The starfield and moon elements of the stellar cover scene were taken from Digital Domain's image library. The Earth was supplied by Mike Gentry of the Media Resource Center at NASA's Johnson Space Center, and then enhanced by art director Ron Gress, who corrected colors and removed artifacts created by the scanning process. After the cameraman image was digitized, the elements were delivered to artist Filippo Costanzo.
The Earth and moon originally appeared quite flat, so Costanzo re-lit them from the left side as per Physioc's drawing, using Amazon Paint to create the desired shading and directionality. He likes Amazon's simplicity and ease of use, which caters to his skills as an architect and traditional artist. Costanzo then keyed out the white background from the cameraman element and adjusted the shading on the right side of the figure.
Costanzo notes that the use of the white background during photography created a wraparound lighting effect on the cameraman, helping to tie him to the mysterious fantasy mist element, which the artist painted in by hand.
Using Panavision's new Millennium as his basis, Costanzo then built the hybrid camera by adding a video viewfinder and other fictional components.
The finalized elements were composited using Digital Domain's proprietary "Nuke" software and exported as a single high-resolution, layered Photoshop TIFF file.
Finally, AC design consultant Alan Alpanian adjusted the finalized elements so they would fit the cover's typography requirements.
The entire AC staff would like to thank our creative partners for helping us create this month's cover, which would not have been possible without them.
