Steampunk is something I’ve been seeing for quite sometime, and only recently decided to try. Recently fantasystock over at DeviantArt posted a few images of a Black Aces VF 41 Fighter Jet while I was going through stock photos and remembered that I wanted to do a stock image using Marcus J Ranum’s Sky Captain image. I had a distinct mental image of woman meets machine with interesting results.

Inspiration and Technique
I would definitely have to say that partly this image was inspired by an older movie called “The Rocketeer” and also by the Batman villain “Firefly”. When I originally had the vision for this I knew I would be designing something impossible, surreal, and absurd, and that would look amazing  and visually interesting.

I debated for sometime with the coloring for the smoke stream coming from the afterburners and settled on blue because it balanced the rest of the image out perfectly and still kept the primary focus on the model. I used a combination of smoke and lighting effects as well as blurring to create the illusion of lift and movement in a subtle way.

The masking involved in this image was very complex, as it required me to blend an organic and non-organic element in an unnatural way, without making it seem “forced”, this was tricky to say the least but I feel it came out well. I used masking throughout most of the retouch work as usual, the model had excellent skin to begin with so this retouch was not as extensive as I’ve had to do in the past, which is another great thing about Marcus J Ranum stock images.

I actually looking forward to trying more artwork in the steampunk style in the near future and I’m building up source material and research to that end. If anyone knows any resources that would be useful please get in touch with me. Thanks.