This is good Niko! Very green! The little red eyes peering out of the darkness are a good effect...is the dude meant to have a "Frankenstein-type" pose there? (ie is that the effect you wanted to portray, or am I tripping again?) I hate it when I feel those patches of 'flatness', no inspiration, I'm glad you've broken out of yours. :-)>

Great fantasy picture..!
Isn't this a very state-of-the-art photomontage, as always..?!

First, I thought that a man wandering among the woods encounters the "tree of life", and breaks to a shocked halt...
...But, the man is headless..!
..."The Headless Wanderer-Man"..!

Also, as far as I can notice, he seems to be looking towards us...
...I mean, turned towards us...
...Yet, the back of his hands seem to be looking away from us...
...Anyway, he, the keeper......the scarecrow..!

Or, is it not Cameron, but definitely me who really does the trippin'..?

I love the tree itself, you created a very strange sense of space which is great. Texture is wonderful but I guess that goes without saying! Nice touch with the red eyes. I think we're all tripping after this ; D

I'm happy for you, Niko. You've successfully gotten out of that plateau. :-) Very 'painterly', I should say. :-) As for me... (*

Tree of life?....or tree of death?....awesome work Nico. This was very dark on my monitor, couldn't see any detail in the darker areas, until I brought it into photoshop and played with levels a bit.

cool - I like the perspective here, the way those top leaves are so close it seems like your slightly raised and looking just a touch down on the figure....nice use of the textures, too...yup, I likes this. (",)

Wow. OK> I think I'll have to take the time to study this one. This reminds me of the Comic Thor and the Ygressil(sp) tree. Then I read the comments and saw the red eyes and that the man was headless. so if this is the tree of life and he is Adam where is eve? Bsteph

Thank you guys. I'm wery pleased that you liked this one. This became on of my personal favorities too. Punk. Dunno about that frankie pose, thats just darkened portrait of me. And I hate those flat times too, it's pretty annoying to notice that head that used to be full of wicked ideas is temporarily empty. Doruk. damn you and your sharp eye. Original pic is me looking away from camera, removed my bald head and tried to create illusion of stooping figure. Bevchiron, thank you. Speaking about space and textures, I'll post the original pics that I worked.. Stars. Wanted to do something bit watercolored. Michelle, you got the idea behind this... BUT, damn, so the pic was too dark after all? I got win2000 and haven't calibrated my monitor, so darkness might be from me. Jordy. ...actually, I did not use any ready textures this time. Just photos and watercolor filter. Bsteph, so this is too dark for you too? Damn, damn, damn. IS that pic too dark? .n

I just calibrated my monitor, I like my Mac settings but realised my images looked very dark & different to most people. I should be seeing things at least similat to Windows now & your image doesn't look too dark to me. Dark yes, but in an atmospheric way, not dark, I can't see it. Interesting to see the original pics.

I don't know could be my monitor.....couldn't see the red eyes that everyone was talking about or that the guy was headless..... But usually most images look fine to me...that's why I pulled it onto my hard drive to get a better look.

It is now (I mean when you provide the raw material) that the wild imagination behind the final result is seen far more clearly, I think..! Really interesting, and I'm really impressed... :)

btw, Niko, just what IS that second picture that makes up the tree trunk? (",)

Jordy. Its the edge of the melting (surprise, surprise) ice on the water. .n

oh. right. of course. shucks, now why didn't I see that? ;-) (Mike removes tongue from cheek) (",)

one late comment: excptional composition. and very interesting to see a bit of what went in there. extraordinary stuff!