For a blog post research I stumbled over the topic Masters Of The Universe.
Suddenly all these good old childhood memories about the toys, the cartoon series and even the Dolph Lundgren full-length movie came into my mind and I felt inspired to make a small poster with something badass from Eternia.
Here are some details… 
So, by the Power of Grayskull! Let’s case study through this! …and to get into the right mood listen to this.
01. I started this photo illustration by searching for the right photos, which I found on stock.xchng and cgtextures. I build the ram’s skull by cutting out the horns and replacing them with other ones. A single cut out bone was enough for building the entire staff.
02. Then I duplicated, rotated, flipped, and scaled the bone.
03. I also added some shadows and used bevel and emposs for more dimension.
04. Then it was time for a round of dodging and burning to get a constant look. Hope Skeletor would like this one. I moved on to build the surroundings. First I added a cut out mountain, duplicated and flipped it horizontally.
05. With a soft brush I painted smooth light around the mountain’s edges and some colored spots where placed over them and the havoc staff. No doomsday without a sky that can fall down, so I needed a sky photo (set on screen) above my white background layer.
06. Because Skeletor always wanted to reign over Eternia I placed the eternian palace in the background. The cartoon series was used as reference and I build a quick, black vector silhouette. After placing some fireworks (set to screen), some lights and a blue texture above the background layer, I colored the whole image blue.
07. For a more „dangerous“ atmosphere I darkened the colors and edges and switched everything into a viole(n)t color mood. The mountains went through dodge and burn and with three more silhouettes of Snake Mountain, Castle Grayskull and of course (yes, the little spot beside the castle) Zoar the Sorceress, it all got a little bit more the Masters Of The Universe touch.
08. To change that single-colored look I added some different colors in the foreground and over the horns. For the UBMF (ultra-brutal-menace-effect) I painted some red eyes. How evil!
09. With a mixture of color balance, selective color (mostly the neutrals), hue/saturation, channel mixer and the levels combined with different opacities and layer modes it ended up like this. For the title I chose the Friz Quadrata font, that was actually used for the TV credits of She-Ra, the twin sister of He-Man…
10. I outlined and beveled and embossed the title and gave it a gradient overlay and several strokes – all for the ’80s vibe.
11. Although I wanted a cartoon like final result, I reduced a little bit of the contrast. I added some other colors…
12. …took the result of step 8 with a “stamp visible..“ layer, added the gaussian blur, gave it more saturation, switched the hue to more pink and set it on screen. Then I placed it on top of my layers and added a M.A.S.K.(lol), used a soft black brush on it and lowered the opacity.
13. Before the evil hordes can conquer and rule over Eternia I placed some rays around the skull, some sparks near the title and again I darkened the whole image. Now, it’s ready to get cropped to any format.
Hope you enjoyed this case study and it was helpful somehow. It took a lot of hours and several hundred layers.
If you like it and want it for your wall you can get it as a poster, postcard… right here.
There is also a German version of this case study right here.
Now, saddle your battle cat and ride on. Remember – YOU got the power!
Ralf is a German communication designer. After his diploma he keeps on freelancing - since 2010 together with Marcel and his sister Kerstin.
He fell in love with graphic design back in the year 1980something.
Great one Ralph, the details in the case study are really informative.
Great job! Conngrats
