Idea:

My sustained investigation was how would mythical creatures interact with a modern world. They mythical creature I wanted to use was a griffin. So, I decided to make the griffin in a hospital being tested on by scientists. I thought that if a griffin were in a modern world the humans living in it would want to see its DNA and how it came to be a mixture of animal. Because the world is more modern instead of taking samples of the griffins DNA the people would zap it instead.

Materials:

I used photoshop on the computer to create my final picture. I used the website Unsplash to get copyright free images with fair use. Many layers and layer masking and filters had to be used because I wanted to make sure the griffin was blended and looked like one animal instead of a choppy collage.

Processes: After I found my background image, I roughly sketched a griffin outline with a black brush where I thought the griffin should sit. I decided to instead flip the griffin while I was making it because the angles would make more sense. I collected images if eagles and lions first. I used a one of my lion images for the front half, then I found an eagle picture and scaled it up for it to be proportional to the body so I could use it for the head. I found another eagle picture where the talons were visible and used a layer mask like I did with the head to blend it into the base lion body. I also had to layer mask away the paws so the feet were completely replaced. On the head of the griffin I put the wings of a random white bird I found because when I was looking for a reference for griffins they had white pointy ears that were made of feathers. I had to use adjustment layers so that the lions body would be the same brown as the eagle feathers. For the back half of the griffin I used a new image of a lion laying down because the first image did not have a back half at the right angle. I used a layer mask to cut around the new lion and cut off its head. I used more adjustment layers to change the color tone and saturation of the lion back half. For the tail I found another lion where the tail was visible. I wanted the tail to be bended in a different way so I used the warp function on photoshop to accomplish that. Next came the wings, I found the perfect bird wing with the perfect colors but, I wanted the wings to be extended more so I used the warp function again to stretch them. Later, I decided to refine the edges and ears of the griffin so I downloaded feather brush and stamped them on the edges of the griffin. To make sure my image stayed with the theme of my investigation I added lasers by shift-clicking with a brush so the lines would be straight, plus I added skinnier lines to add more details. Inspiration was how Frankenstein had lasers and I thought it would make sense in my image. The very light areas on the end of the lasers were accomplished by motion blurring a white blob I filled in. At the end I made the lasers look like they were glowing by lowering the opacity of a soft brush. Then I put a doctor on a computer because it look like they were doing research on the griffin. I blurred the doctor slightly because they would be out of focus. lastly I added a darker edge to not only make the griffin look like it was glowing more but also to bring the image together.