2014 | Ask the Maker Pt. 3
This fills the requests of alghuls, setentpet, wandererjulia, and monstersinyou.
TEXT
Resource bank:
- My guide to wooing your text tutorial is here.
- This massive zip of fonts courtesy of raiindust is amazing.
- Font Source on Tumblr
I'm going to jump into this here because, as you can see linked above, I've already written a whole text guide, and I'm not interested in rehashing it. The main point of this section is that you can use text for a lot of things, and they don't have to be just...putting text on your icon to say something. (Although, just putting text on your icon to say something is 100% a valid compositional thing, and obviously I do it all the time so I'm not knocking it.) You can use text to add texture, you can use text to emphasize a concept, you can use text to crop or frame, you can use text to fill up space in the background, or just to add something decorative.
Also: text does not have to be readable in all instances (lol, literally contradicting any and every professional text guide out there right now); if you're using it as you would a texture, who cares what it says? So if you want to do something like the icon below, but your inner graphic designer is yelling at you that the text has to be readable or you shouldn't do it, ignore that little shit. What does s/he know anyway?
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This icon was requested by alghuls, and it is probably my most recent example of using text in this way. The base above is, as you can probably tell, already colored. Wanna know how? Go here. Anyway, this icon is a real example of trial and error because I didn't know where I was going with this icon when I started. I didn't even have the subject extracted at first. And then once I decided to do that (which also involved resizing Regina with the free transform tool), I still had no idea where to go which meant I just did random things until something stuck (like, at one point, I had this mess of an icon which probably could have been cool, but nah.). Anyway, once I found a texture that worked (by maeappleseed on tumblr) and started in on light and texturizing the icon, I got my groove on, yay!
So I got to the part where I decided something needed to be in the background of the icon, but what? I went for text because I love text; everyone should love text; text is amazing. Deciding what the text should say meant I had to think about my subject for a moment. We've got Regina in full on Evil Queen mode, and she's threatening people over her inability to get her hands on Snow White. And why does she want Snow? To ruin her life, basically. So I took a Regina quote from the Pilot episode of Once about happy endings, and re-purposed it for here. And then I figured...why not take it a step further and make the text visually represent what it is saying?
What you need for this is the pen tool*. Don't know how to use the pen tool? Now you do!. So basically, I typed the text in what I am pretty sure is Atreyu, rasterized the text, and blurred it a bit. Then I grab the pen tool, make a path, make a selection, and the copy&paste it onto a new layer to move around as I see fit. I did this a couple of times, and then I made the original text layer invisible because I didn't need it anymore. The final effect is literally broken happy endings.
* You don't, technically, have to use the pen tool. If you would prefer not to get into that, you could easily use the lasso tool (I'd go for the polygonal lasso tool in this case) to do, more or less, the same thing. If you don't have that/can't be bother with that either, duplicating your text layer a few times and then using either the eraser or layer masks can get a similar effect. Also clipping masks (see the next section for more) with shapes or brushes could be used in a similar fashion for more complicated effects!
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So with the text here, I first attempted to do readable text, but the composition was already pretty busy; plus the crop was fairly close as well so there wasn't really space for what I wanted to do. Rather than scrap my text altogether, I went a different route. I chose a more decorative font with a grungy, gothic feel to it (the font is MecaGothix), and I typed 'wrath and ruin' to match the feel of the icon which was basically 'Regina will destroy all the things when she's angry'. The text is originally an orange color taken from the far left side of the icon, but I set the layer mode to subtract and then lessened the opacity a little so it looks more like deep purples and blues instead. Then I went crazy on the layer mask (as you can see), and the end result was this subtle grungy texture that you probably don;t notice overly much in the final product, but WHATEVER.
There's loads of other things you can do with text. Some of them are in my text guide, some of them will be in the text guides of other people, some of them you'll find on your own, and some of them are in really cool text tutorials on the internet.
BRUSHES
Resource bank:
- A list of 56 free Photoshop brushes
- Search PS brushes on DeviantART
- 50 "must have" PS brushes
- GO FIND YOU SOME BRUSHES, MAN. WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR???
If what you want isn't somewhere above, try a Google search for whatever brush you're looking for. Seriously. Wanna know how I got blood splatter for this icon? Google searched "photoshop brushes blood splatter". If you've never downloaded and installed brushes before, that's okay! It is pretty easy, and this tutorial will show you how.
If you want to make your life easier, you could make different "menus" for each set of brushes, but I am incredibly lazy so I just append mine. I have a long list of brushes (that slow my PS down much like my long list of fonts, but whatever) which means I scroll through this a lot. See that purple arrow? That points to the corner that allows you to expand the size of your brush bank so you can see more things at once. If you end up with a lot of brushes and are lazy like me so you append them every time, this might make things easier on you scrolling wise.
So, obviously, brushes are a fabulous tool, and you can use them for a whole lot of things, composition wise:
blending | accents | backgrounds
texture | masking | & making really big paint messes, among other things.
So to cover backgrounds, texture, masking, and making really big paint messes, we're going to look at this icon, requested by monstersinyou.
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The great thing about this icon is I had a theme for it which is a great starting place when you are planning a more complicated icon. In this case, I was making icons for iconsomething's 100x100 pixel canvas challenge which called for our icons to look like a painting.
I am kind of in love with extracting a subject from its background right now (Don't know how to do that? Go find you a tutorial!) so that's what I decided to do here. Once that was done, I decided on a background color by picking something from the background of the original screencap. At this point, I wasn't really sure where I was going with anything so I just threw some paint splatter onto the background (in cyan because...I like cyan) at the bottom because that's where I want the focus to be.
Then I had this freaky brainwave where I decided that Hook needed to be painty as well so I grabbed a paint brush that I liked, and I used it to mask away some of Killian's body. The original effect was a bit much so I duplicated the layer (mask and all) twice. The first duplication I left alone, but with the second one, I used a bit of blur on the layer mask (from this to this) which brought some of the original background into the canvas once more. The final step at this point was the put some paint splashes in the foreground as well to get that layered effect that makes the paint textures seem like part of your overall icon composition instead of just thrown in there without any thought. I chose pink to balance out the cooler cyan and green already present so you get some dynamic going in terms of your colors.
Next I did some coloring work which I've talked about in the second part of my AtM Q&A here so I won't be going into that right now. But after the coloring I noticed my main problem which was, despite all that business down at the bottom, my canvas looked rather empty. I wasn't feeling in a text mood at that particular moment so I was at a loss as to what I should use to fill the space. That's when I started thinking thematically. What do you do to fill the negative space of an icon with a pirate as a subject? A PIRATE SHIP, OF COURSE. So I Googled stock images of pirate ships to find one, and I put it back behind my original cut out of Killian but on top of the cyan paint splashes (layer palette, and while we are here, learn to love your clipping masks).
So that's looking a bit better, but I want to keep evening the composition out so it isn't so bottom heavy. I also want to keep with my theme which calls for a painting. So it is time for more paint brushes. There's some dark blue/purple splatter on soft light as well as some brighter lavender on screen which add some extra texture to the overall icon and lend it a little more in terms of that "actually painted" look.
That's really it for the brush work in this icon, but since this is a composition guide, I'm going to keep going with the final touches on this icon. There was, as you can see, some more coloring work done. Gradient map, vibrance, you know, the usual. Then I ended up adding a border at the bottom which, in my head, makes my icon look more finished somehow. I think it gives the icon some sort of anchor or end point that is literal instead of just arbitrary. Whatever. I don't really know why, but I do it a great deal (x, x, x, x, x, and x which are all from my most recent icon post, wow). So I just copy merge the icon, drag that new stamped layer down to the bottom until I get the border thickness that pleases me, and then I scroll through the blend modes to see what works. In this case, I chose to set the border on overlay.
The final compositional aspect of this icon ended up being text because I suddenly found myself in a text kind of mood. I may have been listening to Taylor Swift (you can judge all you want, idgaf), and I had a lyric from Red rolling around in my brain: forgetting him was like trying to know someone you've never met. As I, rather unfortunately, ship Captain Swan, this lyric caught my attention and held it. I will probably try and incorporate it into an icon properly someday, but in the meantime, I used it to add a finishing flourish to this icon. The font I used was Rabiohead because I wanted something that had a handwritten/painted feel to it that wasn't too ornate (remember to pick a font to match the mood of your icon).
So I typed the lyric in, rotated it using the free transform tool, and then I rasterized it. At this point, it isn't really readable text, and I didn't mean for it to be. Sometimes text isn't for reading, it is meant for decoration. In this case, the text ends up adding an extra bit of texture to the icon, and it sort of has the feel of graffiti which fits the 'painted canvas' idea that the icon was supposed to conform to. In order to really capitalize on this, I duplicated the text three times so I had four layers of text. I moved them around the canvas and set them to varying opacity levels for the illusion of depth (much like layering the paint slashes on the background and then the foreground, woo). I also blurred them all. Then I paint daubs sharpened the whole thing and resized it down to 100x100 pixels.
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If you didn't go read that guide to clipping masks I linked above (and now here) and you don't know how to use them? You might want to go have a read before you continue on here because clipping masks are more or less essential for the blending the I'm going to execute next.
Brushes are a great way to get your blend on and add a little spice to your icon at the same time! (Side note: I also love to do this with shapes., and that is how I made this icon) The how-to for this is pretty basic: grab a paint brush that you like (or any type of brush you like, I don't own you), make a new layer, paint that mother trucking layer (my go to color for this would be black because that's the easiest color, imo, to blend with, but you do you, alright?), get the image you want to blend in, set it to your preferred blending mode, right click it, and add a clipping mask. Bam! Done! That might sound a little confusing so here's the layer palette for this one: here.
Slight detour from paint brushes here because alghuls actually requested this icon. So I'm going to talk a little more about it starting with the problem I had with cropping this thing down. There ended up being three versions of this icon:
I'm not really a whiz when it comes to cropping so I'm not going to bore you with my ramblings on that. What I do want to chat about here is what the different crops do for the composition of the icon. The first crop (the farthest out) showcases all of the paint texture that the icon has, including textures I added later. However, it de-emphasizes the color contrast and the text detail. The third icon (the closest crop) gives a surreal effect because it showcases the paint brush work to its fullest effect and emphasizes the monochrome coloring of Emma. It does, however, cut out Hook and the contrast between the two caps completely. The middle icon (the one I chose for the final cut) showcases all these elements, more or less, evenly which is why I ultimately made it the final. There may or may not be some kind of rule of thirds thing going on here; I don't really know because as many times as I have read about the rule of thirds (and it is a lot), I still don't understand anything about it.
Coloring wise, this icon used gradient maps for both the black and white and the monochrome pink on Emma (although, that was a bit trial and error because she started off orange and purple for some awful reason). Texture wise, I just piled up textures that added to the painted effect, and then I went to town with paint brushes on the layer masks of said textures. And that's more-or-less all there is to this icon!
TEXTURES
Doesn't everyone have to have a section like this? Probably. I'm still trying to learn my way around using textures for things other than lighting/coloring. It really is such a trial and error process, I think. But textures can really enhance an icon and completely change the mood. It's hard to put into words so I'm just going to give visual examples:
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I have no idea who made the first texture, but according to my image search, you can get the second texture here. The first texture is inverted, and then both textures are set to screen with the red channel removed. They take a pretty simple icon, and they (along with some painting on my part and a lot more coloring fiddling) transform it into a weird space fantasy thing.
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This texture by novakist, repeated several times with different parts showing, set to screen gives the background a rough texture and kind of a torn flyer type of look.
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This star chart texture by maeappleseed, rotated to suit and set to screen, gives the illusion of a map behind Hook!Milah to showcase her need for adventure as well as to add to the whole pirate captain/sailor feel.
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BUT ALSO
Don't be afraid to go to extremes with your textures because...well, with enough dedication you can wrangle something out of a combination that looks pretty much impossible. I added the orange texture by raiindust on full opacity on luminosity with the red channel removed. Which pretty much looks atrocious, as you can clearly see, and I do apologize for your eyes. But a stamped layer on exclusion, a ton of gradient maps, some selective coloring, some brush work, and a couple of textures later, well...I liked the result!
I guess the biggest take away from this showcase is that, when I'm not using a texture for lighting purposes, textures are my way of creating a particular mood or atmosphere and are often symbolic. So thinking about what you want your icon to say or the story it is trying to tell will help you pick out the textures you might want to use in your icon.
setentpet requested this icon, and unfortunately, I scrapped most of the process (the finishing touches, as partially detailed above were the only bits I still had; hazard of working over multiple psd files, I guess). Fortunately, it isn't too complicated so here we go.
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OR
1| Choose any screencap (the one I chose for the remake) you like, but you'll want an area with a lot of black or at least some dark and easily blended color. Or...don't do that, and instead paint the dark color in if you'd rather (which is what I ended up doing so).
2| Grab a funky texture or create something of your own using brushes. I chose the same texture in the original icon which is this by, I think, ibtextures.
3| Set that texture to screen or lighten. Mask away the parts that you don't want.
4| Proceed with icon (add a couple more textures, some more coloring, and whatever for the old one | coloring, blended in another screencap of Regina, added text for the new one).
5| The whole idea for the original icon was to a) have the texture take the place of clothes and b) to use that texture as a stand in for curse smoke for Regina because it is a thing I've been wanting to do for ages now. So that was the concept that guided the composition (and thus influenced the composition of the second icon as well re: the text (which is a play on words) and, obviously, character choice).
Alright! I think I'll wrap it up because I'm out of requested icons, and I just sort of flail around a bit when it comes to composition anyway. But I do hope you gleaned something from this! This is the last of my requests (unless someone pops in with something new) so that'll be it from me from now. I hope you enjoyed!
PART ONE: TEXTURES, FONTS, TIPS, AND TRICKS & PART TWO: COLORING GUIDE.
My previous tutorials and guides can be found here. | My Ask the Maker thread is here if you have any requests.