Banners

For those of you who don't know much about what I do. I do lots of things! One of the things I do is create a lot of banners/headers for blogs and web sites, twitter facebook, Etsy.  Banners usually go to the top of your page which is why it is called a "Header". Today I was working on the above banner for a customer.  His previous banner which I will post below needed some help and he hired me to fix it. His instructions were that he wanted it to look  dark misty/ghostly, have his title and the caption about sending in your photos.  He said he had no set image in his mind.

GREAT! Those are my favorite kind. I love when I get the freedom to do a banner using my own ideas. Direction is great and needed because I don't do free marketing developing a banner.  So with his idea of it being "dark and misty" I decided it would be really cool to focus on a energy wisp that is commonly seen in ghost photos. Sometimes they are blue, white or red. I went with the blue and decided to have the ball leave a trail behind it as it moves having spelled out the title in a neon appearing text. I then brought the ball around the edge from the right and into the scared girls face.

The ball is just a circle made up of several other circles. Each circle contains a different color of blue. I then used a smudge tool and smudged it in a circular motion creating movement and a 3 Dimensional look. I then took a photo of a man and changed the opacity until it was nearly transparent and put it into the center of the ball. This give the appearance of a specter in the ball. There is a little more to it then that but it gives you the general gist of it.  I then reflected the blue ball into the girls eyes so it appears as though she is looking at it terrified.

To make the misty trail, it is made up of airbrushing a transparent white and then blue on top across the area I wanted. Then I come back in with a smudge tool and start pushing it around to give it a wispy movement. The idea is to kind of make it look sort of like cigarette smoke that curls and twists. But not too much. Again I was trying to achieve a mist not smoke.

Here is what the original banner looked like.

My hope is that you find its' a vast improvement.

Here is the blue ball that I started out with to create the wisp. Its made up of 8 Steps.  Once I added it to the banner I swirled it around with the smudge brush to give it a spinning feel and then like I said above added the face to give it a specter feel. I just turned the job in so I have no idea if they like it yet but you can visit my client here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCW4hyr5YO2SMcNnXDS6VWtw/feed?view_as=public
Hope you enjoyed and if you want more details just ask!