Well, he's not really a giant, but he's a sweet little monster. Why play with baby toys when you have the real stuff. Sean at 9 1/2 months.

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Rod Watson

He's a 'Keeper', Rod. A real keeper! Nice work.

What a great picture, Rod! Great to see you at the CF!

Bob

Hilarious! How'd you do that?

Oh please tell us, Rod. I'm wondering the same thing. The photo is priceless, and Sean is a doll!

Judy

The photo is actually a combination of 5 photos:
(1) Rose Island Lighthouse from 1997
(2) Sean's main body from around June 2003
(3) Sean's right leg, taken from a different photo on the same day as the above.
(4) Sean's right foot, taken from a third photo on the same day as the above.
(5) Sean's firetruck toy, taken a few weeks ago.

The main photo of Sean was actually of him crawling off the edge of the couch. Both legs were bent in crawling position, so I needed to find some other shots of him to construct his right leg and foot standing on the oil house roof properly. It took awhile to get the proportions semi-correct, I think it almost looks natural. Could be alot better though, but it was a real pain in the butt to work in the leg and foot. If you focus in on the leg and foot, you'll see it's not quite right, but most people at a glance would just assume it's from the same photo. The mind plays games with the eyes, and tends to correct mistakes automatically for the viewer.

The entire work was performend in Photoshop, working with numerous layers. At one point there were 11 different layers to the photo, and the overall file size was at 135Mb. The lantern room was cut out of the lighthouse and pasted into the hand, then I drew back in the background behind the original lantern room. Alot of shadow layers were drawn in to make him and the light correct to each other three-dimensionally. Alot of little snip and tucks here and there eventually completed the shot. I thought of adding other toys in, but figured I would stop there.

The original version is actually a large high resolution .tiff file. All the individual parts were drummed scanned, and the final version is sized at 16"x20"@300dpi (82.4Mb) without any sizing interpolation performed. I still have some touch ups to do in the face area, then I'll have a 16x20 printed from the color lab and framed for his bedroom.

I'm going to create other "Sean's adventures" to add to the collection. I have a couple neat ideas I'm thinking about right now. I have a great starting photo of him to use, just not for sure where to put him. Maybe climbing the mountains in Aspen, playing with the Orangutans at the zoo, reaking havoc to the iron ore ships in the great lakes....endless possibilities.