The world according to the Blaine Brothers: Photoshop extensions

The Blaine Brothers were called upon to create a Dickensian world – in Photoshop.

A BBC comedy series “The Bleak Old Shop of Stuff” parodying the works of Charles Dickens gave the Blaine Brothers some interesting possibilities to create grimy victorian scenes in Photoshop. The important thing is getting the perspective to feel right, which is where 3D compositing can help. Incidentally as you can see from the clip above the opening scene starts with a swooping vertical shot a bit like our exercise this week.

Designing your sets in Photoshop (or other 2D image manipulation software) makes sense as you can texture and build architecture out of existing photographic references and library images and then composite them into flat layers, before bringing them into 3D space to arrange them. It’s a great way to build a world out of found images of buildings and architecture to create your own environment.

The set extensions seem to work here as it’s a satirical, comic world, but how might you use this technique- what theme, genre or place would you build?

Rather than creating your own material in this way, you can use other people’s imagery- legally. That’s very much central to HaZ Dulull’s VFX film work – which we’ll see next.