During a recent shoot with Miss Morphic, we set up a shot to simulate Ana falling while wearing an Alice in Wonderland costume. I thought sitting on the Box of White Doom while having her rest her foot on the White Chair of Unspeakable Horror would be preferable than actively pushing Ana down a rabbit hole. The studio was lacking in rabbit holes, to begin with.
We tried several poses but the one above was the best out of the lot. I originally planned to have a tree and a tube-like tunnel stretching down from the top of the frame. However, this wasn't coming out right so I decided to try some with a little weirder.
The first thing I had to do in the post was to cut Ana out from the background. This would have been much easier with a green screen but there wasn't one available. Using the Blend If function allowed me to key out the majority of the white leaving Ana suspended in the air. Some of her dress and legs looked like they had been eaten by moths so I had to paint those back in from the original shot. I used a blurred ellipse positioned below Ana to act as a shadow…
No rabbits to be seen...
Totaly fake floor..
Next would be the background. I used Google images for Alice based inspiration and choose a chessboard as the floor. This was easy to make in Photoshop, black square, white square, rinse and repeat till I had a large floor print to work with. I used the perspective tool to form the floor them bent it 90 degrees to point upwards to form a wall which was then covered by a smoke image which had been bent around its polar axis. This would form a sort of ethereal tunnel ending at the floor. The floor was given a grungy look but adding a gritty texture image over the top.
Next up was the clock image, representing the White Rabbit's timepiece. This was coloured red, the layer duplicated and a radial blur filter applied to make it look a bit zoomed out.
You also have to have a reference to the Queen of Hearts so a simple heart brush sprayed across a white layer and blurred out accomplished this.
Did you spot the reflection in the floor?
Bringing all the layers together I decided on an overall red tint to the composition. Total edit time was around 2.5 hours, to get everything right. I used a dark brush to darken parts of Ana to add a bit of depth to her arms and legs otherwise she would have looked a little flat. Also added a reflection in the black tiles of the floor.
I could have added more but called it after 2.5 hours otherwise I would still be doing it!
I think I will print this one for the portfolio book!