Title: Sunset
Series: Gundam SEED Destiny
Characters: Kira Yamato, Athrun Zala
Layers Total: 134
My Comment: So this wallpaper has a lot of "firsts" for me and thus took months to complete (though it didn't help that I would work on it and then stop for a few weeks then go back to it.. haha). I've always loved the series, and as such, I wanted to put my full efforts into making a really good wallpaper. This'll most likely be my last GS wallpaper for awhile since I'd like to explore other series, but I think of this as my current masterpiece (for my level of ability). I'll begin to break it down, yay!

I had to restart this wallpaper 3 times. The first time I had gotten pretty dang far but hit F12 to save... which actually resets in Photoshop. My undo wouldn't work for some reason (maybe too much data or change...) and I was forced to start again. I learned from my first mistake, and made sure to save a bit more often after the restart. Due to having to start over, I also had looked up better hair techniques and thus my vectors had improved. Although I was saving often, misfortune struct again. I had finished both's hair and had almost all of Kira vectored when I saved, waited till save was complete, and closed Photoshop... this ended up corrupting the file sooooo lost everything again. I think I took a few days rest before starting up once more - but this time I was determined to not lose my data (or if I did, I'd not lose a lot of it). I literally saved each save as a new file. So after working for a bit, when I saved I just changed the number. By time I finished I had 49 saves for this one wallpaper... Haha!

Order of operations basically went hair, skin, eyes, Kira body, Athrun body, bridge railing, rocks left, water, tidying up Kira, rocks left, tidying up Athrun, sky finalizing, bg ground, bg bushes, finishing touches on Kira/Athrun, forest leaves, tree trunks, and color adjusting.

I love how the eyes turned out - big thanks to multiple tutorials for advice and guidance
Hair - first time making more than just 2d hair; big thanks to Photoshop Lady for her tutorials and many others on deviantart

Besides the hair and eyes, the rest of their bodies I vectored as normal and then went about smudging to get a matching look to their hair and skin. I tried adding in a third layer of shadows... but this is my first time ever trying to put more than what's already in the image.

This was also my first attempt at making a background... like really making one and not just vectoring or abstracting. I have little doubt my background skills need imporving, but considering what I went from my last attempt [url=]Relaxing Knight to this... I think it was a major improvement.

Getting the colors right for a sunset feeling also proved to be a bit of a challenge, especially since the original scans were just water and I went from that to a forest/lake/rocks... I can only hope I managed to capture the light decently on everything. I was also pretty concerned with the angle since the original scan made it feel like a downward look... but I moved the characters up and realized that it could have a frontal angle as well (at least I hope so... haha) >.<;;

The forest and bushes turned out pretty awesome (again, please keep in mind I've never ever attempted anything close before) and I think I managed to color/shadow them appropriately in accordance to the setting sun in the background.

Step-by-Step:

Credits:
Photoshop
Paint Shop Pro 8
Original Scan
Tutorial - Eyes - MissNysha
Tutorial - Bushes; Ground; Grass - Snowfirewolf
Tutorial - Hair and a little of everything else - Photoshop Lady