Ask the Maker 2015 // Tutorial 01
The lovely absolutelybatty asked me for a bunch of tutorials over at this year's Ask the Maker! This is the first; a tutorial for an icon that I made for the November challenge over at tmfaction.
I started off with this image from Fate/Apocrypha, although mine was pre-cut out so I saved some time. The composition I had in mind required negative space, so I centered her on the canvas and made sure that the image was still large enough to be able to pick out the details. I chose a colour from her outfit with the eyedropper tool that wasn't too bright and made a fill colour layer with it for the background.
I started off with my usual base prep: I used ctrl+alt+shift+e to merge and copy the subject and background, then moved this to the very bottom of my layer stack underneath the background so that I had it to hand if needed. I then copied this layer and brought it to the top and set it to Soft Light 20% to give the colours a bit of depth without it being overpowering.
After this, I created a new layer and used the gradient tool (I like to set mine to a radial gradient so that it has a more natural look) to add light to the icon. I set my gradient colours to black and white, then dragged from the top left corner to the bottom right, so that the top left was nice and light while shadows were brought in towards the bottom of the icon. This layer was set to Soft Light 70%.
Next I added my favourite texture to the top of the layer stack. I use this texture on basically every icon because it works really well to add lighting and is just really versatile.
by marcasite set to Screen 65%.
The background was looking a bit flat and boring, so I added some textures to add interest and to start building up the colouring. Of the textures below, I added the first one by madeofstone as a layer above the background colour, rotated and desaturated it, then set it to Soft Light 45%.
Next, above the original image but below the gradients, etc. I added the other textures below to start building in some colour. The first, made by pamkips, is set to Soft Light 20%, The second, made by midnight_road, was heavily blurred, rotated to my liking so that it fit with the lighting direction created by the gradient, and set to Soft Light 25%. The effect is subtle at the moment because I want to build on it with the Adjustment Layers.
I wanted to add text, and chose this placement because I already had the blocking composition in mind and so didn't want to clutter the background. I used the font "Intro" because it was clean and clear even at small sizes, and to make the text a bit more interesting I picked a yellow colour from the subject's clothes and used that to make one of the words a bit more eyecatching.
Because the text isn't really the main focus, I chose to frame the subject with the words by duplicating my text layer and moved each layer to one side of the character. I still wanted the text to be somewhat readable rather than getting lost so I added a Drop Shadow to both layers set to Soft Light 50%, with Distance and Size set to 1px.
Next I started on the Adjustment Layers. I started with Selective Colour. Most of the time I only change the Neutrals, and for this icon I set the values to C = -2, M = +5, Y = -2, B = +2. This brought out the blues of the icon while not making the icon too cold.
Next I added a Vibrance layer, where Vibrance was set to + 48 and Saturation to +1. I changed this to a Colour layer because this way the colours of the icon aren't darkened by the change.
To add to the lighting, I used a Curves layer next. I moved the graph just a teeny bit, so that the middle point was set to Input 127, Output 132. This lightened the icon up a bit. Then I added a Levels layer to bring a tiny bit of contrast back in, I set the three graph values to 2, 1.00, 255.
I can never have enough lighting! Above all the adjustment layers, I duplicated the earlier gradient layer and the marcasite texture and set them to Soft Light 50% and Screen 30%, respectively.
For a simple icon, this would now be finished! Now I had to start messing around with blocking...
For the left panel, I copymerged everything I had so far and cut out a selection from the middle of the icon so that I would get a good chunk of the subject in the frame. I deleted everything else from the copymerged layer, rotated it by 180 degrees and shifted it over to the left.
The smaller images in the background are also made from a copymerged layer from the above step. I resized this image to about 20% of its original size, rotated it 180 degrees and duplicated it so that I had a set of tiles that I then moved down the layer stack until it was just above the desaturated madeofstone texture from earlier. I didn't want it to completely cover the background because then you couldn't see the texture work, so I masked out the left half of this layer with a fuzzy brush.
Another copymerged layer taken from two steps above! This time I resized this to about 90% and moved it so that only 5-10 pixels were showing at the left edge of the icon. I duplicated the layer and did the same on the right edge of the icon.
Next I copymerged all of these layers, reduced the Opacity to 7% and set this layer to Vivid Light to brighten things up. Lastly I did another copymerge(!) and used Smart Sharpen with the below settings (layer set to 60% Opacity):
And we're done! I know my writing tends to get a bit scattered so I hope that didn't make the tutorial difficult to follow. If you'd like to request a tutorial yourself, please check out the promo below!
Ask The Maker 2015 || My Thread
I started off with this image from Fate/Apocrypha, although mine was pre-cut out so I saved some time. The composition I had in mind required negative space, so I centered her on the canvas and made sure that the image was still large enough to be able to pick out the details. I chose a colour from her outfit with the eyedropper tool that wasn't too bright and made a fill colour layer with it for the background.
I started off with my usual base prep: I used ctrl+alt+shift+e to merge and copy the subject and background, then moved this to the very bottom of my layer stack underneath the background so that I had it to hand if needed. I then copied this layer and brought it to the top and set it to Soft Light 20% to give the colours a bit of depth without it being overpowering.
After this, I created a new layer and used the gradient tool (I like to set mine to a radial gradient so that it has a more natural look) to add light to the icon. I set my gradient colours to black and white, then dragged from the top left corner to the bottom right, so that the top left was nice and light while shadows were brought in towards the bottom of the icon. This layer was set to Soft Light 70%.
Next I added my favourite texture to the top of the layer stack. I use this texture on basically every icon because it works really well to add lighting and is just really versatile.
by marcasite set to Screen 65%.
The background was looking a bit flat and boring, so I added some textures to add interest and to start building up the colouring. Of the textures below, I added the first one by madeofstone as a layer above the background colour, rotated and desaturated it, then set it to Soft Light 45%.
Next, above the original image but below the gradients, etc. I added the other textures below to start building in some colour. The first, made by pamkips, is set to Soft Light 20%, The second, made by midnight_road, was heavily blurred, rotated to my liking so that it fit with the lighting direction created by the gradient, and set to Soft Light 25%. The effect is subtle at the moment because I want to build on it with the Adjustment Layers.
I wanted to add text, and chose this placement because I already had the blocking composition in mind and so didn't want to clutter the background. I used the font "Intro" because it was clean and clear even at small sizes, and to make the text a bit more interesting I picked a yellow colour from the subject's clothes and used that to make one of the words a bit more eyecatching.
Because the text isn't really the main focus, I chose to frame the subject with the words by duplicating my text layer and moved each layer to one side of the character. I still wanted the text to be somewhat readable rather than getting lost so I added a Drop Shadow to both layers set to Soft Light 50%, with Distance and Size set to 1px.
Next I started on the Adjustment Layers. I started with Selective Colour. Most of the time I only change the Neutrals, and for this icon I set the values to C = -2, M = +5, Y = -2, B = +2. This brought out the blues of the icon while not making the icon too cold.
Next I added a Vibrance layer, where Vibrance was set to + 48 and Saturation to +1. I changed this to a Colour layer because this way the colours of the icon aren't darkened by the change.
To add to the lighting, I used a Curves layer next. I moved the graph just a teeny bit, so that the middle point was set to Input 127, Output 132. This lightened the icon up a bit. Then I added a Levels layer to bring a tiny bit of contrast back in, I set the three graph values to 2, 1.00, 255.
I can never have enough lighting! Above all the adjustment layers, I duplicated the earlier gradient layer and the marcasite texture and set them to Soft Light 50% and Screen 30%, respectively.
For a simple icon, this would now be finished! Now I had to start messing around with blocking...
For the left panel, I copymerged everything I had so far and cut out a selection from the middle of the icon so that I would get a good chunk of the subject in the frame. I deleted everything else from the copymerged layer, rotated it by 180 degrees and shifted it over to the left.
The smaller images in the background are also made from a copymerged layer from the above step. I resized this image to about 20% of its original size, rotated it 180 degrees and duplicated it so that I had a set of tiles that I then moved down the layer stack until it was just above the desaturated madeofstone texture from earlier. I didn't want it to completely cover the background because then you couldn't see the texture work, so I masked out the left half of this layer with a fuzzy brush.
Another copymerged layer taken from two steps above! This time I resized this to about 90% and moved it so that only 5-10 pixels were showing at the left edge of the icon. I duplicated the layer and did the same on the right edge of the icon.
Next I copymerged all of these layers, reduced the Opacity to 7% and set this layer to Vivid Light to brighten things up. Lastly I did another copymerge(!) and used Smart Sharpen with the below settings (layer set to 60% Opacity):
And we're done! I know my writing tends to get a bit scattered so I hope that didn't make the tutorial difficult to follow. If you'd like to request a tutorial yourself, please check out the promo below!
Ask The Maker 2015 || My Thread