05. vampire_sessah - tutorial on blending
This will be a tutorial about how I blend in icons. I hope you'll find it interesting and helpful. If you have any questions then please go ahead and ask :) I'll try to answer then asap!
from
to
01. First I open a new canvas of 150x150px. I always use a slightly larger canvas when doing more complex icons because you can see more and also because it makes some little mistakes invisible when you later resize it to 100x100
02. The I paste both caps onto the canvas and resize them to my liking.
03. My next step when I'm blending is always that I put the upper (which is usually the one with a smaller person) cap on screen.
04. Now you need to add a layer mask to the upper layer and pick a soft black brush. I would recommend a size between 10px - 25px, you just need to play with that.
Then you click on the layer mask next to the layer with your cap and start brushing around the features of the person you want to blend into the background.
My icon now looks like this
05. As you may notice you can't really make her out so you'll have to create a new layer.
06. Again take your black brush and start painting at the new layer. This time you want to bring out her face and features so you'll have to paint over that. You don't need to be too precise when brushing because you can erase wrong bits later. Also I'd recommend to use gaussian blur (~3,6 px) at least once to make the edges smoother. You'll most likely need to change bits on this layer later.
07. Place the black brushed layer below the upper cap and voila!
08. Now you need to take a look if all things that you want to be visible are visible. If some aren't then just go back to the layer with the black brush.
Now you're done with the blending part of the icon. I always colour the caps after I blended them if I blend unless when their individual colours are too different. With this icon this isn't the case luckily so I just go ahead to the next step.
09. Flatten the whole image and resize it to 100x100px.
-->
10. The already blended icon is now your base. Now you can just do the usual steps you do when making an icon.
-->
Done!
All of my blendings are done in the same way
+
=
+
=
+
=
+
=
+
=
+
=
+
=
As you may notice all these have a larger person and a smaller one blended together.
It's my favourite way of blending because you can use the smaller person to blend into darker places like the hair (example 1&3) or shadows (example 4&5).
Excellent for blending are also silhouettes, profiles or backs (example 2 & the icon this tut is about)
from
to
01. First I open a new canvas of 150x150px. I always use a slightly larger canvas when doing more complex icons because you can see more and also because it makes some little mistakes invisible when you later resize it to 100x100
02. The I paste both caps onto the canvas and resize them to my liking.
03. My next step when I'm blending is always that I put the upper (which is usually the one with a smaller person) cap on screen.
04. Now you need to add a layer mask to the upper layer and pick a soft black brush. I would recommend a size between 10px - 25px, you just need to play with that.
Then you click on the layer mask next to the layer with your cap and start brushing around the features of the person you want to blend into the background.
My icon now looks like this
05. As you may notice you can't really make her out so you'll have to create a new layer.
06. Again take your black brush and start painting at the new layer. This time you want to bring out her face and features so you'll have to paint over that. You don't need to be too precise when brushing because you can erase wrong bits later. Also I'd recommend to use gaussian blur (~3,6 px) at least once to make the edges smoother. You'll most likely need to change bits on this layer later.
07. Place the black brushed layer below the upper cap and voila!
08. Now you need to take a look if all things that you want to be visible are visible. If some aren't then just go back to the layer with the black brush.
Now you're done with the blending part of the icon. I always colour the caps after I blended them if I blend unless when their individual colours are too different. With this icon this isn't the case luckily so I just go ahead to the next step.
09. Flatten the whole image and resize it to 100x100px.
-->
10. The already blended icon is now your base. Now you can just do the usual steps you do when making an icon.
-->
Done!
All of my blendings are done in the same way
+
=
+
=
+
=
+
=
+
=
+
=
+
=
As you may notice all these have a larger person and a smaller one blended together.
It's my favourite way of blending because you can use the smaller person to blend into darker places like the hair (example 1&3) or shadows (example 4&5).
Excellent for blending are also silhouettes, profiles or backs (example 2 & the icon this tut is about)