We haven't really even gone into fine tuning how each of them is going to look, but we have our base layers here and so we're just going to work a little bit more to blend things together. Right. Maybe before I do that, I'm going to make sure I have one more tree here just to give it a bit of balance. Two trees to the right, two trees to the left, something like that. Okay, so I already have this information, so maybe I want to use one that I haven't before. And I think this top one here, I haven't used it yet, so I'm just going to take my lasso tool quickly, carve out the parts that I want hard to do, but why, guys? Part of it. Okay, good. So command J again. So I always have this first image that I start with, so I never kind of leave it. And I'm always working with either a duplicate or something like that so I can always go back to it and change it. Like I said, that's a big part of doing collage is always be open to try something new. So, I mean, if anybody in the chat has some suggestions, maybe something they want to see in it, I think that would be really cool. See, guys have some crazy ideas that I always end up loving more than mine.
Alex Lazaris:
Give us your ideas, chat. I'll be looking out in probably like a minute. We can try to incorporate them.
David Alabo:
Okay, cool. So I'm just going to bring this one up a little bit more like alex, you said that orange and green is just working right now for us.
Alex Lazaris:
I think it's because those palms have that nice kind of yellow already on the tips.
David Alabo:
And so it seems really exactly this left bottom. And now I'm just going to group these holding shift. I select all and command G and just group it or right click and hit group layers just so we have everything nice and neat when we're going through it. Palms. I'm just going to name this Palms. I'll put this one in Palms for our deserts, too. We're going to just group them as well. Make sure you're nice and organized because like I said, as someone that's unorganized, I really need organization in my design. Otherwise it just gets a mess. I'm sure you all can relate to that.
Alex Lazaris:
There's nothing worse than having artboards and layers all named the same and then trying to communicate which things need to be moved around.
David Alabo:
Exactly. I mean, one thing I still have trouble with is naming things. Oh, my God. I can't come up with any name. Someone can come up with an app or something that just names everything for you. In a smart way. I mean, I'll give you all my money for that.
Alex Lazaris:
Adobe like what we named it layer 48 for you. What do you want?
David Alabo:
What more do you want? I'm just going to label this man just so we have all the elements that make up our main character. Call him Panther Man for now. Not very original, but stick with me, guys. Let's make sure his neck is there, his back is there as well. Okay, great. So now I have everything sort of nicely and put that in the checkerboard. Why not put it in a group as well? I'll just set this as stage, and so already I just have basically four, five elements that I've put together nicely in groups to just help us visualize how things are working. I put it as sky, and I don't think we'll have time today, but if we did have time and we did import this Photoshop piece into After Effects, the amazing thing is that everything is kept from one program to the other. So all your files and everything is named perfectly, and it just helps with the ease of work.
Alex Lazaris:
Absolutely.
David Alabo:
So now I'm going to just bring it let's try bringing things together a little bit better. I'm just going to go to our man, and what I want to do now is change the color of the head. It's just a bit too maybe faded and I didn't get rid of this tail over here. There we go. And you see this even on this. So I'm just working sort of how things come around to me. I'm looking at this scarf here or this wrap thing, and I'm just not liking this little blank spot here. So what I'm going to do is make sure I'm on the right one. I'll duplicate this just so I can keep the original, and I will rasterize it. And I'm doing this because I am going to use the Clone Slam tool, which is don't be afraid of it. I was for a long time, but it's really just an amazing tool, especially for quick things like this. I'm just going to hit Alt to select my target and boom. I mean, this isn't perfectly lined up with his pattern, but look, you see, that's pretty good. We can almost line that up and then we see you have a little bit there. And look at that. Within two clicks, we completely made that seamless.
Alex Lazaris:
Have you used the Content Aware fill yet?
David Alabo:
I heard crazy things about that. I'm not ready for it.
Alex Lazaris:
Okay. It's great. Change your life, man. Yeah, absolutely.
David Alabo:
Something I need to put on the to do list now, but I saw that they did some updates for the Even in even in After Effects, the content, the wear fill, and it's crazy. Like, you can basically mask out and fill it with. I mean, it's so Smart machine has mind blowing for me, honestly.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, I agree.
David Alabo:
But for today, we're just doing things rough and dirty. What I want to do is now what I did was I picked out this cool earring thing from our man over here. And I just want to make sure that that is put on the ear of our panther. So I'm just going to select the lasso quickly. Select this here, and I'm going to hit command J so that the earring is now sort of separate from this. And it didn't take my masking information, but that's okay, guys. We don't really need that right now. Make this a little bit bigger. We're just adding character. We're adding little details. These little things, they really do make a difference in the overall piece. I'm just going to make sure select this skip.
Alex Lazaris:
We've got about 20 minutes before we start doing our artist spotlight.
David Alabo:
Okay, got you.
Alex Lazaris:
We have about an hour ish left in the stream. A little bit less. I have 50 minutes.
David Alabo:
Okay, that's perfectly fine. Okay, so now I have just a little bit more visual interest going on with this guy's ring, I mean, this guy's earring. And that's just to kind of ground the whole piece together. And so now what I'm going to do, make sure I name this earring Maasai Back. I'll put Maasai Back so I know that that's his back information. And let's just say I'm not feeling like maybe this section here. So what I was thinking was that he's kind of wearing this kind of cool shirt, but it's also got like a bit of breathing room at the back. So we're kind of just imagining how someone might survive in this strange planet. Things aren't going to work exactly like they do here on Earth. But he needs some breathing space because the desert's hot, guys, and you need to breathe.
Alex Lazaris:
Makes sense. It's a combination of the newest climate, cool technology, and the business attire.
David Alabo:
Exactly. So now I can't see his tail because that's because the tail is underneath that layer. So I'm just going to make sure comes right somewhere around here. And what I could also do that I really like is say I just move this around so that maybe his tail is there's a bit more going on in that section of the tail. What I'm going to do is this tool that I'm sure a lot of you guys know and love so much is the liquefy tool.
Alex Lazaris:
Love the liquefy tool.
David Alabo:
It's so cool, honestly. And okay, what it's doing right now is just giving me the whole image, which is fine. I mean, we're not going to use all of it, but let's see show backdrop. Okay, cool. So now we can see our backdrop and we can actually even select our layer. Is it okay? No, make sure it's all layers. And it's really cool because you can even see where it is. Now what I'm going to do is just take my brush and make sure it's kind of big as well. Pressure density, those are fine. Don't touch that. And just kind of move it around. What that's going to do is just create more of a tail. So let's hit okay. And see what we have here. Okay. I see what's happening. I think because we still have our mask on this, it's given us a little bit of a complicated thing, but we'll solve that right away. What I'm going to do is just so I'm not doing anything drastic I'm going to regret later, I'll just make a copy of that and then clicking the mask, I'm going to hit hold on.
Alex Lazaris:
Clever is asking, is the Puppet Warp good for the likes of Tails? And yes, the Puppet Warp would be a great tool also for it definitely. Just so you can keep some of this stuff together.
David Alabo:
Okay. I think I'm pushing my machine to its limits right now.
Alex Lazaris:
Doing this liquefy is a pretty resource intensive process.
David Alabo:
Definitely it's not for the faint of computers. You have to have a beast with you. Unfortunately, I don't have a beast with me, but we'll make it work.
Alex Lazaris:
Do you want to try the Puppet Warp then? It might make it a little easier for you.
David Alabo:
All right, let's do that.
Alex Lazaris:
If you go to edit edit.
David Alabo:
Okay.
Alex Lazaris:
And then go down from there, you should have Puppet Warp right there.
David Alabo:
I don't even touch these things. But look, I'm learning something new already.
Alex Lazaris:
So whenever you click yeah. So you got the two ends there, and then you can put however many joints you want in that. So wherever you want to place another joint. There you go.
David Alabo:
This is so cool.
Alex Lazaris:
And then you click and drag those points, and it will move for you. So you should be able to.
David Alabo:
This is crazy, guys. You see, I'm learning something new right here. This is really cool.
Alex Lazaris:
Okay, now you'll be a tail master.
David Alabo:
All right. So you see, we're giving a lot to this guy. Now. First, his tail is kind of, like, sad looking, but now we're giving it a bit more. And when you think about it, in the whole grand scheme of the piece, you're kind of continuing these lines that you're creating. Like, you're creating a leading line from this palm here, going into our main character over here. And then even with this tail a little bit, it's leading you. So I think that's super dope. Thank you. Whoever suggested the yeah, that was clever.
Alex Lazaris:
Thank you, Clever. Those pinpoints that you put in those, you can change the radius, and that has more effect on it and stuff. So if you did want to smooth it out later on, you could do that through that. And that works in Illustrator, Photoshop, and After Effects, kind of all in the same way.
David Alabo:
See, I know about the puppet tool from After Effects, which is also super powerful. But now I know that I can also use it in the context of Photoshop. So what I did is there I just didn't like the angle too much. So what I did was just hold command, and then that kind of allows you to stretch these borders around. Okay, so cool. Now we have pretty much a nice vibe going on. I think what I'm going to do is maybe add a tiny little branch over here just for my eye's sake. I like to keep things nice and not too symmetric. There is beauty and asymmetry, but to really make it feel balanced, let's say I'm going to do is just duplicate this right one here and kind of mash it up a little bit as well. Kind of make it look different. Because when you're doing with collage, the main thing I find is that I like it when I can't tell that this is the same image or something like that. Really try to push the boundaries of each asset you can, because right now, look, guys, I'm only using about ten assets, but I've managed to make different things out of or different sort of variations out of them, which I think is important. So now we have our piece. When we look back at our color palette here, I think we did a pretty good job. I think we have most of the color information we want, but there's also depth to this piece. We have our main character here, and he's at a point where he's sort of looking around like, what do I do? You're asking that question from someone who watches this piece. Like, what is this guy waiting for? What's he looking for? And we know he's on a stage now, a checkerboard stage, and he's looking to his left, possibly already looked to his right. So he's looking for something. So we need to put something there for him to look out for. And I know we don't have much time, but I'm just going to quickly go through these and see what I have here. Okay, so back to my Moroccan roots. I found this beautiful archway that was just like, wow, even the image on its own is beautiful. But what I'm going to do is where is it? Okay, make sure hit enter to lock it in, drag it to the top, because it's not going to be on top of everything. But I'm just trying to work with it right now. So what I'm going to do is I just want this outline here, and I'm sure there's I would just use.
Alex Lazaris:
The object selection tool and see just crop the arch. So treat it like the rectangle marquee tool. So you'll want to go from the left point down to the bottom right point.
David Alabo:
Got you guys. I'm also learning here.
Alex Lazaris:
No, that's what it's all about, man.
David Alabo:
This isn't just a one way street. Okay, exactly. I think I've pushed it again. What can we do okay, guys, I made a pretty big mistake and I didn't save this.
Alex Lazaris:
Good idea.
David Alabo:
This is the one mistake that is going to cost you. And so quickly, guys, I should have done this in the first five minutes. I'm just going to make this collage and don't be quick to go and hit. Okay. Right, let's take a minute and read what they're saying. They're saying maximize compatibility. So what that means is that it's just making sure that if you do take this Photoshop file, which we would have if we had time, into another program, it's going to keep everything nice and neat. So make sure that's clicked. I won't hit show because I need to know it. And hit okay, so now it's saving it, but it's saving it in a smart way for you. Why wouldn't you?
Alex Lazaris:
If you do have, like, this where your computer might be resource constrained, it is good sometimes to turn that off if you know that nobody with previous versions of Photoshop will be opening that file. So really what that file does is it allows CS three, CS four older versions to work with it. But if you want to save disk space, you can turn off that setting and it'll save you some resources.
David Alabo:
Okay, so this object selection tool is amazing.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, it's pretty good.
David Alabo:
It literally saved me about ten minutes of going in and just painstakingly trying to select this with my above average pen skills.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, that's the great thing about that tool is it works really well with cleaner backgrounds and stuff. Sometimes it can deal with some of the craziness, but you have this image, it has kind of lower contrast and spots, which makes it a little harder to do.
David Alabo:
Yeah, I can see that. But honestly, it's done the job we need for right now. And I'm going to show you another cool tip is if I were to hit select and mask, and let's just give it a second to sort of do it. This is pretty good for what I asked it for. And thanks for the tip, Alex.
Alex Lazaris:
Of course.
David Alabo:
That object selection is amazing. I'm just going to hit this. I always like to hit the shift edge just a little bit just to take away those annoying little bits on the edge that we might not like hit. Feather a little bit, smooth it out. And this is amazing. I mean, this is a lot already to work with. And what I'm going to do is just hit that mask and boom, we have this. I mean, it's covering his face now, but check what I'm going to do in a second. So what I'm going to do is where is this in the scene? Where does this fit? So I'm going to make sure that I want to make this sort of a portal, because he seems to be in a bit of a situation right now.
Alex Lazaris:
He might be wanting to get out of there.
David Alabo:
You understand? There's something he's looking at that he's not happy and he's trying to get out of there. So I'm going to put this archway right behind the desert and boom. Look what we have here. You have even more sort of a visual sort of element that's drawing your eye to the center. But we're not done yet because that's a bit too boring for me. So what I'm going to do is I want to put space. I heard that. You like space, don't you?
Alex Lazaris:
I like space. I like cats. I like deserts. I like all these things we're going to be.
David Alabo:
So what I'm going to do is just this nebula that I found on Adobe Stock. It's just beautiful. I mean, what I'm going to do is holding shift, kind of turns it in nice even degrees, which is good. I'm liking this little bit right here. So I have that here, but it's not what I wanted. I kind of wanted it in the archway. So what I'm going to do is either right click, go down and hit create clipping mask, or a quick way I like to work is just hold alt and in between the layers, the first and the one you want, you see this little thing when you hold alt, boom, it does that for you. So that's like a nice quick tip. I'm liking this. This is great. But what I want to do is that I want to keep a little bit of those edges on the archway that we had. So what I'm going to do is there's several ways to do this, but this is kind of the way that makes sense to me the most. I'm just going to hold command and hit the nebula. And what that does is just kind of select it out. And I'm not sure if this is the way, but I'm going to find out in a second because what I want to do is just make the edges pop out a little bit more. So one way I guess I could do it is this is to let's click this archway. Okay.
Alex Lazaris:
What I might do would be to duplicate the arches and put one above the nebula and then mask out the inside of it. Is that what you're talking about, keeping the frame of the arches?
David Alabo:
Okay. Yeah, I like that idea, but I'm just going to see if I can do this quickly is to just hit command on this archway and go to select and then modify it. But what I want to do is just bring it in a few pixels.
Alex Lazaris:
Nice.
David Alabo:
So let's see by five if that's going to work. Let's do a bit more. And this might be a long way to work around the thing, but what I like about it is that it gives me a bit more of a fine tuning. And it's a little bit easier for me because now I find myself getting into a bit of an issue where things don't exactly go the way I want to. But that's part of the process.
Alex Lazaris:
Absolutely.
David Alabo:
What I'm going to do is just hit that inverse and now what I'm going to do is just create another mask on this and then invert it. So what that did was it just kept a little bit of those edges for me, I could probably go more, but I just wanted just a little bit of relief to the edges so that it makes it feel a bit more like a real know, more something that exists in that plane. So you just have that nice bit of that know. That's what I wanted. And you could also do it the way Alex did. Alex mentioned in that you just put the arch on top of it and then kind of masks that out different ways to skin the can I even say that?
Alex Lazaris:
I think so.
David Alabo:
I don't know how this guy is going to feel about saying that, but.
Alex Lazaris:
Don'T probably leave the frame completely.
David Alabo:
Okay, so we have this and already got I think this is a pretty good start. It has a lot of interesting things going on. But now I'm like, we've hidden our planet away. I mean, what happened to our planet over there? And no problem, guys, we're just going to make him bigger. Not smaller, bigger. But I want it to stay where it is. I don't know why it's not staying. Usually it stays where I want it to. Yeah. Okay, so make sure you're clicking the actual layer, not the group. And then just hold alt and just scale this bad boy up. I just wanted to go just underneath this arch point, this middle point, just because the arch has also kind of helped lead your eye up there. I could put it up here, but I don't think that's as interesting as leaving that little bit of space there. And what that does is also, if you're just joining us right now, what I'm designing is basically a poster style surreal collage. And the beauty about picking this format, which is also amazing, by the way, for Instagram and all those kind of social media posts that kind of have everything in the phone format. But what it does is that you're cutting away the edges, you're giving importance to the staging or whatever is happening in front of you. And by laying things up in this kind of format, it gives a sense of larger than life or it gives a sense of scale to these objects that having them in a landscape wouldn't do. I mean, don't get me wrong, there are ways to make things seem huge in landscape as well. But for me, I'm just sticking to this kind of poster format and it really helps to sort of create these kind of nice scenes that are surreal or whatnot. So now we're going to get into the bit of the nitty gritty, and we're going to just sort of match the colors of our panther man over here. I'm going to see panther head, and what I'm going to do a really good way to work with images is to just, first of all, turn it black and white.
Alex Lazaris:
There's so many surreal puns going on. People are like, looks amazing. Unreal. Seeing David create this was surreal.
David Alabo:
Thanks, guys. I appreciate y'all for sticking with us so far. I mean, it's been fun. So putting things in black and white, you're just removing that of there's a lot happening right here, don't get me wrong. So we want to just make sure that what we're working on is black and white just so we can see the values, the blacks and whites, how things really fit in. And one of my favorite tools is both the levels and the curves. I'm going to do levels right now, and I hold alt when I click it, by the way, just so it already kind of clips it to this piece. Saves you a little bit of time. So what I'm going to do is it's a little too light for me, so I'm just going to scale these things until I find it at a vibe that I like. I'm going to push this midpoint marker here. You see? Now I'm liking these dark features on. By the way, guys, we're focused on his head right here, so don't forget that. So watch the space. And I'm just going to play around with the settings. Don't be afraid to just mess around with them. Okay? This is giving us nice detail, but I'm really liking the blacks when I push it. This side happens when I okay, so this is nice. It's bringing that out to life a little bit. So what I'm going to do is that after I've done that, this is just a simple place where I'm going to take off the black and white adjustment that I did. And now what I want to do is make sure that it's matching nicely with his back. I kind of want it all to seem the same, and there are different ways to sort of tweak the colors. First of all, let's make sure we're on the right one, okay? I want this guy that's got the back perfect. So again, black and white, just to see, honestly, even sometimes, putting it black and white can solve a lot of the issues that I was facing. Okay, so this is cool. I'm liking this. I'm just going to stick to default, and what I'm going to do is just make sure that those levels are matching.
Alex Lazaris:
And we're going to get into the artist spotlight once we're done with this real quick.
David Alabo:
Okay, cool. So look already by sliding this boom look, see, you're getting a lot more of you're putting them in the same world. They weren't in the same world they were two completely different images. But what we're doing is just sort of setting the values to be the same, but we don't want to lose too much information from our original picture. We just want the blacks to match a little bit more. And so now watch this. When I remove the color yeah, we have a little bit of a tinge of magenta on him, but the values are kind of similar. Yeah, they are. Before we go on to the Artless Spotlight, what I want to do is just quickly go to one of my favorite, absolute favorite tools, selective color. This thing is just an absolute monster of a tool because of how much control it gives you over these. What I'm going to do is just like, I'm noticing that there's too much magenta in his okay, that's a lot perfect. But I'm just going to see and just mess around and see if I can get the right vibe for this guy and see if I move that. Okay, good. So I need a bit more blue in there. And you see, now we're getting a lot closer. It's not perfect, but look, this is just about a minute of messing around with it. You can really go into the neutrals, into the whites and all that stuff and really sort of fine tune all, and that just adds to the believability and the plausibility of your piece. At the end of the day, you are trying to make the person question whether you just found this Panther Man sitting there or you brought him together.
Alex Lazaris:
Absolutely.
David Alabo:
So, yeah, that's what I would do. Just to show you a quick run through of what I'd go through for each and every step to make sure they all sing together nicely.
Alex Lazaris:
We can come back to that. Yeah, we can come back once we wrap up the Artist Spotlight. But right now we're getting into the Artist Spotlight. How exciting. I'm excited.
David Alabo:
I'm so excited.
Alex Lazaris:
Make sure chat. If you want to participate in the Artist Spotlight, there is a tab up in the Artist Spotlight section where you can nominate yourself or fellow creatives to Be Spotlighted. But today we have Farah Manley, based out of Toronto, Ontario. Yeah, the work is insane. So we're going to tuck into it. Make sure that you give Farrah all the likes. Follow them on Behance, follow them on Instagram, follow them on all their links. They've got actually everything. They got YouTube, Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter.
David Alabo:
Shout out to Farrah.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, he's awesome. Farah is an architect by day, a digital content creator by night. She's a mom to her little heston and enjoys creating fun whimsical pieces and has experienced photoshop for 17 plus years and counting. So that's crazy. That's a lot of years.
David Alabo:
That's amazing.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, we're going to tuck into the first one that she's got listed. Concrete could fly.
David Alabo:
Whoa.
Alex Lazaris:
Whoa. This is crazy.
David Alabo:
This is amazing.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah. I love how like you were just talking about with the color selection and making sure that colors feel consistent throughout the piece. This is so consistent. The textures are incredible.
David Alabo:
And what I love is that it's almost so subtle. You can tell that Farah is really sort of very selective and careful about selective guys about her know, it's quite like muted colors, but then she's having a bit of that blue in the sky pop and she's giving us all these details. I'm assuming that's her son. That's amazing. I just love that. And I love that she's sharing the process, too. She's being transparent. That's so cool.
Alex Lazaris:
A whole video on it as well. That's crazy.
David Alabo:
Wow. This is the kind of detail I need my behance to be on right now.
Alex Lazaris:
I love when you look at people's behances and you're just like, wow, I need to do more of that.
David Alabo:
Exactly.
Alex Lazaris:
I mean, look at all the detail even on this piece with all the reflections of the lily pads on the water.
David Alabo:
That's not easy work, guys. No, that's dedication right there to making sure we get that wow. When we see the picture. And I saw another really cool piece of skeleton with flowers coming out.
Alex Lazaris:
Halloween 2020.
David Alabo:
I mean, guys, look at this. This is so cool.
Alex Lazaris:
Even the detail of just showing, like, the skull in the hair like an X raymosis is pretty amazing.
David Alabo:
Yeah. I love skulls, roses, animals, butterflies, and I even love the little skull in the belly. Like, I don't know how it ended up there, but you don't want to ask.
Alex Lazaris:
It's true. Yeah, it's crazy.
David Alabo:
Really cool.
Alex Lazaris:
The color coding on all the assets is incredible.
David Alabo:
Exactly. Yeah. And she's showing what they look like before, so that isn't just simply putting it in there.
Alex Lazaris:
And pro tip for you creatives at home, if you do this where you add a bunch of noise into your images, it's a really good way of making them all feel consistent in texture. Obviously, there's a lot of other work going on, but this is good tip if you're trying to do compilations at home. Let's jump into NX baby. Lots of hearts.
David Alabo:
And I see that I think she's using herself as the subject in the first one as well. The other one, that's amazing. And she's crayon memories. Her kid's going to see this and be like, wow, my mom is cool.
Alex Lazaris:
Seriously.
David Alabo:
I love that she's telling stories with these. It's not just something pretty. She's sending a message. And I'm sure she could explain it better than we could.
Alex Lazaris:
But I'm looking at these assets and I'm over here. It looks like the arms and legs are cut off on this person.
David Alabo:
Yeah.
Alex Lazaris:
So maybe she even had to redraw it.
David Alabo:
It looks like it's from a different person. Right? The legs.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah.
David Alabo:
Just going to turn my lamp on quickly.
Alex Lazaris:
Adobe Live. Oh, she was on Adobe. That's awesome.
David Alabo:
Oh, nice. Shout out to. Adobe. Oh, this is really cool.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah.
David Alabo:
I wish I could see giant goldfish when I look up. Yeah.
Alex Lazaris:
It reminds me of ghosts in the shell a little bit where, like, the 3D boards going around.
David Alabo:
I love that film. And the anime. I mean, the anime is even better.
Alex Lazaris:
Some would say just pieces after pieces, man, of just incredible work.
David Alabo:
Wow. I am sort of blown away by her piece. I checked her out before we did it, but really sort of studying it. I think it's so amazing how personal she is as well, with her art. This is her family she's using, but recontextualizing it into Farah's, actually, in Chat.
Alex Lazaris:
And your work is absolutely incredible.
David Alabo:
Big fan here. Big fan here.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah. Oh, my God, these are so cool. I wish I could have all these images of me as a kid.
David Alabo:
Amazing. Yeah. And I'm sure when her kid sees this, it just sparks the imagination. Awesome.
Alex Lazaris:
Oh, my goodness. So cute. Oh, my goodness.
David Alabo:
Amazing. And the lighting, her attention to lighting and how it affects each of the subjects is very well thought through. You got to give respect to that.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah. It's not easy to do.
David Alabo:
And the little snow flying in the air, all those things with the moon at the top. This is really good work.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, this is exceptional. Thank you for letting us share your incredible talent with the world, because this is amazing. Load.
David Alabo:
Pelican. I saw a pelican live in person, I don't know, a couple of weeks ago. They are scary to look at. You don't want to mess with the pelican. They've got these bloodshot eyes. They're so red. And when you see it feeding time, you should definitely, if you ever do, manage to I don't know how, but find yourself in front of a pelican, like, watching it feed and sort of, like, stick its beak over its neck so that its neck is stretching out its mouth, I mean, that's evolution on steroids. I don't know.
Alex Lazaris:
I love this. Look at this. The behind the scenes photo.
David Alabo:
Oh, my.
Alex Lazaris:
You're a legend. She says she does time lapses. I think that's what these are all just don't want to get, like, DMCA, but everybody in Chat can go there and check it out. Definitely go give her likes follows appreciations. I'm giving you a follow right now. Incredible work. Incredible.
David Alabo:
I'm going to do that as well.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, just bonkers, bonkers talent. Really inspiring stuff to see. So thank you so much for letting us share your work. You're incredibly talented.
David Alabo:
Thank you, Farah.
Alex Lazaris:
And now we're able to go back into color grading. I'm really excited to see kind of where we can get wrapped up. I know we have about 14 minutes left, so we can put the final touches on this.
David Alabo:
All right. I mean, so far, I'm really happy with what we have, but after just seeing Farah's amazing work, I feel like we need to add a bit more of that atmosphere that she nails in all her pieces. What I'm going to do is just quickly find some boom clouds. I mean, nothing says atmosphere more than clouds. Again, unfortunately, we have our good old JPEG here. All I'm going to do is just quickly pick out this, okay, it's not picking out for me. No problem. I'm just going to mask this out and then this is quick, rough and dirty, guys. I'm just going to take my brush, make it big, turn the hardness, make it a really soft brush because we're dealing with clouds and clouds are typically soft. I'm going to do is just get this edge off and even by getting it off, I'm adding even more of a mist cloud vibe to this with very little effort. So that's one way to sort of give yourself a bit of a bit of a help in hand and already boom. Look, this feels like clouds that live in there. So I'm just going to go down, make sure it's above my desert because I want my deserts to kind of have this cloudy vibe. Let's make that because now this piece needs atmosphere. We need to feel like this piece is alive and moving. So I'm just going to make this opacity all the way down. She's given this bit of that cloud vibe, but what I'm going to do now is play with the blending modes.
Alex Lazaris:
I find clouds so challenging to deal with and you just take so much time to finesse them to get you that you want it to be thick, but you don't want it to be too thick. It needs to be yeah, it's tough.
David Alabo:
Clouds are tough, don't get me wrong, and they are real masters of clouds, you know what I mean, like people who make this stuff happen. But what I'm going to do is already this pin light is giving me a bit more of this atmosphere foggy vibe I like. So a lot of the time I find myself in photoshop just experimenting that I think is the most fun with the thing. You experiment and new things come about that you didn't really expect to happen, but that's the beauty of it. And I'm just going to duplicate these clouds and make sure they are below our purple. Sorry, I'm just going to make sure that these clouds I copied are behind that, but on our blue cloud. Perfect. You see, what they're doing is just doing a little bit more. Deserts are dusty and stuff. We don't have time to put all of these things, but you're sort of changing the subconscious feeling when you look at this piece. It's not something that someone might notice or be able to claim that that's happening over there, but they'll feel it and that's just about as important. I'm just going to name these Atmos blue. I know that that's it.
Alex Lazaris:
And this one, like you're saying, this really does impact you on a subconscious level because humans have been we've been since cavemen times, literally just looking at the natural environment. So it's just ingrained in us.
David Alabo:
Exactly.
Alex Lazaris:
And if you can do these little textures or decreasing saturation on things at certain levels or distances, it becomes more relatable. So as you're building these scenes out, remember to incorporate those so it feels more natural, 100%.
David Alabo:
And I really like the way you put that because that's also another reason why when we see something that's not right, we know it's not right.
Alex Lazaris:
We can't put your finger on it.
David Alabo:
Exactly. You can't even say why it's not right, but you just have that feeling. So we're just trying to tap into that feeling. But instead of picking out what's wrong, we're looking for how we can make it better without really noticing. So I'm just fixing the tail just a little bit, make it seem like all these colors from his head all the way down to his tail sort of are in the same space. If I had a bit more time, I'd work a little more on his back. But for the sake of time, I'm just going to go through this quickly. What I'm going to do right now is arch, make sure I'm labeling all these and these palms. I just want to push that blending thing just a little bit more so I can get rid of those harsh white edges. I know they were nice, but they are a little distracting now, and that's okay. You just have to be ready to make decisions that might hurt you a little bit, but it's okay.
Alex Lazaris:
I love how David is playing around with all these pictures and making a great yeah. I think that's what is so magical about your work is that it takes such talent, but also patience to kind of build the compositions that you've built. And I would probably get way too frustrated trying to do so, honestly.
David Alabo:
Yeah, I really appreciate that farah. I mean, coming from you, that means a lot. I think obviously, it's patience. I'm just kind of going through this quickly to show you sort of how I'm thinking. I'm not necessarily a guru at this. I'm just showing you how I'm thinking and sort of the ideas or questions I ask myself when I'm making these pieces. So what I'm going to do is just switch up the color of this nebula a little bit. It's a bit too strong for me. I'm going to hit this hue and saturation. I love it so much. It's so quick and easy to switch things around. And what I'm trying to do is just find the right color that really speaks to me. Go through all these could make it red, but I think I'm going to stick with the same color here. But what I'm going to do is I'm just going to make it a little bit desaturated. It's a bit too saturated for me.
Alex Lazaris:
And if you have any more questions for David, we have about, like, seven minutes, so make sure you get your questions in so we can answer them real quick.
David Alabo:
Seven minutes. Okay, no problem.
Alex Lazaris:
But JP says, organization love the time you're taking to get everything on point. Naming organizations layers can be boring, but they appreciate it. So good job. I, as a disorganized creative, also really appreciate the effort you've put into naming everything.
David Alabo:
Thank you. Honestly, this is a lesson for me as much as it is for everyone else, because I don't practice what I preach all the time, I'll be honest with you. But I was like, if I'm going to be on Live, I'm going to make sure I look as organized as possible, guys.
Alex Lazaris:
Absolutely.
David Alabo:
You know what I mean? Okay. So I kind of left out my good old buddy here, this desert here, and I don't really like leaving out anybody in this. So what I'm going to do is just lift this up so that it's given a bit of a bit more of the I don't know how you could say it a bit more weight or just filling up the space a little bit more. So now we've got all our elements. They're looking nice, and they're all singing to each other. And so now you just want to move things around just so you're not too set on something. You know what I mean? You're not too set on something like liking this. I want to make sure the blue is there. So what this kind of means, the whole idea of the piece is that you have a man that has a question on his mind, what am I going to do? If you saw from the beginning, we saw how we brought just from one idea of a man with his arms on his hips, you can ask yourself, what could I do with that? How could that serve the piece? And when you ask yourself these questions, you find yourself fleshing out the story for yourself or fleshing out the concepts for the piece. I think the arch was a little too big for me, so I'm just going to reduce it a little bit. And what I like is that the arch, if I had a bit more time, what I would do is just create more of a contrast between the panther's head and the arch just so that the panther's head is the main focus. But because of a lack of time, I'm just going to make sure that this is just a little bit more like that. Okay, that's fine.
Alex Lazaris:
Kay asked who's your favorite artist that inspires your pieces the most?
David Alabo:
Definitely one of my favorite absolute favorite artists has to be Giroud Mobius. I don't know if I can pull up his work quickly. He is one of the coolest. He unfortunately passed away not too long ago. But this French illustrator, and I think his work is just mean. Like, when you see it, you can tell sort of where I get those inspirations. He's also a big lover of mobius of deserts and Jimi Hendrix, which is one of my favorite people that ever know. And so it's really cool how someone like him, who I've never met mobius in my life, nor did he know I exist. But we shared so many sort of similarities, and I would say he's number one. I'm a big fan of this Japanese artist, Hiroshi Nagai. He also does kind of colorful, minimalist, surreal paintings. So that's another guy I like a lot. And I just try to pick the best things I like about each of these artists. Okay, so now I'm just looking at the piece now, and I think it has everything sort of what I need. But I'm just going to add one more thing that I feel could just take it a bit to the next level. Looking for my cloud. Okay. Atmos purple. I'm just going to duplicate that, put that under inside the desert. And this time I'm not going to go for fog. I want actual clouds. So I'm going to remove this blending, put it back to normal, take my Opacity back to 100, fill to let's keep it filled at 880. I know you can mess around with the Opacity, but this is fine. So what I'm going to do is just put this behind everything else. And what you're going to see in a second is how it all comes together. And I'm just going to put that all the way at the top.
Alex Lazaris:
Oh, that's nice.
David Alabo:
So what it's going to do is just give you more of that fog vibe, but extending it into the background, which I really like. Okay, it looks like I have moved the wrong thing, but it's okay. For the sake of time, I'm just going to quickly show you this. And what that does is just add a bit more of a visual interest or add a bit more of the mist, kind of create this world. It's not exactly flat. There has to be stuff moving around. So after all this is done, I'm kind of liking how this piece is going already. Color wise, it's pleasing to me. And there's depth to the piece. You see the planet at the back. You have the sort of trees coming in from the side and filling in this empty space. And then you have the archway in front of the planet, but above, like standing tall. So it gives the illusion that this archway is massive or this portal is massive or almost as big as this planet. Not really. And then coming from that, you go through the desert and you go through the blue desert and the purple desert. Before you come to the checkerboard, which is the main stage our man is at, it took, let's say, ten assets or ten stock assets, but what we did with them is create a lot of depth and layering to this piece. And it's unfortunate that we don't have time to take this into after effects, but what you're going to notice is that you even extend that illusion of depth in the sense that you're going to bring everything into a 3d or a full 2.5 D world where everything is flat, but you're laying them at different distances to the screen.
Alex Lazaris:
I agree. We have to wrap in like 2 seconds.
David Alabo:
We have to wrap in a minute. Okay. This checkerboard is a bit too contrasty for me. So what I'm going to do is just put in this and just give it more of a vibe.
Alex Lazaris:
So as we're kind of wrapping up, I know we need to say goodbye in a second, but Harjeev wants to know where can we see your artwork at? Do you have any upcoming art shows? Kanye, tell us what's going on with what's next for you, essentially, how can we find you? What are your social channels? All that good stuff.
David Alabo:
Okay, so thank you, Harji, for that question. Love you, bro. I think you can find me on anything. David Alibo. That's David. A-L-A-B-O. You can find me on Twitter, Instagram. I tweet a lot on Twitter if you want to just hear me ramble about stuff and on Instagram as well. And what I'm doing now, actually, maybe I'm not allowed to say, but I do have an exhibition in Lagos, Nigeria, coming up in November. And I've been meaning to go to Lagos for about two years know, because I do want to sort of break into that market over there as an artist. So I'm really excited to show something that's going to be sort of groundbreaking, melding, all my sort of mediums, 3D illustration, graphic design and everything. I'll show you.
Alex Lazaris:
Well, thank you so much, everybody. Appreciate you. Thank you for coming out and we'll see you soon, David.
David Alabo:
Thank you for having me, guys. Appreciate it.
