As I was writing “Apprentice,” I always wanted to create cover art with an image of a grown-up looking Jack standing with Riddick, the two of them looking like they might realistically be a couple. The big problem that I had was that, while there was a wealth of Vin Diesel images available, there were almost none of Rhiana. (Another big problem I had was that I had very little good graphic design software available to me for a long time.) As I found images, I began experimenting. Ironically, I only got really good at it after the recasting announcement had come through, and it suddenly became incredibly important to me to create images of the reunion that I, and other Rhiana and Riddick/Jack fans, had been hoping to see and now never would. Most of these also appeared on the Rhiana Griffith Fan Club website’s galleries, and should reappear there after the relaunch.
“Organic Duo” — This wasn’t necessarily the first photomanip I did, but it does use one of the earliest images of Rhiana that appeared online. Her shirt was actually red in the image, but I redid it in black to match Riddick’s shirt. Probably the trickiest part was finding exactly the right color casts to use on the images so that they would appear to have been together and lit by the same sources. I think I was able to match them up pretty well, and the process taught me a lot about limited palettes and hue adjustments.
“Heavenly Conjunction” — as I recall, the image of Vin Diesel that I used in this actually came from his short film, “Multifacial.” I recolored his tank top to black and slapped some goggles on his head to make him look like Riddick… but didn’t remember to shine his eyes (rats!). The image of Rhiana is a lot of photomanipulation. It’s her face, but someone else’s body and hair. The facial image comes from her performance as “Aimee” on the Australian soap opera Home & Away, and I think I stole the hair and body from a catalogue model.Getting it to look like I hadn’t just pasted her head onto someone else took a while, and then I needed to match her hues with “Riddick’s” and give them a background that fit — using a screencap from Pitch Black itself. This is the end result, and I am pretty happy with it.
“Two of a Kind” — In one episode of the Australian soap opera, Home & Away, Rhiana Griffith’s character Aimee cajoled one of the show’s starring characters into holding a “bikini car wash” to raise money. Stills and clips from the soap were hard to come by, but it was pretty much guaranteed that anything that had to do with “bikini car wash” and teenage girls was going to make it online… and in fact it was this very clip and accompanying stills that made us non-Australian Rhiana fans aware of the fact that she was acting in the soap. Her bikini wasn’t black, but it seemed appropriate to make it black when pairing her up with Riddick. I didn’t do the best job of adding highlights and shadows to it, though, and I probably should have given her the Jack goggles. But the lighting worked pretty well and it’s not my worst manip… not that you get to see the worst ones on here! Photographers and artists are not known by the pictures they take or make, but by the pictures they show.
“Hobby Girl” — I really didn’t do enough hue adjustment to this one. Obviously this uses the same image of Riddick that I used in “Two of a Kind,” but this time, I used a much later image of Rhiana, circa 2005, from her performance in the short film Wrong Answer, directed by J.D. Cohen. Rhiana portrayed “Clare,” a college student who had agreed to participate in a psychological study. What she didn’t know was that it was reproducing the infamous Milgram experiment, which ultimately led to a broken and traumatized Clare fleeing the test in tears. One still the RGFC was given featured Clare looking warily up at the professor in charge of the experiment as he instructs her on what she’s expected to do, and that’s the one I used. Aside from adding the Jack goggles, I really didn’t change much about the picture… and as noted, really didn’t do enough to blend her with the Pitch Black image behind her.
“Pillow Talk” — Not my best work, but definitely one of the raciest in the collection. The image of Vin was an extremely popular one hosted on AoVD and many other fan sites, one that generated a lot of thirsty commentary in the chat room, too! I paired it up with a screen capture from Rhiana Griffith’s performance on the Australian soap opera Home & Away. Her character, Aimee, had developed an obsessive crush on a guy who lived in the same house she did (even though he aleady had a girlfriend) and so one afternoon, after he had lain down for a nap, she sneaked into his bedroom, partly undressed, and joined him in bed… something that resulted in some high drama when his actual girlfriend came home later. But it gave me a great image to work with. Combined with some pillows and draperies I found online, I was able to create a fairly decent boudoir scene, although I should have done more with focus depths, perspective, and lighting.
“Skiff Jack” — The base image I used for this is from the Pitch Black “Skiff Scene,” in which Riddick tries to intimidate (or possibly turn on) Fry by standing right behind her and murmuring in her ear about how Johns isn’t a legitimate police man. So yeah, Rhiana Griffith’s face is superimposed over Radha Mitchell’s. I used a screenshot from her performance in the Australian crime drama “White Collar Blue,” where she portrayed Lilly Derwent, a young woman who had just escaped the clutches of a serial killer. While being questioned by the police, she began suffering from the effects of the roofie that she’d been unknowingly dosed with, growing sleepier and spacier with each question. That gave me a lovely shot of her wearing much the same expression that Fry was wearing in the Pitch Black screen capture (which you can find on the cover of “Unrestrained”). An image of Vin Diesel’s hand was added on top of everything… although I don’t think I did the best job of making it look like it belonged there.
“Stay in the Light” — I think this is one of my better accomplishments in terms of lighting and hues. I paired up a publicity still of Riddick in Pitch Black with another of the publicity stills we were given from Wrong Answer, and experimented with light and color until it looked relatively plausible that both figures were lit by the same source. I’m pretty happy with it.