070; Ask the Maker Tutorials part I of ?
Ask the Maker icon tutorials part I requested by naginis and afeastforme.
Let's start with this one. I had to recreate it because I didn't save the psd, so it won't be exactly the same!
Open your screencap. I used this one of Matt from the pilot episode.
Resize it and crop it however you like.
Then we start to color. I used curves to light up this little fucker. It's a really dark cap so we need a lot of light.
Here's how it looks my curves layer so you can see.
And I'm going to tell you my secret. I use almost ALWAYS this gradient map. I've been using it for a long time now and it's amazing. It brings a lot of light and I love it. Always set on soft light and play with the opacity. 56% in this case. It always works on dark caps, not so much in very well lighten caps, so remember that!
Then I used this gradient map. I've used it before but it was one of naginis psds that showed me that I could use it in normal mode and look AMAZING. I used it at 11% opacity.
And now I used a new black and white gradient map in normal mode. We can still see Karen's reflection on Matt's glasses so I took a brush and paint it black. The icon's already nice but I decided to make a new color fill layer with a grey color (#dedede) and set it to multiply to mattify a little bit the whites. 50% opacity.
Now I made a black and white texture and set it to soft light to add some shadows. I also used a couple of grungish textures and I know they were by lookslikerain but I don't remember wich ones exactly, so instead I used this one also by her in screen mode. And that's basically it. Merge everything and sharpen it as you like!
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Now we go for the animation part! Some months ago poisonfield made an awesome batch of animated textures that you can find here. I used the fire texture that has 26 layers. Now I go back to the icon, click window and open animation. Go to the texture and select all layers and drag them to the icon. Resize them all at once so they fit one of the crystals of the glasses and set them all to screen. I don't know if there's a way to change the mode all at once, but I had to do it one by one, so have patience! and then select everything again, duplicate it and drag it to the other crystal. And that's it!
And now for the next icon.
I used this dark cap. I know. What the hell was I thinking? *sigh*
Crop it and do your thing.Curve the shit out of it.
I know, lol. A lot of light was needed! And now for some reason I don't really understand I duplicated the original cap and set it to soft light 50% opacity. Make a new vibrance layer with vibrance at 100. And now we go for the gradient maps. We take my favorite one and set it to soft light at 70% opacity. After that we take the copper one in normal mode 24% opacity.
The icon now look like this
Yeah, I know! Not nice at all! I warn you right now that this icon has a lot of painting.
I started with Karen's face. I take a grey color (#d3d1cf) and paint her face. Set to soft light 26% opacity.
Now I paint Matt's neck and Karen's face to the same grey set to soft lifgt 58% opacity.
Make a new vibrance layer with vibrance 100.
And now I made a curves layer that pops the colors and it's a little messy. Here's how it looks.
And now we keep painting. With an orangish color (#b7851a) I painted the background. After that I made three differet layers, the first two in blue and the third in grey to paint Matt's shirt neck because it had a really ugly color right now. The first two in normal mode and the third one set to overlay. That's how it looks right now.
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Okay. Now I made a new selective color layer to pop the yellows.
Reds:
Yellow 100%
Black -20%
Yellow:
Cyan -25%
Magenta 24%
And guess what? We keep painting. Karen's lips were to pale and to make them even more kissable I painted them with a pale red color (#c45c4e) set to soft light 33%. Duplicate the layer and set it to multiply 36%. Then I painted some lines on her hair in a orange color. And now I painted with a brownish color I took from her face some parts of her face to soften those pixels. All of them in normal mode.
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It looks weird, I know! It's a lot more easier if I could post the psd *sigh*.
Sharpen as you like and that's it!
Please, if you have any doubt just let me know and I'll try my best to help you.
I hope you enjoyed these tutorials and that you find them useful! Can't wait to hear what you think :)
My ask the maker thread is open for your requests :)
Ask The Maker 2016 || My Thread