Are those webs shooting out of the Hulk’s backside? Is that Reed Richards in an advertisement for a male enhancement product? These pictures can’t be real. Well, we can’t put one over on you. These are just some clever uses of photo manipulation, some would call it “photoplasty.” The good people at Cracked.com have taken liberties with this skill for the amusement of others for quite some time. We want to follow in their footsteps and bring this form of comedy to our web site. If you look at the picture to the right you can see a stellar example of my handiwork that once adorned the hallowed walls of Cracked.com.
Essentially, the goal is to take whatever twisted theme pops out of our heads and run with it like Flash on a sugar rush. It’s all fairly simple. Any chimp with a cybernetic implant or advanced genetic manipulation could do it.
You’ll need some photo editing software such as Gimp or Photoshop. Using either of these software packages should enable you to airbrush, clone stamp, or simply crop a photo/drawing in order to transform it into basically a 180 degree direction from anything Stan Lee or Brad Singer could have imagined. Think about it, airbrushing an image lets you remove blemishes or objects from a picture faster than Dr. Doom can say disintegrator ray. A clone stamp allows you to make a copy or take a sample of one image and duplicate it onto another picture. Suddenly, you could have an entire graduating class tossing their caps into the air via their Wolverine claws. Nothing says happy graduation like “snnkt!”
Chances are you’ve probably seen examples of photoplasty or taken a hand in it yourself. If you’ve ever taken a photo of your principal and stuck it on Nicki Minaj’s body just so you could make it a screensaver for his desk, then you’ve accomplished photoplasty. (How you got the screensaver onto his laptop is your business. We don’t judge.)
The idea is to use the resources of the Internet at your disposal like a mad scientist. There are pictures aplenty across this crazy technological highway. You just need to grab’em, rip’em apart, and mix them together to create something funny that fits our theme. Keep in mind we do like-a-the-comic books and would like to keep our entries steered towards comic books and comic book movies. Sometimes, we might throw a broad theme at you, but we’re confident you’ll remember where our bread is buttered. Also, keep in mind that nudity is a no go for this competition.
Oh, did I say competition. That’s right Sparky this here is a bonafide contest with prizes, glory, and such. (Warning: We cannot guarantee glory.) At the end of the contest, we will have a first prize winner who will receive a CBM t-shirt, DVD, and a book/graphic novel. We will also have a second prize winner who will get a CBM t-shirt.
The contest will be open til midnight (EST) of December 1st. You can make as many submissions as you want, just add them to our comments section. For those confounded by Photoshop, you too can stay in the action by pitching a text description of your idea so some of our more tech-savvy readers might transform your vision into gold. (Note: Only the artists win the prizes)
In our first contest we’re asking our readers to create images of “The Most Trivial Use of Superpowers.” Basically, you’ll create a picture of what happens when people with atomic death rays for eyeballs or mondo super strength put these powers to use in everyday or mundane tasks.
The contest will be judged based on humor and not on artistic ability.