We've been getting a ton of press at Worth1000 over our Ultimate Celebrity contest, where the goal is to take the best physical features of multiple celebrities and merge them into one super celebrity. One of the requests we got from a prominent newspaper was to prove that Aviary (a web app) could really be used to create an ultimate celebrity. Piece of cake.
This time around Aviary's resident plastic surgeon Meowza performs illegal skin grafts on Catherine Zeta-Jones, Keira Knightly, Angelina Jolie and Charlize Theron, creating the beautiful Catheinize Zightly-Jeliens. I hope his malpractice insurance is paid up.
View the sources and full layered file
This work made heavy use of painting, blending and layering effects.
Sources:
Kudos to INXS for providing the beautiful accompaniment!
Standard disclaimer: For those of you new to this blog, this was not created in Photoshop. It was created in Aviary, a suite of online web applications. You can sign up for the current beta at http://a.viary.com.
Here's one more video of Phoenix, our powerful Flash-based image editor to tide you over for the week:
This time around Aviary's resident mad scientist Meowza experiments with illegal genetic cross breeding. For shame, Meowza. For shame.
View the sources and full layered file
This work made heavy use of painting and layering effects.
Kudos to Alvin and the Chipmunks for providing the soundtrack!
But wait, there's more! Here are some more Meowza experiments on innocent animals: Someone please call PeTA already.
View the sources and full layered file
View the sources and full layered file
Standard disclaimer: For those of you new to this blog, this was not created in Photoshop. It was created in Aviary, a suite of online web applications. You can sign up for the current beta at http://a.viary.com.
If you like this post, please Digg it.
Update The frog image was dugg and the traffic seems to be slowing the site, so we're redirecting traffic over to this blog post which can handle the requests better (and also contains the cyborg frog). You should be able to access the frog image by clicking the sources. Sorry the extra step!
Maybe it's because he's got a sweet tooth, but Meowza simply can't stop turning things into Chocolate. He's like the Prince Midas of Hershey Bars.
View the sources and full layered file
Kudos to Christina Aguilera for providing the retro-funky Candyman sound track. Man, I'm getting hungry.
Here are some more Meowza chocolatized works, for your viewing (and tasting) pleasure.
View the sources and full layered file
View the sources and full layered file
Standard disclaimer: For those of you new to this blog, this was not created in Photoshop. It was created in Aviary, a suite of online web applications. You can sign up for the current beta at http://a.viary.com.
After some of the outcry over our last post showing Hillary Clinton shedding her skin in Aviary's online image editor, we had to prove to everyone that we are non-partisan and love both candidates. In fact, we love them SO much, we figured we'd make them mate and produce a love child super-candidate.
Meowza and Daft Punk team up to show just how much better off the world would be if enemies mated with each other, with hilarious results.
For those of you new to this blog, this was not created in Photoshop. It was created in Aviary, a suite of online web applications. You can sign up for the beta invitation at http://a.viary.com.
We are proud to announce that we have just released a special patent-pending V filter for Aviary's image editor.
Watch the video to see this filter in action. We used Hillary Clinton as our test subject.
The result:
Update: For those of you new to this blog, this was not created in Photoshop. It was created in Aviary, a suite of online web applications. You can sign up for the beta invitation at http://a.viary.com.
This video is insane. Much like the singer (zing!).
The most amazing thing is that this took the legendary Meowza literally 21 minutes to do in Phoenix, Aviary's image editor. It was a rush job, done largely for the purpose of showing everybody how a photo-realistic image edit takes place from start to finish, and it still came out amazing.
21 minutes! Crazy.
Here's a video of the Clone Stamp Tool you can use in Phoenix, Aviary's online flash-based image editor.
The clone stamp tool allows you to copy (clone) from a target area in a photo and paint it in to a destination area with regular brush options.
Clone stamp is perfect for minor retouching on the seams of areas that have been cut and pasted together.
Here are some great images made entirely in Phoenix that used elements of the Clone Stamp Tool:
Colin Farrel & Tara Reid merged by Meowza
Street by phischer
From the "People are falling apart series" by Meowza
If you already have a Phoenix account, you can open up these images to see how they were made and try editing them further!
Here's a video demonstrating the Copy and Paste functionality you can use in Phoenix, Aviary's flash-based image editor.
Copy and pasting is essential for any layer based editing program, as it lets you break an image into several pieces that can be individually edited.
Here are some great examples of images that were made using Copy and Paste
"Bottled Fish" by Nicky666, uses the following source image, copied and pasted into new layers:
"Iggy's Night Out" by meowza, uses the following source image for both a main component and window reflections.
It's very easy to see why this functionality is the most important one to achieving photo-realistic image effects.
History Panel
I'm including this here, rather than in its own post because it is a really quick and simple demonstration. Phoenix includes 20 history states, which means that you can undo/redo up to 20 steps back. We can presumably allow more than that once Flash Player 10 is released and memory usage is optimized further.
Video of our history panel in action
Our History Panel shows you a thumbnail (optional) of all previous states in addition to the activity done / tool used during the step, letting you visually jump between steps quickly and easily.
Here's a video of the Distortion and Free Transform Tools you can use in Phoenix, Aviary's online flash-based image editor.
The distortion tool allows you to distort (surprise) any active selection by grabbing one of the four corner handles. You can twist, distort, stretch and warp selections with it in 3D space.
A great example of ways distortion could be used: To make a person look heavier. This example of Britney Spears used distortion to enlarge her legs.
The Free Transformation tool allows you to rotate, mirror, move, scale, and skew any selection. You can also keep things in the current ratio by holding down the shift key as you use it. This is really useful for placing any objects in your scene exactly as you want them.
We've been ultra-secretive about Phoenix to date, but it's time to let more people take a look under the hood of the most advanced Flash-based image editor created to date.
Let me caution, Phoenix is not for casual editing (like cropping and removing red-eye). Of course you can do those things in Phoenix, but that's a waste of the engine's potential. We are targeting our user base of Photoshop-using hobbyists at Worth1000 and built it around their specifications, so including a lot of advanced editing effects was an absolute must.
Our goal with Aviary in general was to create a portable web-based suite where people could collaboratively create really rich audio-visual content (the type that generally goes viral).
Case in point, here's an early technical demonstration of a new tool we're including in our next build - the color replacement brush.
I'll be publishing some more advanced videos showcasing effects that are possible to create in Phoenix (the full tool) in future posts.
For now, here are some Phoenix-created images... not bad for an online tool, huh?
So why recreate an image editing tool online when there are fantastic products like Adobe Photoshop, GIMP and Pixelmator available for desktop usage?
Simple: none of them allow for easy collaboration. Every tool in the Aviary suite does.
If two people wanted to collaborate on an image (let's say to participate in a game of Photoshop Tennis or give critique on different mockups), a whole bunch of limiting variables would need to be in place before it could happen:
- Both people would need to own Photoshop (or the same program) on their computer.
- Both people would need access to an FTP site or image hosting site. The file URL would need to be manually copied and pasted to be shared.
- Both people would need a separate location to comment, and possibly a separate location where comments could be listed privately or publicly.
- Revisions would be manually maintained and stored separately on each person's computer (unless they shared them with each other).
- If they are trying to track rights, royalties and attributions, they would need some kind of complex contractual agreement in place.
With any tool in the Aviary suite, all a user needs is a browser with the Flash Player installed and they can bypass all of these variables. Is there a trade-off for production-grade work that must be a certain resolution due to Flash's limitations? Absolutely. But is there a gain in terms of quick collaboration? No question. For mockups, collaboration and feedback, the gain is essential.
My teams work flow currently uses Google Docs in much the same way. We draft documents in Google Docs, and discuss and revise them in BaseCamp. Finally once we're done collaboration we recreate or import the work in a production-quality tool like Microsoft Word to create the final output. It's an invaluable addition to our workflow. We suspect that Aviary will be valuable in much the same way for professionals.
As for hobbyists creating content for fun and web display, Phoenix should be perfect to create incredibly rich content.
For an invitation to Phoenix, sign up on the right hand side. And don't forget to check back for videos of Phoenix itself in action.
Try Out Aviary»
Aviary is a powerful suite of browser-based design tools for people who create. Head on over to the Aviary homepage to try the applications out and learn more. It's free to try our tools or sign up!
RSS
Email