Aileen (Dark Tower) icon process
I was asked by john_scorpy about the Aileen icon at my Ask the Maker thread, so here's a short and sweet process guide on what I did to that icon.
I use Photoshop CS4, but the steps are fairly straightforward and should be translatable.
The base image I used has beautiful colors, but were a bit muted. I was going for the "wolves/dangerous" theme at theiconquest and I wanted something bold, red, alarming.
One
I took the image and pasted it on to a 100x100 canvas, resizing and moving it around using Free Transform until I had a crop I liked.
Two
As usual, I applied Color Balance right on that same layer, so I recreated the coloring on a Color Balance Adjustment layer for this tutorial.
Shadows: -100, -18, +18
Midtones: +100, -30, -100
Highlights: +26, 0, -21
However, that knocked out the pink around the gun, which I thought was a nice, ironic touch. So I put it back using a layer with a #ff92c2 soft brush set on hard light.
...buuut I wanted the gun to be crisp. So I masked away her hand with the gun.
For a more glowy look, I duplicated the layer and set that to soft light.
Three
I added her name in Ringbearer font, #5a5a5a, set that to Linear Dodge blending mode, and positioned it parallel to the arch of her body.
To add a bit more contrast, I added the Outer Glow effect on the text layer:
Blend Mode: Linear Burn
Opacity: 75%
Color: #d4d45e
And then I masked away the parts of the letters that covered her body.
(Yes I kinda like masks.)
Four
I still felt it was missing something. So I added another layer with the same font settings but in Helvetica Neue, Light weight, 8pt.
i would break what's left of me at your behest
Set that to Linear Dodge, and lower the opacity.
That didn't seem quite right, so I experimented with placement. I eventually ended up with the placement as it's seen in the icon, to follow the lines already in the rest of the icon.
And that's it :)
My layers:
Ask The Maker || My Thread
I use Photoshop CS4, but the steps are fairly straightforward and should be translatable.
The base image I used has beautiful colors, but were a bit muted. I was going for the "wolves/dangerous" theme at theiconquest and I wanted something bold, red, alarming.
One
I took the image and pasted it on to a 100x100 canvas, resizing and moving it around using Free Transform until I had a crop I liked.
Two
As usual, I applied Color Balance right on that same layer, so I recreated the coloring on a Color Balance Adjustment layer for this tutorial.
Shadows: -100, -18, +18
Midtones: +100, -30, -100
Highlights: +26, 0, -21
However, that knocked out the pink around the gun, which I thought was a nice, ironic touch. So I put it back using a layer with a #ff92c2 soft brush set on hard light.
...buuut I wanted the gun to be crisp. So I masked away her hand with the gun.
For a more glowy look, I duplicated the layer and set that to soft light.
Three
I added her name in Ringbearer font, #5a5a5a, set that to Linear Dodge blending mode, and positioned it parallel to the arch of her body.
To add a bit more contrast, I added the Outer Glow effect on the text layer:
Blend Mode: Linear Burn
Opacity: 75%
Color: #d4d45e
And then I masked away the parts of the letters that covered her body.
(Yes I kinda like masks.)
Four
I still felt it was missing something. So I added another layer with the same font settings but in Helvetica Neue, Light weight, 8pt.
i would break what's left of me at your behest
Set that to Linear Dodge, and lower the opacity.
That didn't seem quite right, so I experimented with placement. I eventually ended up with the placement as it's seen in the icon, to follow the lines already in the rest of the icon.
And that's it :)
My layers:
Ask The Maker || My Thread