… for Visual Effects

Tip #1547: Ask the Artist: Nemanja Sekulic

Larry Jordan – LarryJordan.com

Workflow thoughts from a world-class photo-manipulator.

Nemanja Sekulic is a pro photographer and digital artist, who has a passion for photomanipulation and compositing. In both his personal and commissioned projects, some of which you can see on his website, Sekulic weaves elements of science fiction, fantasy, and surrealism into realistic everyday vignettes.

BorisFX.com interviewed him about his though-process and workflow. (Here’s the link.)

Here are three questions from the article:

• What type of photography or photographic genre do you work in? I like to do a bit of everything, which I think lets me have more fun creatively speaking. And since I do photo manipulations and composites, it allows me to take different kinds of photos — portraits, maybe a landscape for a background, and then small objects, food, etc. — and combine them into a new fun, and unique story.
• How do you prep for a big project? I approach most projects in the same manner: First, I do research on the topic. I want to know as much as I can about my subject. But how long I have to do my research depends on the size of the project and its complexity. Next, I’ll do some sketching, which is an important step in compositing since it helps me understand what elements I need to include in the work to be able to create a final image. Then, after that, I take all the necessary photos for the project, which could also include other visual elements like stock photos or models of a 3D element.
• What’s a keyboard shortcut you can’t live without? It’s hard to choose just one, but I’d pick Ctrl+Z, or UNDO.

EXTRA CREDIT

Here’s Nemanja’s website. He has some AMAZING images on his portfolio page!