Tutorial #3: The King's Speech 1

[firstillusion]

In the fantastic Ask the Maker meme over at icon_talk, miatoscane asked if I could write a tutorial for two icons from The King's Speech, and I was happy to oblige, because I love working with screencaps from that movie.

I'm going one at a time, so expect lots of tutorials in the next few weeks. If you want to request something yourself, feel free to do so here or

Comments

[firstillusion]

Thank you!

I always paint around the contours of a subject's body to make them stand out. When they are facing forward, there is always going to be a light blob on their shoulder/curve of their neck (Bertie's left side (on the right for us) and the part on Elizabeth's right (our left) shoulder where the shadow of her hat falls).

If the subject is cropped a bit closer, the contours of the face are still where I go first. My first blob is always in the crook of their neck and the next one is right alongside the slope of their arm.

I tend to do a diagonal though: if I blob to the right of their neck/shoulder, I'll put another blob next to the top of their head on the left like this:

[firstillusion]

No problem! I learned this trick through a tutorial ages ago but in that tutorial, I always felt there was too much highlighting going on, so I toned it down. On the other hand, absolutelybatty is much bolder and often paints over faces, pulling it off. ;)

[appleindecay]

Amazing! I will definetly try this out later. :D
Thanks for sharing!

[firstillusion]

No problem, glad you like! :)

[library_of_sex]

cool! i kinda wanted to ask for a tut but i was all lazy. i can't follow dirctions properly either, so i probably won't learn much. my fault, not yours.

[firstillusion]

No, I understand what you're saying. This was a very basic icon and there wasn't really much to tell about it. I like the icon but it's just your basic Adjustment layers so if you're BFFs with your PS already, I doubt there's much you can get from this tutorial than fiddling with settings. :)

appleindecay and absolutelybatty asked some great questions at the meme about how I do certain things and what my approach is. I'm excited to get into detail on that.

[library_of_sex]

I can never recall how I made an icon. It's so sad. This is a lovely tut. Sorry I didn;t have caps in the other comment. I'm more sober now.

that ask a maker activity is awesome! I love all the tuts and stuff coming from it. I set up a thread while I'm still drunk enough to have the nerve. :P
(i'm scared my answers won't make any sense though!)

[firstillusion]

*runs over before you sober up and decide to delete it*

(I always end up deleting things or editing them heavily after I've made a post while slightly under influence...)

[miatoscane]

Thank you SO much for this very detailed tutorial!!:) I love this icon so much I couldn't prevent myself from asking a tutorial for it and I'm very glad I did because I can see how useful some adjustements layers are, especially the saturation one (I tend to stay in my comfort zone with more "regular" layers) and the idea behind the negative space composition of this icon!thank you again, I'm looking forward to your answers to the questions other iconmakers asked you!:)

[firstillusion]

You're very welcome! This was one of those icon that just 'happened', which is why I was a little frustrated with myself for not being able to give much insight into why I did what. So I'm really relieved you found it useful regardless.

Adjustment layers (particularly the Levels) are my comfort zone, but I should really work more with color fill layers set to the different blending modes. In this icon, it worked really well so maybe we should both try to get more outside our comfort zones? :)

I'm using these tutorials as a sort of stress relief at the moment. The other icon you requested a tutorial for uses a texture I have to relocate in my textures folder (which is quite extensive), so as soon as I can put the right name to the texture, I'll start writing up that one as well.

Your icon is incredibly cute by the way!

[miatoscane]

I definitively agree with you that getting more outside our comfort zones is really important for an iconmaker!:) and I must admit that a tutorial like yours really helps in that way because I find in it many tips, like the saturation layer (you should indeed keep on using these kind of coloring layers because you really know you to get the best of them) something that I'm generally kind afraid of using, not really knowing what would come from it and your tutorial shows how great results we can have from using it.:)

and I can tell you that I love the kind of icons that just "happened", to me they are often the most beautiful!:) I especially love the icons that you submit at elite_movies because you give a very original approach to the movie icons.:)

Thank you again for sharing your tips with us (take your time for my other request, I'm already so pleased with this tut!)!:)

oh indeed this cat icon by < lj user="lemonpuch"> is really full of cuteness!:)

[gendrys]

This is beautiful! I've learned a lot going through the tutorial already, but I had a question about this step:

"I wanted the icon to have a more yellow hue, so I created a Levels layer in which I put the Blues at 84, again putting it underneath the Curves layer."

What do you mean when you put the blues at 84? This is how I interpreted it, but I'm sure I must be doing something wrong since my image looks 100x more yellow than yours!

[firstillusion]

I'm sorry I wasn't more clear: I meant move the cursor to 84 in the Blue Channel. I see in your picture that you use several points on the scale, whereas I only used the middle one. I've uploaded a picture of how my levels layer looks here and added it to the tutorial as well. I hope that fixes your problem. If not, don't hesitate to let me know and we'll figure it out. :)