Arch street is my last design of the second part of my travel series. I was heading back home when I took a picture of arch street. I wanted to have a design that shown the Comcast Center. I did take a few pictures of the building by itself but they were up close and I wasn’t able to get a great shot. At arch street, you can see the whole building. I was only a few blocks away from the Comcast Center. I also like that you can see construction as well. I thought it would be a nice picture to play with in Paintshop. The exact location of this picture is 20th and Arch Street.
I made a few variations of this design. The one that I love is the mirrored version. I didn’t record myself making that version because I played around with the design more while the video was being made. I really love playing with reflecting mirror. I completely forgot to use that effect in the original. I like how it reacts to the design. I really love that the van looks like it’s about to collide with itself in the design. I do like the original as well. I am developing a layering system. I use base effects and blend them with textures. After that, I blend the base textures with contours, and then blend more effects. Each time I make a significant change, I save my progress in different folders so I can keep track of each layer. It’s a lot easier to go back and sample with other blends instead of relying solely on memory and the undo button. Sometimes paintshop crashes on me when I try to go backwards to find a particular blend. I try to save everything to avoid losing blends.
I am trying to blend more colors in designs. I want to focus on color schemes instead of individual colors. The mirrored version is very dark and colorful. The original has a lighter color scheme that has lots of blue, green and yellow. I had a fun time with this design. I was really on the fence in making it at the beginning. I thought I should move on to part 3 of my travel series but I definitely wanted to feature the Comcast Center. I’m happy with this design.
I really love the song Comet Halley by Stellardrone. I ran into this band completely by accident. I was looking for songs by Airglow on Free Music Archive. I did a search and found a song by Stellardrone called Airglow. I used that song for my last music video. Towards the end of the music video, you can see a message on my computer saying the battery is about to die. I’m sorry I didn’t edit that part out. I usually plug my computer to full strength and then use the battery until it dies. I’m trying to get a whole design done before that message pops up. Well… I hope you like this design and the music video.
- Time to create: 3+ Hours
- Tools: A Photo of Arch Street in Philadelphia, PA and Paintshop Pro
- Song in video: Comet Halley by Stellardrone