Gunship Pilot

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This image began as a spin-off from the Forever War image. I wanted to make an image that would show off the detail of the fighter a little better. The first version used the same armored suit as the Forever War image, but I decided that it looked too similar, so I substituted some other items instead. Both the ‘harness’ and the helmet actually come from sets intended for female characters, but they adapted to a male figure without too much difficulty.

It’s one of the most heavily post-worked images that I’ve made so far. After the initial render, I pulled it into Photoshop, where I did one of my standard tricks, applying the Dramatic BW 1 preset from Macphun’s Intensify CK 2016 tool, then compositing the result with the original to give it a little more detail. I also tweaked the levels sightly. This is normally where I’d leave it, but on an impulse I decided to try using Luminar 4. I used one of Luminar’s presets, then tweaked the settings some more. The AI Skin Enhancer did a good job on bringing up detail on the figure’s face, and I decided to use the Sky Replacement tool to substitute one of Luminar’s included skies for the rendered sky. The result is rather far from the image as originally rendered, but I think it works quite well.