I can’t sleep anyway so I worked on the project some more.  I found there were issues with the black and white version of the photo I was using.  The issues came from adjustments I had made to the color filters in the black and white.  The reason I made the adjustments was to lighten some of the darker tones in the photo.  Well, this led to a few problems with skin tone (especially when both coaches and Tarvaris Jackson and Joe Webb looked like they had nasty skin rashes).  I went back in, removed the adjustments to the tones, and found that the darker tones actually help the picture.  Well, without further ado, here it is:

Click to enlarge

I’ve always referred to the Vikings former Head Coach as Papa Smurf (every time I saw him his beard reminded me of Papa Smurf), so I decided to turn the coaches and players into Smurfs (albeit very large and very human looking Smurfs).  I went with the garish colors on the clothing because these are colors one normally does not associate with the NFL.  I did have the field painted purple, but there were some mistakes I made in the coloring process that show up when the layer is visible.  Unfortunately I’m going to have to start that part all over again, but that should be no bother.

At this point I would estimate I’m about 3/4 of the way done in the coloring aspect.  Then I’ll do the touchups on the bleed areas and some outlines to give it maybe a comic book feel (perhaps “The Smurfs Play in the Superbowl”).

For those geeky/nerdy types – the original TIFF file I started with came in at 79MB (the picture was taken with an 18 megapixel DSLR camera).  Now, with the layers added, the PSD file comes in at 349MB.  The size of the JPG alone is 6MB.

Well, that’s it for now.  I need to try to get some sleep.  Goodnight, everyone.