Sébastien Del Grosso is no stranger to the idea of mixing media; Take his series “The Sketch Of A Life”, which combines skillful drawings with studio photography to create a surreal transformation of a standard portrait. He is back at it again, but this time melding reality with a galaxy far, far away.
In his latest project, “Le Cosmos de Star Wars” Sebastian takes photographs of small Star Wars action figures and digitally transports them into a whole new world. Starting with a foundation of photography, he artfully layers photos with textures to create a striking final image meant to evoke the reality of the Star Wars universe.
Originally attracted to macro photography, Sebastian’s various travels led him more towards interests of landscape, architectural, and conceptual photography. These composites are attributes of all three facets with original imagery used for both the subject material as well as the scenes they are set in. You can see sample of his process here in the making of a piece entitled ‘Geonosis’:
He starts off with a silhouette of the action figure set against a bright screen. Then he manipulates the body to create various poses and shapes to layer them together once in Photoshop, similar to the process of stop-motion animation. Once brought into Photoshop, the silhouettes are compiled together to create scenes that bring the figurines to life with the help of layers of color and texture to help ‘awaken the force’.
The backgrounds are made to resemble planets like Hoth and Endor, and are actually photographs as well, but to create depth and dimension further edits and textures are applied. If a particular background is too complicated to achieve, Sebastian creates a drawing made in Adobe Illustrator and then blends the layers together.
For more of his work, check out Sebastian’s Flickr, Facebook, & Instagram.
CREDITS: All photographs shared by Sébastien Del Grosso are copyrighted and have been used with permission for SLR Lounge. Do not copy, modify or re-post this article or images without express permission from SLR Lounge and the artist.
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