Icon Tutorial #1: B&W Manga to Coloured Icon!
I wasn't going to make tutorials, but I got asked for two in one of my recent icon posts (thank you for your enthusiasm nishya, I wouldn't have made this without you). This one, and another of Orihime, which I may do later, but it was a lot more complicated and I don't know that it would work well as a tutorial. We'll see.
So! Today we are going from:
This
to this
!
This tutorial is a mix of icon-specific and transferable steps. For example, once I made this icon I tried the same techniques and created the following two icons. They were not step-by-step the same, but the techniques and concepts were.
and
My tutorial may seem really big, but I've taken the care to explain why I did what I did, which should help with the transferability of this tutorial.
Icon Tutorial #1: B&W Manga to Coloured Icon!
Note: I use Photoshop CS2, but that probably won't matter too much.
1. When I first started working on this icon I knew that empty white space was my enemy. Unless you intend for it to remain white it has to be filled in with something else. So my first task was to find a "background" image, and in this case I chose the following texture from tragic_icons' Asian texture set.
Why? Because I thought the mountains and Asian text would look good as a background. Its also a light, bland colour so it shouldn't distract from the main focus. Mainly your choice is going to be a matter of taste and preference.
We can't have it covering up the whole picture though, only the background area. There are a lot of different ways to do this, but my solution is simple: erase everything covering Ichigo. Set your texture layer to multiply, and then you can see both the lines and the texture background. Not tablets or anything fancy needed, just a mouse and small brushes when you do the edges.
Like so:
And then like so:
2. Next we do a bit more of the same, only with colour. Reference images of the character you're working on are very handy when picking colours, but if you trust your eye you can always pick your own.
Create a new layer and set it to multiply for each colour you use. Then take your colour and fill the areas in! I usually go over most of the area with a big brush and then go back and erase. How you fill the colour in isn't too important, but pay attention to how it looks when you paint over the lines, vs leaving them untouched; as well as which colour is better over what lines. Play around with it and you'll see what I mean, this is a very situational step.
In this case I only wanted to colour the skin and the hair, and this is what we have now:
YAY! What we have now is basically a really simple icon base. But there are some minor difficulties on the horizon.
3. First you have to consider the lack of texture this kind of icon presents. If you want a more detailed looking effect, you want texture.
I started with this texture by fly_away_x_x:
And set the layer to soft light to get this:
Not enough texture yet, and the icon is looking a little washed out, so I added this texture by Fraoch_Icons
And set the layer to soft light to get this:
Not bad so far! Onto the next step!
4. Lighting!
Now before I go on, I have to say that since I made this icon a decent while ago, I can't remember the exact order of one thing. On all the following lighting textures, I'll show you the whole texture, but at some point I decided that I didn't like the colour they were turning Ichigo's hair, or the lighting effects. I tend to do selective erasing in this case. Not necessarily erasing everything covering his hair, but the bits that weren't turning out quite right. What you'll be seeing is the original texture, but the result will be the texture applied with the bits erased.
This is a common enough problem with all icons, when a texture looks wonderful but its glaringly annoying in one or two small areas. My solutions are either erase, or smudge. The decision on tool and extent of use is made on a case by case basis, but those are the only two tools I use to remedy the problem, and they have been very handy.
The first texture I used is the following by 77words:
I chose it to add light and colour to Ichigo and to darken the background. Set to soft light again and the result:
The colour is nice, but I wanted his face much lighter than the background, so I added another texture by 77words:
Set to soft light (see a pattern here?) and voila!
Much better, but I love colour, so we're going to add some more, another texture by 77words. I think I had just found these, hence the prolific use.
Set to soft light:
There's a nice light intensity differential between Ichigo and the background now, super! But Ichigo's too bright and washed out. The colour seems pretty good to me at this point, so I'll add just one more texture to bring the lighting under control. Oh look, 77words again! ^^;
This is actually a bit big for an icon, I'm not sure why it is. But at any rate, I aligned it with the top left corner, so the excess that got cut off was on the right and bottom. Soft Light one last time and we're almost there!
5. Finishing Touches
With this approach to colouring, even after doing some selective erasing, certain colours may not have turned out quite how you want them. In this case I think Ichigo's hair is too red. Fortunately there is a quick fix for this.
Duplicate the layer with Ichigo's hair and bring it up to the top. Set it to Hue and fiddle around with the percentage until you get what you want. In this case I set it to 34%.
See? Much better! This can be applied to any of the base colours if you want to bring back some (or a lot) of that original colour.
EDIT: Someone asked what the icon would look like without bits having been erased, and it occurred to me that this is a very good question! So I got off my lazy butt and put together the icon with the full textures, minus the text layer.
You can see that Ichigo's hair is much darker and a lot of the texture is lost. /EDIT
6. Text - The Last Step!
I hate text. This is a firmly established fact if you know me at all. So it was quite a shock when the text and placement for this icon came to me at the beginning, instead of the end. This was a contest entry for bleach_icontest and I had decided to use the lyric prompt, specifically: "I am stronger".
The font is Swis721 BlkCn BT and I'm afraid I can't tell you where it came from, because I don't know. Its either a CS2 font, or one that came with this computer I have at work.
EDIT: I dug further and the full name of the font is: Swiss 721 Black BT, its made by Bitstream and it looks like you have to buy it. =( But you can google further than I did and find out for certain. /EDIT
Set to: Black, 9pt, and Sharp anti-aliasing.
I wanted this very simple, so I place a basic drop shadow under the text. Black, blend mode: multiply @ 75%. 120 degrees (global light), distance:1 size: 1. (Settings for CS2 users.)
This was the first ever time I put text on top of a character's face, but I had seen some good examples recently and so I pictured it in my mind this way. It seemed to fit perfectly, so I refused to meddle any more and thus we have the final result!
Wow! I finished my first icon tutorial! Go me!
*cough*
If there are any questions PLEASE feel free to ask them and especially if its something critical I left out, then I'll be sure to update the tutorial.
Also if you have any suggestions regarding how I put this tutorial together I welcome your input. I tried to make it as helpful and useful as possible, but it is my first time after all.
Guidelines:
1. Comments are absolutely the most important thing to me. So if you do nothing else, please comment!
2. If you use this icon to make your own credit is nice, but not necessary. I'd rather see what I inspired others to do than get credit for helping you out a bit, so please post any icons made with this tutorial here, I would just die of joy!
3. Have fun!
Feel free to friend me for future icons and possibly other tutorials.
So! Today we are going from:
This
to this
!
This tutorial is a mix of icon-specific and transferable steps. For example, once I made this icon I tried the same techniques and created the following two icons. They were not step-by-step the same, but the techniques and concepts were.
and
My tutorial may seem really big, but I've taken the care to explain why I did what I did, which should help with the transferability of this tutorial.
Icon Tutorial #1: B&W Manga to Coloured Icon!
Note: I use Photoshop CS2, but that probably won't matter too much.
1. When I first started working on this icon I knew that empty white space was my enemy. Unless you intend for it to remain white it has to be filled in with something else. So my first task was to find a "background" image, and in this case I chose the following texture from tragic_icons' Asian texture set.
Why? Because I thought the mountains and Asian text would look good as a background. Its also a light, bland colour so it shouldn't distract from the main focus. Mainly your choice is going to be a matter of taste and preference.
We can't have it covering up the whole picture though, only the background area. There are a lot of different ways to do this, but my solution is simple: erase everything covering Ichigo. Set your texture layer to multiply, and then you can see both the lines and the texture background. Not tablets or anything fancy needed, just a mouse and small brushes when you do the edges.
Like so:
And then like so:
2. Next we do a bit more of the same, only with colour. Reference images of the character you're working on are very handy when picking colours, but if you trust your eye you can always pick your own.
Create a new layer and set it to multiply for each colour you use. Then take your colour and fill the areas in! I usually go over most of the area with a big brush and then go back and erase. How you fill the colour in isn't too important, but pay attention to how it looks when you paint over the lines, vs leaving them untouched; as well as which colour is better over what lines. Play around with it and you'll see what I mean, this is a very situational step.
In this case I only wanted to colour the skin and the hair, and this is what we have now:
YAY! What we have now is basically a really simple icon base. But there are some minor difficulties on the horizon.
3. First you have to consider the lack of texture this kind of icon presents. If you want a more detailed looking effect, you want texture.
I started with this texture by fly_away_x_x:
And set the layer to soft light to get this:
Not enough texture yet, and the icon is looking a little washed out, so I added this texture by Fraoch_Icons
And set the layer to soft light to get this:
Not bad so far! Onto the next step!
4. Lighting!
Now before I go on, I have to say that since I made this icon a decent while ago, I can't remember the exact order of one thing. On all the following lighting textures, I'll show you the whole texture, but at some point I decided that I didn't like the colour they were turning Ichigo's hair, or the lighting effects. I tend to do selective erasing in this case. Not necessarily erasing everything covering his hair, but the bits that weren't turning out quite right. What you'll be seeing is the original texture, but the result will be the texture applied with the bits erased.
This is a common enough problem with all icons, when a texture looks wonderful but its glaringly annoying in one or two small areas. My solutions are either erase, or smudge. The decision on tool and extent of use is made on a case by case basis, but those are the only two tools I use to remedy the problem, and they have been very handy.
The first texture I used is the following by 77words:
I chose it to add light and colour to Ichigo and to darken the background. Set to soft light again and the result:
The colour is nice, but I wanted his face much lighter than the background, so I added another texture by 77words:
Set to soft light (see a pattern here?) and voila!
Much better, but I love colour, so we're going to add some more, another texture by 77words. I think I had just found these, hence the prolific use.
Set to soft light:
There's a nice light intensity differential between Ichigo and the background now, super! But Ichigo's too bright and washed out. The colour seems pretty good to me at this point, so I'll add just one more texture to bring the lighting under control. Oh look, 77words again! ^^;
This is actually a bit big for an icon, I'm not sure why it is. But at any rate, I aligned it with the top left corner, so the excess that got cut off was on the right and bottom. Soft Light one last time and we're almost there!
5. Finishing Touches
With this approach to colouring, even after doing some selective erasing, certain colours may not have turned out quite how you want them. In this case I think Ichigo's hair is too red. Fortunately there is a quick fix for this.
Duplicate the layer with Ichigo's hair and bring it up to the top. Set it to Hue and fiddle around with the percentage until you get what you want. In this case I set it to 34%.
See? Much better! This can be applied to any of the base colours if you want to bring back some (or a lot) of that original colour.
EDIT: Someone asked what the icon would look like without bits having been erased, and it occurred to me that this is a very good question! So I got off my lazy butt and put together the icon with the full textures, minus the text layer.
You can see that Ichigo's hair is much darker and a lot of the texture is lost. /EDIT
6. Text - The Last Step!
I hate text. This is a firmly established fact if you know me at all. So it was quite a shock when the text and placement for this icon came to me at the beginning, instead of the end. This was a contest entry for bleach_icontest and I had decided to use the lyric prompt, specifically: "I am stronger".
The font is Swis721 BlkCn BT and I'm afraid I can't tell you where it came from, because I don't know. Its either a CS2 font, or one that came with this computer I have at work.
EDIT: I dug further and the full name of the font is: Swiss 721 Black BT, its made by Bitstream and it looks like you have to buy it. =( But you can google further than I did and find out for certain. /EDIT
Set to: Black, 9pt, and Sharp anti-aliasing.
I wanted this very simple, so I place a basic drop shadow under the text. Black, blend mode: multiply @ 75%. 120 degrees (global light), distance:1 size: 1. (Settings for CS2 users.)
This was the first ever time I put text on top of a character's face, but I had seen some good examples recently and so I pictured it in my mind this way. It seemed to fit perfectly, so I refused to meddle any more and thus we have the final result!
Wow! I finished my first icon tutorial! Go me!
*cough*
If there are any questions PLEASE feel free to ask them and especially if its something critical I left out, then I'll be sure to update the tutorial.
Also if you have any suggestions regarding how I put this tutorial together I welcome your input. I tried to make it as helpful and useful as possible, but it is my first time after all.
Guidelines:
1. Comments are absolutely the most important thing to me. So if you do nothing else, please comment!
2. If you use this icon to make your own credit is nice, but not necessary. I'd rather see what I inspired others to do than get credit for helping you out a bit, so please post any icons made with this tutorial here, I would just die of joy!
3. Have fun!
Feel free to friend me for future icons and possibly other tutorials.