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1. Experiments
Mel Nuttall

2. Process
The first production experiment that I created was to practise
adding in the powers of one character that I might be
cosplaying. Since I hadn’t done that sort of thing on Photoshop
before, I thought it would be a good idea to know what I’d be
doing. I found an online tutorial that I knew wouldn’t be
completely the same for mine but I thought I could use it as
inspiration.
I downloaded two pictures of a Scarlet Witch/Wanda Maximoff
cosplay from the internet and followed through part of the
tutorial to be able to set the different parts of the images I
wanted to use as a brush.

3. Process
To do this I added the picture of what I wanted to use to a
separate photoshop file on top of a blank white layer. By
changing the blending mode to subtract, the current colour
disappeared and I set that to be the brush preset. From there I
did the same with the other image I was going to use. Then I
went back to my image so I could use the brushes and paint
the energy onto separate layers with slight colour changes.
At that point I started to move away
from the online tutorial and make my
own choices to get the effect that I
wanted. This in my opinion was a good
idea and I enjoyed testing out different
things rather than just doing everything

4. Process
that the tutorial said. I started to experiment with the blending
modes to try and get the effect I wanted I also added an outer glow
to parts of the layers so that it put some subtle lighting into the
picture to make it seem more realistic. Since the glow didn’t have
done a little sloppily
but I was still
pleased with the
result and will use
this technique for
my own images.
quite as much of an impact on the image I
wanted, I made a new layer and changed the
blending mode to make it seem like there was
more of a light reflection. It didn’t turn out
quite as well as I had hoped since it was

5. Reflection
• What elements of your experiments will you
include in your final product?
I will definitely use the technique and process that I used to
create these experiments for my own. They were simple and it
didn’t take me long to create brushes and add in glows and
slightly different colours to build up how the character’s
power looks. I’ll also make sure to include both types of the
look I created with her powers in each picture depending on
the setting and pose.

6. My second production experiment was dedicated to trying to
see if I could create an effect so that I can give the background
a cartoon or cel-shaded effect to go with one of the cosplays I
was thinking of doing, potentially for the video showcase. I had
several ideas that I could use for this video, but I wanted to see
if I would be able to make the background match with the
cosplay. This cosplay would have been two characters from the
Borderlands franchise. Part of the cosplay involves cel-shading
my face and clothes. Having a background wouldn’t be essential
to a video but I thought it would be a nice addition if I was able
to do it.
I started by starting a new after effects
composition. Since I didn’t have any
footage to test, I used a clip from the
music video of a song by an artist that

7. I like, to see if it would work on that. My first step was to add in
the cartoon effect to my clip. I’d seen someone use the same
effect on an online tutorial so I knew to use
After Effects rather than Premiere. This had its
upsides and downsides since I’m not very
experienced with After Effects but I thought it
would be a good opportunity to get more
practice. The effect was close to the sort of look
that I was looking to go for and from there I
could start to test out the different settings of
the effect. I spent a while tweaking and trying to get the lines
and style of shading to fit the game’s style. It didn’t really look
how I wanted it to in the end, so I felt
a lot less confident about using this
technique for my project products.

8. Before I decided for final that it wasn’t going to be something I
would include in my project, I wanted to see if it was possible
to overlay another part of the video without the effect on top
of the cartooned version. This would be to replicate the cosplay
video being added on top of the background with the effect,
since the cosplay would already have a cel-shaded look.
I didn’t think that erasing the background to have both visible
would work without adjusting each individual frame so I looked
at several different blending modes. While this was definitely
better, the images became quite dark to see and still not the
look I wanted to achieve.

9. Reflection
• What elements of your experiments will you
include in your final product?
Due to finding out that the style of effect that I would want to
create isn’t really possible to make or would take a lot more
time that I have available means that I will not be using this
experiment in any of my products that involve film and
moving images. The possibility of still having a video showcase
for the Borderlands cosplay is still there, although it will either
be filmed on a green screen and added in to a cel shaded
background or not touched upon at all to give more attention
towards the actual cosplays.