xxvii. tutorial - jesse

[fuuurs]

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My Ask the Maker thread is here if you have any burning questions you need answered.  If anything in this tutorial isn't clear enough, don't be afraid to ask me about it. ♥

I knew I wanted lots of negative space so I started off with this:


I wanted to brighten things up, so I used Levels (19, 1.0, 196).


Seeing as this was made for the color palette challenge at IQ, I decided I needed to desaturate things in order to make coloring easier. I created the following gradient map (ffffff, e5dacd) and set it to normal at 50%.




I needed things to be a little warmer, so I used color balance. I only changed the midtones (+28, 0, 0).


At this point I decided to fill in the negative space was bugging me. I created a color fill layer (621912) and masked it so Jesse was still visible.


I wanted to lighten things up and add a little grit to the icon, so I added the following texture, set to soft light.




I still needed to make things warmer and peachier, so I added the following texture (set to soft light again).




The icon looked really boring at this point, so I set the following texture to soft light and masked it over Jesse in order to give the background more visual interest.




Next I sharpened the icon with Smart Sharpen.




The icon needed text as a requirement for the challenge I made it for, so I used the color f0dfb9, Futura Std (Extra Bold) for the font and set the tracking to -100. I warped the text (using the Shell Lower style) with a +1% bend, 0% horizontal distortion and +22% vertical distortion. I set the opacity to 65% and masked it over Jesse. Then I duplicated the text, used the gaussian blur (0.3) and set it to normal at 100%.






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