#72 - Icon Tutorial 02 - The Mummy (aka: fun with rambling)
In my Ask the Maker thread dark_x_huntress asked for three tutorials and this is the first one. I'll likely do the next two together since they're both Shadowhunters and I think I did them at the same time.
We're gonna go from this:
to
I made this icon for a challenge at theiconthrone called I'm Kind of a Big Deal, which was to icon things that represented us. This icon was part of five of my favourite movies (the others being The Breakfast Club, Hot Fuzz, Tangled and Speed. I can recite most of the characters' lines from each of these movies because I have and continue to watch them so much).
I've never actually iconned The Mummy and because I left that challenge to the last second (what other way do I leave things?) I didn't have time to hunt down caps and sort through what I wanted. Instead I Googled "The Mummy", went to images and selected large as a sorting filter. This was one with a different colouring than the rest of the images that popped up, that were very yellow and orange and "sandy", for obvious reasons. I also like that the image pretty much sums up the movie in one still. There's an evil creature, Evey's horrified and curious, and Rick is brash and hammy.
01) I started out by resizing and placing my image which is where we start with this journey.
This movie came out in 1999, before hi-res images were prevalent and easily accessible. When I selected "large" under search tools in my Google search a bigger image of this still popped up, over 2000px wide, but when you look at it that shit is blurry as hell. Beggars can't be choosers but obviously the best quality you can get your hands on is key.
Sorry, rambling. Anyway. So as you can see when I made the image smaller the colours seemed to... tighten up? Get sharper? The contrast also seems to be uppped from the original image.
02) I duplicated the base and set it to multiply, then added a Topaz filter. Normally I would have gone with soft light for my middle layer but I find with hi-res images, movie stills, etc that they lose way too much detail when I do softlight --> screen. I can't explain why (and have no idea) so for official stills like this I usually bounce the darker multiply layer off screen.
The filter looks like Topaz cartooned? When cartooned is used in images with smaller details, kind of like this one, but that aren't necessarily detail focused (this isn't a Where's Waldo picture, after all), it adds softer detail focusing without over sharpening. I could sharpen the image and reduce it to make it managable but the Topaz filters are fun! The cartooned one is GREAT to use with a super bright close up when you want to exaggerate angles or shadows.
MORE RAMBLING.
--> Scary, right? It's horribly dark and you can really see the distortion that the filter puts on the image.
03) That's why I slapped a screened layer on top of that ish! It's really bright and contrast-y now, too, which I'm only a fan of when I want it done on purpose.
--> look at the definition on that regenerating muscle and flesh, though!
04) I added a brightness/contrast layer next and reduced the contrast A LOT. It brought the image down so you could actually see some of the stuff that was left shadow-y from my duplicate layers/
--> It lessened the severity of the dark parts and made it easier for me to see what was going on in the icon.
05) Gradient map time! I added this one set to soft light.
-->
--> To me this just looks like when I'm purposely going for a muted tones icon but not on purpose at all. :(
06) My final step is a vibrance/saturation layer. I most often play around with the vibrance over the saturation because I find the vibrance is enough for me to be happy with the colouring but saturation can push it into "MY EYES ARE BLEEDING" territory. Here, however, I actually used more saturation than I normally would. I cranked the vibrance up and threw in about a quarter of that for saturation.
Final product!
--> I think it helps that the icon has the infamous blue/orange contrast going for it (if you didn't know it's a thing). Super simple but a lot more vibrant than the original image.
Layers
Questions? Clarification needed? Just ask!
We're gonna go from this:
to
I made this icon for a challenge at theiconthrone called I'm Kind of a Big Deal, which was to icon things that represented us. This icon was part of five of my favourite movies (the others being The Breakfast Club, Hot Fuzz, Tangled and Speed. I can recite most of the characters' lines from each of these movies because I have and continue to watch them so much).
I've never actually iconned The Mummy and because I left that challenge to the last second (what other way do I leave things?) I didn't have time to hunt down caps and sort through what I wanted. Instead I Googled "The Mummy", went to images and selected large as a sorting filter. This was one with a different colouring than the rest of the images that popped up, that were very yellow and orange and "sandy", for obvious reasons. I also like that the image pretty much sums up the movie in one still. There's an evil creature, Evey's horrified and curious, and Rick is brash and hammy.
01) I started out by resizing and placing my image which is where we start with this journey.
This movie came out in 1999, before hi-res images were prevalent and easily accessible. When I selected "large" under search tools in my Google search a bigger image of this still popped up, over 2000px wide, but when you look at it that shit is blurry as hell. Beggars can't be choosers but obviously the best quality you can get your hands on is key.
Sorry, rambling. Anyway. So as you can see when I made the image smaller the colours seemed to... tighten up? Get sharper? The contrast also seems to be uppped from the original image.
02) I duplicated the base and set it to multiply, then added a Topaz filter. Normally I would have gone with soft light for my middle layer but I find with hi-res images, movie stills, etc that they lose way too much detail when I do softlight --> screen. I can't explain why (and have no idea) so for official stills like this I usually bounce the darker multiply layer off screen.
The filter looks like Topaz cartooned? When cartooned is used in images with smaller details, kind of like this one, but that aren't necessarily detail focused (this isn't a Where's Waldo picture, after all), it adds softer detail focusing without over sharpening. I could sharpen the image and reduce it to make it managable but the Topaz filters are fun! The cartooned one is GREAT to use with a super bright close up when you want to exaggerate angles or shadows.
MORE RAMBLING.
--> Scary, right? It's horribly dark and you can really see the distortion that the filter puts on the image.
03) That's why I slapped a screened layer on top of that ish! It's really bright and contrast-y now, too, which I'm only a fan of when I want it done on purpose.
--> look at the definition on that regenerating muscle and flesh, though!
04) I added a brightness/contrast layer next and reduced the contrast A LOT. It brought the image down so you could actually see some of the stuff that was left shadow-y from my duplicate layers/
--> It lessened the severity of the dark parts and made it easier for me to see what was going on in the icon.
05) Gradient map time! I added this one set to soft light.
-->
--> To me this just looks like when I'm purposely going for a muted tones icon but not on purpose at all. :(
06) My final step is a vibrance/saturation layer. I most often play around with the vibrance over the saturation because I find the vibrance is enough for me to be happy with the colouring but saturation can push it into "MY EYES ARE BLEEDING" territory. Here, however, I actually used more saturation than I normally would. I cranked the vibrance up and threw in about a quarter of that for saturation.
Final product!
--> I think it helps that the icon has the infamous blue/orange contrast going for it (if you didn't know it's a thing). Super simple but a lot more vibrant than the original image.
Layers
Questions? Clarification needed? Just ask!