Monthly Cross-Product Challenge #1
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Welcome to a new kind of Creative Challenge, where you get the chance to play with all your favorite Adobe tools, and perhaps try out some you’ve never used before!
How to participate:
You don’t have to be an expert! This is for anyone at any skill level. The main thing is to have a go, and let the joy of creating be its own reward.
Generate a starter image or a vector drawing based on the theme of the challenge, using Firefly, Adobe Express, Photoshop, or text-to-vector in Illustrator. Expand the image into a finished product of your choice using at least one other app from Creative Cloud and/or Substance 3D. The point of the challenge is to work across apps, so this is important. Bonus kudos for incorporating Adobe Fonts, Adobe Stock, or Substance 3D Community Assets. Video is okay too.
When you're done, save an image, screenshot, or video clip of your final artwork, post it here as a reply to this post, and tell us your process and which tools you used.
There are no prizes other than the joy of creating and the experience gained in making different tools work together to a final creative product.
Challenge 1: Animal Life
Begin in Firefly, Photoshop, Adobe Express, or Illustrator (vector) Generate a starter image of an exotic animal, fish, insect, or other arthropod (no limits, so long as it's alive). Ancient animals are okay, so if you’re a dinosaur fan, go for it! Create an environment around it, using Photoshop or Illustrator or any other Adobe tools you prefer. Add other creatures or plants to tell a story and complete the scene. Be as poetic or as whimsical as you like!
Here’s one idea: A cuttlefish birthday party!
It started as a Firefly generated drawing of a cuttlefish. In Photoshop, after removing some debris with the Remove Tool, I added the crab and expanded coral reef using Generative Fill after enlarging the image with the Crop tool. The balloon and the party hat are Generative Fill using the Selection Brush at 70%. The birthday cake is from Adobe Stock (the water put the flames out, sadly), with an overall color tint to blend with the scene. Shrimps are Generative Fill (Selection Brush again). Finally, I took the whole scene into the Camera Raw filter to enhance the watercolor-and-ink look with the Clarity slider and desaturate the colors.
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Magnificent! (It's fun digging in a making it perfect like this, isn't it?)
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Return to the Jurassic
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Great scene!
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Prompt: create an image of a young female looking straight into the lens in lotus posture at the side of a pond where several fishes are rearing their heads above the water and many other creatures are coming together in a circle around her, with some birds landing in her hair.
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Okay Richard. Take it to the next level. Show us what you can do with the rest of your Adobe toolkit to turn this into a full-blown scene. That's what this challenge is about.
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Almost nailed the hands!
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Peaceful!
Beautiful picture Richard!
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three dinosaures sitting around a camp fire (before the troubles get in)
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Great start, Didier! Fill it out with the rest of the story. There's more going on outside the frame that's probably super cool!
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Haha!
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Hi Alan! This is a great idea for a challenge. I started with Firefly for the overall scene and background and went into After Effects to create this ray bursting with energy. The bursts of lightning are added with the very same effect going by the name “Advanced Lightning”; the fiery ring below the ray is made with the “Saber” plugin from Video Copilot. Added some Gaussian Blur to integrate everything a little better and used some masks to get the ray on top of the glowing ring.
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Wow. That's stunning! I was hoping someone would get into After Effects, because it has such ridiculously great tools. Thank you!
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@AlanGilbertson You’re right Alan. I also used AE once in a print project to get the green cast of a cow standing on a grazing round that I had to separate from a background with “Advanced Spill Suppressor”. That was quite satisfying:-)
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I had to look twice at this picture. It really does seem like it was taken from another planet. The lighting and detail are outstanding.
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So Zuess is a mantaray? I knew @Rene Andritsch ! Great result btw
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Ok, I made something video using Firefly and Express, which are my main tools today: I promote them and use them to promote me 🙂
This is the link to see the little animation
here is the still image
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Hey, brilliant (in all senses of the word)! The bonus animation is terrific.
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Oh, thank you! I am really humbled, it's just plain experimentation. Blushing!
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In my experience (and not just mine), experimenting and play, like noodling and improvising in music, are where skill and creativity flourish.
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I like your animation. The image looks great too. It is a nice touch to have the video with the still image.
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I am very flattered to read it, thank you kindly!
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Kirin, a mythical creature in Japan (Qilin in China) - also a beer my old man drinks (therefore do I)
Firefly, then Adobe Fonts and Photoshop for typography.
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I love that. Did the chop come from Firefly, or do you have your own?
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Chop? 🤔
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A chop is Chinese rather than Japanese, but it's a seal that usually looks like the stamp in the lower left. I asked because one of my clients used his own chop in the first book I designed for him, his translation of Sun Tzu. This is his chop:
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