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Submitted: October 22, 2009
Image Size: 307 KB
Resolution: 1242×714

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DIE HARD Photo Refby *JoeJusko

Digital Art / Photomanipulation / Conceptual

There is definitely a lot of confusion as to the use of photo ref in art so I figure I'll show a quick example of one such usage. It's impossible to get everything correct out of your head all the time, especially for detail specific assignments. That's where research and photo ref come in. The "DIE HARD; Year One" comic relates the stories of a young John McClane when he had just joined the NYPD in the late 70's. Since publisher BOOM! Studios had retained likeness rights to Bruce Willis ( not always the case as in my recent Planet of the Apes/Charlton Heston piece) I had to find a way to render a young Willis for the covers. After getting Dave's layout for the newest cover I decided to shoot a couple of pics of myself in the appropriate pose. I altered the angle in toward the center of the cover to keep the viewer's from eyes from running off the left side and lit it so there would be enough dark area to give it weight when inverted to a negative image. Dave (correctly) suggested I force the perspective a bit on the guns to enhance the dramatic effect and give it that 70's movie poster look we're always going for with these covers. A Google search on Willis gave me a somewhat usable pic that matched the angle needed and as a bonus gave me that WTF? look that McClane always had. I also found a shot of Willis with 1970's hair! It was like hitting the lottery there! As for the final likeness, it's nowhere near as close as I would like since I had to alter the pic to make it age appropriate to the story. Any time you start eliminate details from a face (lines creases, etc) that give it it's character the likeness will ultimately suffer. Normally I would have stressed over this more than I did but I realized that the likeness would be lost anyway when inverted to negative that just an approximation was acceptable here. The final image can be seen here--
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