Halo:Reach Ad Banner FanArt

I got a wild bug to create some deeper fanart than just a panorama. So I took my favorite panorama, "Mind the First Step", and turned it into an advertising campaign banner. Similar to the kind you would see in your local Gamestop, for example.
•20"w x 50"
•72dpi (resolution I grab the shots from my account on Bungie.net)
•The original panorama: [link]

The reason why I chose to use this picture for this is because of how the spire curves and your eyes naturally go from the top to the bottom of the picture. Everything seems to flow very well in this deviation. I even surprised myself when I saw it after I was done. My spartan really stands out and helps to set the starting focal point for the picture.
As for the logos and whatnot, Google is a great thing. I wasn't able to find the "ONLY ON XBOX LIVE" stamp-type logo. Once I find that and put it on here, then this will be fully complete and I will love it forever.
I hope you all enjoy it.

Process:
Played a match of Halo: Reach Invasion Slayer on Spire over Xbox Live on my Xbox 360. After the match I went into the game's theater mode and found the scene I wanted to shoot. To create my panorama, I begin with the middle of the 3 columns of screenshots I will take. Once I capture a screenshot, I will move the camera about 40-50% until I get another screenshot. I continue doing this until I have the area I want to use all captured.

Once captured, I will then upload all the pics to my file share where I then download the high resolution .jpg. The easy part is using Photoshop CS5's automation feature to photomerge the screenshots together. Once it processes that, I then use the Rectangular Marquee Tool to copy the picture merged together so I can then paste it on a new document. I don't have to do it this way and could instead just mask the original, but I prefer to keep it separate original. Once on the new .psd, I then adjusted the Vibrance and Contrast to +35 and +20 to bring out the rich colors in the picture. I then copied the picture and hid it. I began the blurring of the areas of least interest and to create a focal point for the eyes to follow. My blurs for the furthest away were at 94%. Upon getting closer to the spartan, I adjusted the blur down to as low as 2%. After blurring, I will then sharpen the spartan slightly on some edges, Mainly the DMR barrel, Gungnir left shoulder armor. I also added in a lens flare where you see the light at his leg and lowered this flare to 22%. Once i was pleased with the picture, I unhid the copied picture and lowered it's opacity and fill to roughly 15% each. With this being done, the blurred picture showed through the non-blurred picture, which gave it some nice definition and depth in the blurred areas.

Once the picture was complete, I then googled for the logos. I wanted to find large logos so it took me a moment to find the ones I was satisfied with for the resources I had available to me. Once I found them, I placed them on the bottom and adjusted the size, colors distance between each other and gave them a slight drop shadow to stand out. When the words and logos were in place, I decided to place two more gradients on the piece. One at the top and one at the bottom. The top one is very slight and goes from the spire blue that is on the shield to transparent. The bottom gradient goes from the ground's slightly darker of tan color to transparent as well.