The Queen of Hearts Plays Croquet

To recreate the croquet scene from Alice in Wonderland, I decided I wanted to do something that evoked the feeling of an alternate reality.  After trying several different ideas, I settled on an industrial aesthetic, making natural materials in the picture virtually nonexistent

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I started by using a base picture of a garden labyrinth, and used the polygonal lasso tool to select each section of the labyrinth and fill it with one of three shades of silver – very light for the top, light for some of the sides, and dark silver for the sides of the labyrinth that had the darkest shadows.  (This hand-conversion from green to silver was painstaking and took a very long time.  Next time, I would probably try to use the color replacement tool and see if I get a similar result in less time).

Once I had the labyrinth turned silver, I wanted to make it look like a metallic texture.  To do that, I first selected the entire top using the color picker tool and applied a gradient going from white to dark grey, to add shadows.  For the sides of the labyrinth, I used the color picker tool to select all of the light and dark silver, added noise using the noise filter at 12.5% Gaussian monochromatic, and then applied a 45 degree motion blur to make the diagonal lines on the “metal”.  To complete the base labyrinth, I added a few black lines to highlight some of the corners or twists and turns, since turning the labyrinth to metal had removed some of the color distinctions

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To make the picture have more depth and realism, I decided it needed shadows.  To make the labyrinth’s shadow, I used the background garden picture as a guide and used the polygonal lasso tool to draw the shadows where they would be at the front entrance of the labyrinth.  I then filled the lassoed area with black and set the opacity of the layer to sixty percent.  To add some interest to the back of the labyrinth, I found a picture of a metal tree that I cut out and added to the picture.  I separated the labyrinth into two layers at the location of the tree so that part of the tree could be on top of the labyrinth layer and part could be below it, hiding the base that would not be visible from the front of the labyrinth.  To add more detail to the front of the labyrinth, I found a picture of a clock, desaturated it, pasted it on the left side of the labyrinth, rotated it, and made the layer slightly opaque to look as though it was carved into the metal of the labyrinth.  I liked the effect, so I did the same thing on the right side, rotating the clock the opposite direction and making it slightly smaller.

I struggled with the sky.  At first I had it solid blue, but it appeared too realistic and did not fit the overall color scheme of the image. Eventually, I took the block of blue and applied the “difference cloud” filter to it, and after some adjustments, settled on a coppery tone of sky to go with my metallic world.  I also applied a lens flare to show some sign of sunlight poking through.

After the sky was applied, I did not like how the labyrinth appeared to just fall off the ends of the earth, so I decided to put a background in the picture.  As a child I always wondered why the Queen of Hearts did not have a castle, so I decided she needed one that overlooked the labyrinth so she could keep her eyes on the cards.  I found a black and white image of London and cut the background out to use as a perfect castle.  When I pasted it in, though, it became overpowering and took away from the labyrinth.  To address that, I changed the opacity of the layer to 61%, reflecting the fact that it was off in the distance. 

I also found a picture of an airship that I wanted to use, so I cut it out using the lasso tool and pasted it in to the image.  At first, I had it much larger and in the foreground of the picture.  I filled one panel of the airship with black and turned it into a flying scoreboard, showing the Queen beating Alice at croquet quite soundly.  However, this once again dominated too much of the picture and took focus away from the area of the croquet match, so I moved the airship back into the background and made it much smaller.

I tried to find a way to change the color of the grass on the grounds to something more metallic, or find a picture of metal grass, but every time I did that the colors were too overwhelming.  Eventually I found a picture of one metal panel with hinges on either end, and I decided it would make a perfect floor board.  I made many duplicate layers of the floor board.  In order to make more room to play croquet, I also made the canvas size larger than the original garden image (adding two inches to the bottom of the picture) and then used the clone stamp to make some smaller panels to fill in this space.  However, the panels were perpendicular to the ground and it looked like anyone standing on them would fall right off the world!  To address this, I skewed the entire floor approximately 45 degrees to give it a better perspective, and then filled in (using the clone stamp) more panels on the sides where there were none due to the skew.

I decided to put a path leading up to the labyrinth in order to give the image some more color and to divide it into sections.  To make the path, I found a metal and wood chessboard that I liked.  I copied a section of the chessboard and pasted it many times until I had one very large board.  I then made the shape I wanted for the path using the polygonal lasso tool, and cut out the path from the rest of the chessboard and pasted it in to the main croquet picture.

For the flower bushes, I found a picture of a small rose bush and used the hue adjustment to give its leaves a slightly silver tone (though I decided to leave some green in the picture – there’s a reason the Queen loves her roses so much!)  I made four copies of the bush and bunched them all together, making one large bush.  I then found a picture of a copper rose earring, cut the rose out of the picture, and pasted it on the rose bush in many locations, changing the size and rotating the direction of the rose to give variety.  I made a separate rose bush in a similar method using a silver rose necklace.  When I pasted the two rose bushes onto the main picture, they did not look “full” enough, so I made a duplicate bronze bush layer and overlapped it over the first one.  I once again made the shadow using the polygonal lasso tool, filling a section with black and making the layer opacity 60 percent.

I was fairly satisfied with the “world” I had built, but I still had not decided how to represent the characters that would play croquet in a world this devoid of greenery.  When I found a Barbie Queen of Hearts doll, I decided that a plastic person would work well, so I cut her out using the polygonal lasso and pasted her into my image.  I then made a duplicate of the layer, filled it with dark grey, made it sixty percent opaque, and skewed it to represent the Queen’s shadow. 

I liked the effect of plastic toys living in a metallic world, so I searched for other Alice in Wonderland dolls.  I found a picture of an Alice doll holding a flamingo croquet mallet and cut it out to paste into my image.  This was particularly challenging as her hair was very wispy and it was difficult to copy it and not the background.  When I pasted the photo in, I noticed that parts of Alice’s hair were too light due to the lighting of the photo, so I selected them and used the hue, brightness/contrast, and color balance tools to adjust the colors.  I also brightened the entire image of Alice to make her more vibrant so that she was not overshadowed by the Queen in her bright red dress.  I made the shadow for Alice the same way as I made the Queen’s.

To make the card, I found several pictures of mimes (to reflect the black and white or red and white color scheme).  I also found a deck of cards made out of metal.  I pasted the card on top of the mime, and cut out his left hand and made it its own layer to put it on top of the card.  The mime was originally holding a feather duster in his right hand, so I removed that and added in a paint brush.  The paint brush had red paint on its end, so I used the color picker tool and replaced that with silver paint from the rose bush.  I also used the color replacement tool to make half of a bronze rose silver, to show the card was in the process of painting the roses silver.  I made a shadow for the card the same way I did for Alice and the Queen.  (I was originally going to have several cards inside the labyrinth and two outside painting the rose bushes, but the picture was too cluttered when I did that so I reduced it down to just the one card).

I made many different versions of the Cheshire Cat, and I did not like any of them.  I tried using the general shape of a cat and pasting in various metal parts (from engines and cars and other metallic objects), but he never quite looked like a cat.  I also tried using several different metal and robotic cats and pasting together their body parts, but it always looked very awkward and never had the right grin.  Finally I found an image of a cheshire cat car made from metal covered in fabric, and I decided to use it.  There were people inside the car so I used the clone stamp to remove them.  When I pasted the photo into the image, it was too bright a pink color and distracted from the queen, so I used the color replacement tool and selected the bronze from one of the roses to tone down the color scheme of the cat.

You can view the complete photoshop file to see how the individual layers were put together to form the final picture.