Speed Art – Trump Tower Destroyed in Photoshop

There’s no good reason for this post. There’s no good reason to waste two hours on such a thing. That said, people love speed art and they love Michael Bay Transformers. I just kind of combined them. I Took a picture of Trump Tower some months ago when I got my new 5D Mark II. I figured it was a perfect picture to use for a speed art project. Though I will say, if I do another one of these, I will use a horizontal – landscape image. I think they suit video better. In any event, this is my first attempt at anything like this – speed art. I am not new to Photoshop of course-I have been using it for years doing architectural work. I am self taught for what that’s worth. Never had a class or lesson, so if you are interested in learning Photoshop on your own, don’t despair. We have lots of Photoshop Tutorials, and will be bringing more and more with each passing week.

So, I wanted to attach some large stills here for anyone that wants a closer look. No, it’s not perfect, but it was fun. If I had to give a general run down of the process in text form, it would go something like this. First, find original image. Decide to destroy something. People, especially guys seem to really like blowing things up. And, because I have no desire to blow anything up for real, I thought I’d take a page from the Transformers Movie that was filmed here in Chicago, and see if I couldn’t do something like that. I have a lot of respect for the guys that do work like this in cinema. I did it in a single frame, with adequate results, those guys do it 24 frames every second. It’s really incredible. So, I first removed the top of the tower and then immediately painted in what would be behind the tower using the clone stamp. Then I grabbed my new layer and rotated it so it was facing the Chicago River. After some tweaking I decided that it would be a lot cooler if it crushed the Michigan Ave. bridge. So, I cut out the bridge using the polygon lasso and then used the clone stamp and internet imagery to replace what would have been behind the bridge. I then broke the bridge into two parts and used the puppet warp tool to bend steel. Yeah, pretty impressive, me bending steel. After that, I did Google image searches. Lots of them, for things like, explosion, bombing, debris, waves, splashes, and things like that. I used lots of little bits and pieces to start to make the image come to life–er, or, come to death? Next, I found rubble and placed it behind the tower and then used the eraser tool to start breaking windows and glass. I then decided that the top of the tower, on its way down, would probably hit the Trump Tower Restaurant on that setback. Naturally right? I added more waves, more splashing. I made the boat rock. Added some cars driving off the bridge. Duh. Dust. Debris. Danger. Destruction. Damage. Then I added some reflection in the Chicago River. Which is ridiculous because there are never really reflections in the dirty river. But, artistic license. If you like this, check out Pabst Photo on Facebook, like us, and we will be sure you see the next one!

Sure, there are a lot of things I could have done with two more hours. I could have windows popping out and flying every which way. I could have more object falling through the sky. But honestly, since there’s no point in the first place, it’s hard to find reason to burn another two hours in search of some twisted reality.