I really didn't think this image was going to eat up as much time as it did. I was able to crank out some of the other wallpapers in less than a week. This one pushed the two-month mark. There were a lot of little components that just weren't working. Combine that with a minor creative block and various non-Minimate complications and two months seems about right.

No excuses. Do or do not, right?


(1600x1200) (1920x1200)

I decided to stick with the Stay Puft face from the previous entry. It just needed to be evened out and smoothed a bit. The proton beam explosions helped a lot. Now you know why Mister Destructor is so cranky. How would you like it? You're off on a merry stroll, destroying as you go, when four kooks with unlicensed nuclear accelerators on their backs start making trouble.

Speaking of proton packs, these are obviously based on the Minimate designs, not the official screen props. Apologies to all the GB purists.

I fought the explosions quite a bit. It either looked like some clip art hastily pasted on top or a three-year-old's crayon scribble. The final solution turned out to be rather simple and I'll definitely be using it in the future. I took a basic brush at 10% opacity and drew a small central circle. I then repeated this with ever growing circles until I got to a point where it was almost fully opaque in the middle and ten percent at the edges. I added the flying bits at full opacity, then applied GIMP's 'Glowing Hot' filter. Bingo-bango, full of explodey goodness. It doesn't look the movie, but I think it works well for this image.

It will likely be a little while before the next post. There are a couple Minimate Database improvement projects on my plate that I need to take care of. Never fear, I have some artsy projects in mind too.