Often work comes to us with a very specific brief, alongside guidelines that often need to be followed to the letter. On occasions though we begin a project with minimal direction and a broad spectrum of avenues for us to explore. In this instance our artists are given the opportunity to flex their creative minds. Often it is just the challenge they have been craving.

Every creative individual around the world has an inner urge for expression. It can be in the form of painting, sculpting, drawing, creating 3D models or capturing a single moment in life in a photo. In my case it is retouching; creating images way ahead of any limitations. Photography is more often than not fantastic, but retouching gives you the opportunity to make it breathtaking. CGI and post-production techniques today are so good you often cannot tell that it’s computer generated in the first place. These techniques and skills give us endless possibilities for making great work even better.

So how do we turn expression and ideas into great work?

Let's take a look at the processes involved and the stages required to turn an idea into a masterpiece! The majority of the time our projects are briefed to us by clients, photographers or creative directors and our job is to make those images unique alongside a clear goal and vision. It is something Happy Finish artists have become experts at - arguably the best there is. But from time to time there is this small spark of thought and imagination to create something that wasn’t there before, something inside us that only we can deliver to the public.

Ideas like this happen to me from time to time, and an example of that can be seen with some recent projects that began with a vision of creating from scratch specific ‘environments’. In these two cases, one was a piece of earth and the other an underwater void.

Both images were done without any CGI components, but instead with traditional retouching techniques, matte painting and some ‘secret ingredient’ that I couldn’t possibly share online! We’ll just refer to it as magic!

The entire concept was based on using small pieces of stock photography and building up something that initially existed only in my imagination. Piece by piece, reference after reference, ideas became things and things became images. Shadows and lights were created by manual process, with grass, stone and earth being customized alongside the use of photography that was edited so much that it is very hard to recognize what was it before.

This is the ‘magic’ component: having fun, playing with images, looking for new techniques and the ways in which to create something from nothing. At one point it seems like it is finished but then the best part begins, digging even deeper to add small yet intricate details such as single flares, reflections, and manipulating what is already there to the maximum. My friend once said: "People always ask me why do you add so many details to your work, nobody will ever see it". From the before and after images above and below, we can illustrate this and the undeniable importance of every adjustment and every second that goes into a single image.

Every artist knows that it takes time and effort to finish work before it is ready to be presented to the world, and this has been the mindset of Happy Finish artists for as long as we’ve been retouching what is already great work. Only then can you be satisfied with the final piece. It’s these images that fundamentally encourage us to make shots better because at the end of the day you are only as good as your last project.