[ THE MAKING OF A WALLPAPER ]
Materials Used:
Photoshop 6.0
base image of Ashurei taken from the WOG3 website (look for it in Google).
Redfield Lattice Composer (OPTIONAL)
No brushes, patterns, actions, or other fancy stuff were necessary. Just Ashurei! :P This probably won't make much sense along toward the end, but it can't be helped ^^;; I didn't make this so that you can make your own identical Ashurei but to show just a few of the many ways that Photoshop can be used to manipulate a single image.


1. The first thing I did, of course, was change the Canvas size to the one I wanted. In this case, it was 1024x768. I erased the white background in the base image, created a new layer, and named it "background." This was not easy because of Ashurei's blasted hair. Bits of white were left over. I'll tell you how I got rid of them later. I filled the background with black and moved it underneath the original layer with Ashurei's image. For simplicity, we shall call that layer "Ashurei 1.
2. I selected the entire Ashurei layer, created a new .psd file, and pasted it in. The new Ashurei image was resized to much, much bigger than 1024x768, copied, and pasted back into the first file and named "Ashurei Large 1." I duplicated the layer to get "Ashurei Large 2." Duplicating is a trick so you can apply whatever filter you feel like applying and not have to undo several times if you don't like the way the filter turned out; you can simply erase the duplicate. In this case, however, there's a real point to the duplication. With the "Ashurei Large 1" layer still selected, I went to the Layers window and selected Soft Light.
3. I selected Ashurei Large 2 (the one that was NOT Softly lit) and here used the Redfield Lattice Compser, using the Crosshatched setting. ALTERNATIVELY, Filter > Distort > Ripple and setting the ripple to maximum can yield the same effect. The Distort > Wave filter can also give similar results. After the ripple/lattice/wave was applied, I went to Distort > Twirl and set it to about -200. This will become the flame.

4. With Ashurei Large 2 still selected, I went to Image > Adjust > Hue/Saturation and clicked Colorize. I adjust Hue and Saturation by sliding the bar until the layer became...well, colorized by a shade of yellow that looked fire-y enough to me. Going to Edit > Transform > Rotate/Distort, I was able to get the shape that I wanted the now-yellow Ashurei Large 2 to be. I created two duplicates of this layer and named them Ashurei Large 3 and 4. Then I went to Blur > Radial > Zoom and applied it to Ashurei Large 4. Now, remember Ashurei Large 1? I duplicated it (again) to get Ashurei Large 5. I once again Colorized it, applied Motion Blur, and set its opacity to about 25 %. It's the layer responsible for the light yellow color in the background.
5. We are actually almost done. The order the layers are stacked and their styles are as follows:
War of Genesis 3 (Text: Overlay)
Line 1 (Overlay) - this is the line under the text
Ashurei 1 (Normal)
Ashurei Large 2 (Screen)
Ashurei Large 3 (Overlay)
Ashurei Large 4 (Hard Light)
Ashurei Large 1 (Soft Light)
Ashurei Large 5 (Normal, 25 % opacity)
Background (Normal)


Touching up:

6. Note the difference in the color between the Ashurei 1 in step 4 and the Ashurei 1 to the right. I made three (yes, count 'em, three) copies of Ashurei 1 and called them Ashurei 2, 3, and 4.
Ashurei 1 (Overlay)
Ashurei 2 (Multiply)
Ashurei 3 (Motion Blur, then Color Dodge)
Ashurei 4 (Gaussian Blur, then Normal)

And the other layers follow as above. Use of the Blur tool (not the filter, the tool) on Ashurei can get rid of those insistent white spots mixed in with Ashurei's hair without compromising the sharpness of the image since we've got three layers under it.