012 | Tutorial
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Quick tutorial requested by mergana and poetfades2black! I'll be addressing how I did the blend on this (as that seemed to be the biggest question about it), but also I'll cover the coloring and the million tweaks I did because I am crazy.
Basically, I knew this icon was going to be a blend from the beginning. Blending is one of those techniques that other people are super amazing at, and I am just a derp. I wanted to work on it for this round of inspired20in20, so I started by looking for caps that would work well with it.
This starting cap of Eleven was an obvious choice because it has a lot of dark that's perfect for a blend. I actually don't remember why I decided to use this other cap to blend it with other than the fact that it's amazing and I love River Song. We could probably discuss all the ~meaning the blend has, but I honestly do not think I had any special ~implications in mind when I made the icon.
Anyhow, I started by copying the first cap onto a 400x400 canvas and dragging it around until I found a good crop. I knew that I wanted a bit of a border on each side, if possible, so I tried to center the darkest parts. I also grabbed my cap of River at this point and started playing around with it just so I could kinda see how the blend would work. I figured I'd end up with the River layer on the bottom and the layer of Eleven above that set on screen and just dragged things around until they looked decent.
Once I had that figured out, I started the ~real work.
Coloring;
My first layer was a curves layer, because this is basically how I always start. The cap was kinda bland, color-wise, so I tried to make it more interesting. I really pumped up the greens and blues, because the yellowish coloring on the original cap was frankly a bit ick and I didn't want to work with it.
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Next I did a color balance layer and kinda got rid of all the reds for the time being. I really wanted the greens and blues to be bright (I think I knew from the beginning that this icon was going to be a very colorful one, but if not, I just played around with the sliders until things looked cool), and the best way to enhance certain colors that is to get rid of the colors opposite them (reds and magentas, in this case).
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However, I was a bit sad that that lost the variety of color in the cap, so I used my selective color layer to bring back some reds, especially in the blacks. You can see how this kind of killed the green, but at least the yellow this time isn't quite so icky!
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Adding the reds back in kind of killed the vibrance that I had going on, so I stuck on a channel mixer layer (which I have been using since raiindust did that wonderful tutorial on them) to pump up the colors. Now you can really see the reds a bit better, and everything looks nice and bright! That wasn't quite enough for me, so I also stuck on a vibrance layer (that seems to actually make very little difference. Oops).
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Now I really wanted to add a bit more contrast, so I did a copy+merge (cmd+alt+shift+e) and set that layer on soft light, 50%. Unfortunately, that made the blacks so dark that you couldn't see any of the reds, so I duplicated that layer, dragged the copy right underneath it, and set it to screen to bring those back a bit.
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And with that, I'm done with my coloring (mostly). You can see my layers panel for that bit here.
Next, I needed to work with the River cap. It has kinda the same coloring scheme, as you can see, but I wanted to make it contrast with the previous cap, so my coloring here was going to be way different.
So-first thing: curves! With this layer, I really tried to maximize the reds and dial back a bit on the blues.
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The cap looked a bit dark (especially since I was going to be screening another layer over it for the blend), so my levels layer actually reduces the contrast quite a bit by making the blacks not black. I know this is actually terrible form and something that you should ~never do~ in an icon, but...rules are made to be broken? I actually do this with a lot of my icons recently because I like to build the contrast slowly as I go.
I also kinda supplemented the coloring changes I made in this layer as well to keep the colors from getting too washed out. Still, as you can see, it's not looking its best here.
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OKAY, enough of that dullness. I added a color balance layer to give the icon some more richness of color (and reds!) and then a selective color to make River's skin tone more realistic and also bring a bit of red into the blacks.
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Well that's…nice. But still a bit boring. So I did a channel mixer layer to add a bit more contrast between colors, and then a vibrance layer to really make the colors pop.
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Then, as a final bit of work to make the colors pop and add a bit of contrast, I copy-merged and duplicated the resulting layer. The first copy I set to screen, 30% to add a bit of lightness, and the second copy went on soft light, 20%.
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And that's my coloring of River! You can see my layers panel here if you're confused.
Blending;
Now on to the fun part: putting the caps together!
As I said before, I'd worked out basically how I was going to blend them. However, with the coloring done, there were some awkward things going on.
For each step of this section, I'll have two images - one of the cap of River (since that's the one I'm changing) and one where both caps are visible (since that's what I was looking at to see which changes I needed to make). I seriously flipped back and forth between having one or both visible a hundred times when I was doing this blend so I could make sure everything was working, and that's kinda the only way to do it (that I've found. If you know a better way, please tell me asap).
SO. The Awkward Things had to be fixed (on a duplicate layer, of course - always make duplicates when you do something like this in case you make a mistake!) To do this, I basically took a smudge brush, zoomed in to 400%, and started smudging away at my layer until the colors were where I wanted them to be. The first thing I focused on was the awkward lines of light that went through Eleven's face.
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That looks a bit better, but there's a weird light spot down in the lower righthand corner that I hadn't noticed before. MUST FIX. Also, there's still some odd lightness around Eleven's eye.
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OKAY that is looking a lot better. But there's still that weird thing with River's finger that overlaps with part of Eleven's brow and just looks really weird to me. Also, her hair must be restored to its glory. This was just more work with the smudge tool (but carefully, on her hair - you can't just do a mass smudge there) and then a bit with the blur tool (to make the smudged bits of her hair look more natural).
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Kay, awesome! I'm happy with this now, so I copy+merge and set the resulting layer on soft light (40%) to make the colors a bit brighter.
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Lighting;
After finishing up with the coloring and composition of an icon, I always always always go to work on the lighting because I want it to be ~more perfect or whatever. The lighting here isn't terrible, but I do want to lighten up a few places, add some shadows where there should be some, and just generally play around to try to make the icon glow.
For this bit of an icon, I pretty much always just bust out my brush tools, my gaussian blur filter, and lots of new, transparent layers. And then I go crazy. No, seriously.
For this part, in order to show you the layers I used for lighting, I'm going to copy the layer on top of a background that's a color opposite it (so all my lighting layers will be on black and all my shadowing layers will be on white). Just keep in mind when you look at these that what I'm actually doing is brushing these things onto a transparent layer. Also, note: I'm posting the images in kind of reverse order so you can see the two bases next to each other and (hopefully) see that the layers I'm adding are making some difference.
First, I wanted to light up a few places that were kinda dark - River's chest (on the left), the right side of her face near hear eye/cheekbone, her left hand, the bars, and some of her hair. So I brush over those parts with a small white brush, do a slight gaussian blur on it (probably .5 or 1 px, just to make the edges not so abrupt), and set that on soft light, 50%.
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Now I want to add a few shadows. I focus on the area right around River's eyes (think eyeliner), the line where her hair meets her face, the part of the bars and her hair that I _didn't _ highlight, and the part of her hand that's still orange. That layer's on soft light, 50%.
[11_22b, 11_23a, 11_23b]
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I also want to add a bit of shadow to her lower cheek. It's like the effect you get when someone has these wonderful cheekbones that cast the rest of their face into shadow. Um. It's a really dramatic look and I like it, sooo I find myself emphasizing it on almost every one of my icons.
I've learned that this shadow needs to be done on a different layer than the other ones I might do (around the eyes/nose/hairline/etc.) because it usually needs to be at a lot lower opacity. Judging from the way this looks now, I painted it on, blurred it, set it to soft light (40%), and then realized that I needed to erase bits of it.
[11_23b, 11_24a, 11_24b]
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Frankly, on the rest of my icons, this is usually enough work with light blobs, but…I guess that wasn't the case here. So let's continue! In order to spare you, the layers I've added each time are above the base they're on (and it's cumulative, obvs., so you can see the progression).
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WHEW! That was super exhausting. Honestly, even I do not know why I am so nitpicky sometimes. But anyhow, I'm almost ready to add textures, but I think the contrast has gotten a little bit too high. I throw on a brightness/contrast layer to pull it back down a bit, and then I add a vibrance layer so the colors don't get diminished.
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Last, but certainly not least, I copy+merge everything, gaussian blur the resulting layer (I normally just have my gaussian blur filter as my last used and can use it again by pressing cmd+f, so I just do that until it looks right), and set that layer on soft light, 30%. More contrast, brighter colors, and a little bit of blur: added. Yay!
Textures;
So as part of the pushing myself for this icon, I think I decided to go way over what I normally would on the coloring and textures. The coloring is already a bit brighter than what I might normally go for, so now it's texture time! My favorite.
I start by making a new layer and putting a gradient on it to kinda focus the light in the icon on River Song. The layer is set to soft light, 30%.
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Next, I add this texture by midnight_road on soft light, 30% to help out with the lighting and play a bit with the coloring
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However, that's making it a bit too light (though it is nicely focused) and a bit too…well, circle-based? I really want a more vertical feel to this icon to go with the bars that River's holding, so I snag this texture by slayground, drag it around and resize it until I have this part of it over the icon, and set it to soft light, 60%.
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I wanted to add a bit of grunge and texture to this now (imagine that!), so I took this wonderful texture by midnight_road and set it to soft light, 30%. As you can see, this especially adds texture to the back of Eleven's neck, which is pretty much exactly what I was looking for. It also backs up the center focus that I did with my previous light textures, so yay for it.
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Okay, well, that's nice, but the icon is still a bit dark. I grabbed this texture by blame (and isn't it gorgeous, ohmygod) and set it on soft light, 60%. However, that wasn't quite working for me-it washed out the darks a bit too much. So I put on a brightness/contrast layer as a clipping mask to up the contrast between the whites and colors, then did a hue/saturation clipping mask so the texture conformed more with the color scheme of the icon. If you're curious, it looked like so after I did that.
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Then I added this texture by erzsebet (soft light, 50%) to lighten up the icon and this texture by insomniax (soft light, 20%) to lighten/warm the left half of the icon a bit.
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Okay, enough of that. At this point, the icon is looking a bit too color-vomit-y (even if I am pushing myself), so I add a vibrance layer (with the slider in the negatives, obviously) to calm those down a bit. And my ever-present brightness/contrast layer to make it a tad darker and less contrast-y.
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Then I do copy+merge and put the new layer on soft light at 100% to make sure that the black are more black and add back in some color and contrast. Basically, I did the vibrance and brightness/contrast layers so I could do this layer, because this layer changes the way colors and light look in ways that I can't do (I don't think) with brightness/contrast layers alone. Someone has probably figured out a much more sensible way to do this, just so you know.
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Touch - ups;
I was about to say WE ARE ALMOST DONE, THANK GOODNESS but then I looked at how many layers I had left to cover…
anyhow, guess I should just get going on that.
There's still a few things bugging me about this icon: some coloring issues, sharpness issues, lighting things that I didn't fix before. So I need to address those before I can call this icon done.
First, we have River's hand (on the left) that has this awkward multicolor thing going on. That's not gonna fly, so I take my brush tool, get the color that the rest of her hand is, make a new layer, brush over that spot, and do a slight gaussian blur on my painting layer. I set the layer to color, 30%, but there's still a difference between the lighting of the two parts of her hand. I duplicate the layer and set it to multiply, 70% to fix that.
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Next I want to address the sharpness, so I do a copy+merge and take a blur brush to the resulting layer. I go over the bars, River's hands, and the highlights on Eleven's face and the back of his neck.
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However, some of the other lines on the icon are a tad blurry, so I duplicate that layer and do an unsharp mask (probably around 20px) and then mask out the parts that get too sharp - mainly the parts I just blurred.
[11_46, masks]
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At this point, I realize that there's not enough yellows and greens in the icon, so I do a quick Channel Mixer layer to change that.
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Then I do a bit more shadow-adding since River's face looks a bit flat again. Yes, I have issues
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Then for a final bit of shape, I did a clear -> black radial gradient layer (like so - just imagine the white away) and put it on soft light, 30% to give the icon a bit of a dark border.
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And that's it! I am still very new to this tutorial thing, so please let me know if my format is hard to read / if there's something I didn't explain very well / if there's something you're still wondering!
Thanks for reading!