Gali Mistika Revamp

 Gali Mistika revamp. So much procrastination took place before I finally sat down and finished off this large panel, composed of fifteen images, all within two days. This revamp is quite simple; nothing extravagant being that I don't have that many parts to play with in making an extremely complex MOC or revamp, but that doesn't matter. My intent for making this revamp is simply because I wanted to make Gali look a little more feminine than that of the original set, so I could feel satisfied when looking at her. Granted her mask build is rather masculine in appearance, and that gave me all the more reason to try and feminize her structure a little more. First I gave her smoother arms, and added spike decorations to them which serve as fins and flight stabilizers; these new arm shapes made her arms look less muscular and bulky, unlike before when her arms were the same boot shape as her legs. I also tweaked and played with a way to add some original Nuva armor to her torso, which served nicely as a feminine chest plate. I also went in and replaced the small leg armor pieces with the larger pieces that look more like thighs, and therefore give her a little more hip shape. Last detail which isn't entirely necessary, not at all efficient for fighting in, nor practical for battle, is the small addition of a heel to her foot. I added this piece to her for height reasons, since Gali looks rather stocky in build once you put the chest plate on her. I wanted her to be feminine, and just a tad taller, so I added a slight platform to her boot, but kept it fairly short, so it's more like a heel to a regular boot rather than some crazy peg heel of inefficiency. The last bit of fun I had was assembling the panel together; it was a slight challenge to cram fifteen images onto one canvas, but I managed. Then to top it off I added both English and Matoran lettering to spell out her name, put in my watermark, and added her Nuva symbol just for fun... that and I put it there to balance out the shape on the left of the title.

 The process I went through to get images which looked like advertisement was first done by taking pictures of the figure on a white backdrop near a bright, sunlit window. This example of the original photograph (edited version above) before it was edited, is displayed below. To make these pictures stand out and look fairly professional, I cleaned them up in Photoshop, added them to a pure white backdrop, adjusted levels, and increased brightness on the eyes of the character to achieve that radiant glow. This resulted in fifteen cleaned images; including the one listed above, which is is one of my favorites being that it expresses more in body language, and looks like Gali is either speaking to someone, or preparing to fight.

Special edition, symmetrical revamp 1

Revamp 1 original

 Something I also tried while cleaning up the photographs is playing around with mask symmetry. I took the first picture out of the collection, being that it's mostly strait on, and I decided to experiment, and find out what Gali Mistika would look like if she didn't have a scope attached to her left mask side. All I did to achieve this was select the right side if her mask, copy it, paste it, and reverse it horizontally; then I tweaked it over the left side of the image, and used the burn tool to add a little shading. This experiment resulted in a special edition image of Gali with a symmetrical mask (above right image). In some ways she actually looks a little more feminine in my opinion, with a symmetrical mask that contains no scope.

 

 These last two images are my chosen favorites out of the collection of fifteen. The left one seems to portray a very hero like pose; something about the body language which seems to express confidence, strength, and triumph. The one to the right is my favorite over all, being that it makes Gali seem quite feminine, and expresses more of a gentle side, very much to that of her actual character. I also like the way it expresses a questioning, yet perky look in her eyes, and the way her head is tilted.

For full sized images of all fifteen pictures in the Gali Mistika panel collection, see here for the full set of pictures on my Flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/76669336@N04/sets/72157635258901907/

I hope you enjoy. ^.~