» tutorial 006; you turn a cocooned shell into a butterfly
There are three parts to this tutorial, since two icons were made out of the same prep work. The first icon was requested by twistedbones, and the second one was requested by zhaoxun! :)
» »
» »
or
A few notes, before we start:
» This icon was originally posted here, for my first attempt at the main quest of chapter one at theiconquest.
» Program: Photoshop CS5. Vibrance is used, but it can be replaced with a hue/saturation layer.
» Difficulty: Easy-moderate!
To get to the different parts of this post:
[ 01 ] Initial prep work.
[ 02 ] Continuing to the wizard icon (this is the one that was requested by twistedbones).
[ 03 ] Continuing to the bard icon (this is the one that was requested by zhaoxun).
Here's the original image of Sohee we'll be working with. A ton of the fantaken pictures from their first Seoul concert have really great lighting and silhouettes everywhere, and this one just instantly grabbed me the moment I saw it.
» »
#01 Initial prep work
This is how both icons started out; it's basically just like making a base for the next two final icons.
»
1. The very first step is, as always, opening a new canvas. This time the dimensions are 900x900 and it's just a simple center crop. There's a small watermark off to the left, so I took a small, light brush and just quickly smudged it away. This is now the base I'll be working with.
»
»
2. Looking at it, there's a lot of sharpness and contrast around the edges of her sides, so to get rid of that, I duplicated the base (CTRL-J), gaussian blurred it (FILTER > BLUR > GAUSSIAN BLUR > 2.0), and set it to screen 58% so that it softly brightens up the background and her edges without overwhelming the icon, since it's pretty bright as it is right now.
One last step before we start colouring: a new curves layer. After hitting auto, two new points were created: 69, 78 and 180, 55. These two points pump up the bright spots and keep the dark spots well contrasted at the same time.
»
3. This texture by ellaangelus on soft light 70% works as a great lighting and colouring gradient, and plays up the blues really nicely.
»
»
4. By now you can see that the difference in light in the background is creating a bit of a line. Let's emphasize that by dragging this texture, again by ellaangelus, over to the canvas. Then apply a small gaussian blur (FILTER > BLUR > GAUSSIAN BLUR > 3.0) and set it to colour burn 20%.
(In case you're wondering, the difference between blurring it before you bring it to your canvas and blurring it after it's already on your canvas is that the latter will blur the texture on one of its sides, leaving a faint transparency, whereas the former will blur the contents of the texture but leave it a solidly filled 100x100. In this case I chose to blur it after dragging it onto my canvas because I wanted to soften the lighting around the edges and give it a, erm, bendy feel?)
»
»
5. Last part! New vibrance layer, +100, but if you don't have that then a hue/saturation layer set to +50 but slightly masked over the parts that get too blue should be fine as well.
It's still looking a bit flat to me, so I copy merged all (CTRL-SHIFT-ALT-E), gaussian blur at 2.0, and set it to soft light 100%. This makes the colours and contrast pop, while softening the impact of her edges without blurring them too much.
Voila!
» »
#02 The first icon
This is the one that was requested by twistedbones, continuing right where we left off above :)
»
»
1. First things first, copy merge all from before to get the "base" that we'll be working on in this part. Now create a new 200x200 canvas and drag the base onto there. Resize it down to 100x100 and now you have a great little centered square of a tiny icon. (Oh, uh, btw, I spent most of my time on this icon zoomed in to 200-300% or so, because everything is so small.)
If you're unsure how to position it exactly in the center, hit CTRL-T and up at the bar at the top with all the options to type numbers in? On the left-hand side, where it says X and Y, input 50 px and 50 px. There! Nicely centered.
Now we're just going to add a nice little glow around it. Double click on the layer to get to the layer effects menu, and click on "Outer Glow." Change the blend mode to Screen if it isn't already, set the opacity to 77%, and for the colour pick the dominant shade in the icon (in this case it was a qt indigo shade, #5358b9). Under the elements heading, make sure the technique is "softer," spread 9%, and size 16 px. Here's a capture of my settings.
»
»
2. Alright, now duplicate this layer four times. Yup. Hide them all, except for the one right down at the very bottom. Hide the glowy effect for now so the next step's a bit easier to see (click on the eye next to "effects" under the layer name). We're going to crop this version, and right now I can't even remember why I thought it'd be a good idea. Anyway. Go to the rectangular marquee tool and cut part of the right side off. I... really don't know why I did this :|
Whatever whatever! Drag it down to the bottom right hand corner and shift it over to the left a few more pixels.
Okay! And now it's time to quickly colour it. Go to variations (IMAGE > ADJUSTMENTS > VARIATIONS) and make sure the slider is halfway between fine and coarse. Click on yellow three times, then red three times.
Now we can put the glow back on! Change the colour to whatever's standing out in this version of the icon; in this case, it'll be an orange-y red (#ea422d).
»
»
3. Now for the next corner! Go up to the next layer and drag it down to the bottom right corner. Same for the top left corner. It's hard to explain how I decided to position them, but it involved a lot of moving and shifting around as I decided if the shift in pixels looked better one way or another. Just a ton of experimentation, lol.
For the bottom right corner: variations again, making sure to click on original to reset the last time you were here before you start clicking anything else!!!, click on cyan 3 times and blue 3 times. Adjust the colour in the glow again, this time to bright cyan (#63d9ce).
Same thing for the top left corner: red 3 times, yellow 6 times, glow colour yellow #dac12d.
»
»
4. Now for the last corner, top right! This one crops part of the left side out. For the variations, I hit green 3 times and yellow 3 times. Then for the glow, I used a bright green (#315b729).
Finally, go ahead and make the last top layer (the original centered purple one) visible.
»
5. Alright, let's go all the down to the bottom left corner layer again (red), duplicate it, and drag it down so it's the very bottom layer. Hide the glow on this one and start shifting it up and over to the left. There's no need to change the colouring on this one since it seems to transition fairly nicely between orange and red, thanks to the glow from those two, so the only change we're going to make is change the normal opacity of this layer to 75% so it doesn't steal any thunder from the corner icons.
»
6. Go ahead and duplicate that layer one more time and move it down between the red and blue corners. This time we'll go and change the colouring a bit to make a little more purpley, so in variations just click cyan and blue each twice.
»
7. Okay, now duplicate the top right green layer. Drag it down to the very bottom and get rid of the glow effect, then move it so it's positioned in between the blue and the green. For image variations: cyan and blue, twice each. Make sure the opacity is set to 75%, we don't want it to be brighter or as eye-catching as the corners.
»
8. ALMOST DONE!! Duplicate green again, get rid of the glow, drag it down to the bottom, and move it in between orange and green. To make it yellow: red 3 times, yellow 6 times. Phew! As you can see, it's hardly a difficult process, but I was having a hard time trying to remember how many times I clicked on what for variations as I was writing this up lol.
Anyway there's really only two special (?) things I did here, which was a helluva lot of duplication and moving around, and the outer glow which emphasized the vividness of all the colours everywhere.
Pretty simple tbh, and if you had any trouble following along it's probably just because I don't know how to string words together into coherent sentences. Feel free to let me know if you need me to clarify anything, this part of the tutorial really used a lot of words and not very many / tiny tiny tiny pictures, so I'm actually sorta expecting all of you who're reading this to be very confused right now. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
» »
#03 The second icon
Here's how to get to the one that was requested by zhaoxun! Super super easy, it's really just a bit of rotation and text work.
»
1. Take the results from part #01 and copy merged all. Duplicate that and rotate it counterclockwise 90 degrees (EDIT > TRANSFORM > ROTATE 90 CCW), and then flip it vertically (EDIT > TRANSFORM > FLIP VERTICAL). This is going to make a nice gradient bar at the bottom of the icon.
»
»
2. Go back to the first copy merged and duplicate that, then drag it up to the top. Now just push it up a few pixels. That's it.
Then go duplicate the copy merged again, bring it up to the top of your layer stack, and rotate it 90 degrees clockwise. Take a rectangular marquee tool, with the style set to fixed size (100 px by 95 px, up at the bar at the top), and layer mask out the majority of the icon except for a single bar at the top.
But it's a bit harsh, so apply the layer mask to the top-most layer (right click on the layer mask, apply layer mask) and gaussian blur just a tiny, tiny little bit (FILTER > BLUR > GAUSSIAN BLUR > 0.5).
»
3. Text time! TW Cen MT, 8 pt, #ac4694 (grabbed from her arm, I think), tracking 160, vertical compression 99%, horizontal compression 91%, and anti-alias set to strong. Here's a capture of my character box.
Double click the text layer to get to the layer options menu so you can make the text pop just the tiniest little amount. Under drop shadow, put the blend mode to normal, the colour a little off-white (a little blue, #d0d5e4), opacity 75%, angle 151 degrees, distance 2 px, spread 0% and size 0 px. Here's a cap of my settings.
I decided to just simply position my text over her face because 1) you couldn't see any details in her face anyway, and 2) I wanted all of the focus to be on THE MOST HEARTBREAKINGLY FUNNY MOMENT OF THEIR CONCERT ;~; I hate how she feels like she can't cry in front of her fans omg okay /end fangirling
»
4. New text layer now, TW Cen MT 9 pt, #54238e (from her shirt, I think), tracking 100, vertical expansion 130%, horizontal expansion 101%, italicized, and the anti-alias is still strong. Here's a capture of my character box.
This time the drop shadow is pure white set to normal, opacity 48%, still 151 degrees, distance 1 px, spread 80%, and size 1 px. Here's a cap of my settings.
»
»
5. Finally, this texture by ellaangelus, inversed and set to screen 38% for a light washed out effect all over the entire icon. AND YAY THAT (FINALLY) CONCLUDES THIS LONGASS POST.
Comments would be faaaabulous, and if you have anything else you'd like to ask, feel free to (please!) hit me up here! :)
» »
» »
or
A few notes, before we start:
» This icon was originally posted here, for my first attempt at the main quest of chapter one at theiconquest.
» Program: Photoshop CS5. Vibrance is used, but it can be replaced with a hue/saturation layer.
» Difficulty: Easy-moderate!
To get to the different parts of this post:
[ 01 ] Initial prep work.
[ 02 ] Continuing to the wizard icon (this is the one that was requested by twistedbones).
[ 03 ] Continuing to the bard icon (this is the one that was requested by zhaoxun).
Here's the original image of Sohee we'll be working with. A ton of the fantaken pictures from their first Seoul concert have really great lighting and silhouettes everywhere, and this one just instantly grabbed me the moment I saw it.
» »
#01 Initial prep work
This is how both icons started out; it's basically just like making a base for the next two final icons.
»
1. The very first step is, as always, opening a new canvas. This time the dimensions are 900x900 and it's just a simple center crop. There's a small watermark off to the left, so I took a small, light brush and just quickly smudged it away. This is now the base I'll be working with.
»
»
2. Looking at it, there's a lot of sharpness and contrast around the edges of her sides, so to get rid of that, I duplicated the base (CTRL-J), gaussian blurred it (FILTER > BLUR > GAUSSIAN BLUR > 2.0), and set it to screen 58% so that it softly brightens up the background and her edges without overwhelming the icon, since it's pretty bright as it is right now.
One last step before we start colouring: a new curves layer. After hitting auto, two new points were created: 69, 78 and 180, 55. These two points pump up the bright spots and keep the dark spots well contrasted at the same time.
»
3. This texture by ellaangelus on soft light 70% works as a great lighting and colouring gradient, and plays up the blues really nicely.
»
»
4. By now you can see that the difference in light in the background is creating a bit of a line. Let's emphasize that by dragging this texture, again by ellaangelus, over to the canvas. Then apply a small gaussian blur (FILTER > BLUR > GAUSSIAN BLUR > 3.0) and set it to colour burn 20%.
(In case you're wondering, the difference between blurring it before you bring it to your canvas and blurring it after it's already on your canvas is that the latter will blur the texture on one of its sides, leaving a faint transparency, whereas the former will blur the contents of the texture but leave it a solidly filled 100x100. In this case I chose to blur it after dragging it onto my canvas because I wanted to soften the lighting around the edges and give it a, erm, bendy feel?)
»
»
5. Last part! New vibrance layer, +100, but if you don't have that then a hue/saturation layer set to +50 but slightly masked over the parts that get too blue should be fine as well.
It's still looking a bit flat to me, so I copy merged all (CTRL-SHIFT-ALT-E), gaussian blur at 2.0, and set it to soft light 100%. This makes the colours and contrast pop, while softening the impact of her edges without blurring them too much.
Voila!
» »
#02 The first icon
This is the one that was requested by twistedbones, continuing right where we left off above :)
»
»
1. First things first, copy merge all from before to get the "base" that we'll be working on in this part. Now create a new 200x200 canvas and drag the base onto there. Resize it down to 100x100 and now you have a great little centered square of a tiny icon. (Oh, uh, btw, I spent most of my time on this icon zoomed in to 200-300% or so, because everything is so small.)
If you're unsure how to position it exactly in the center, hit CTRL-T and up at the bar at the top with all the options to type numbers in? On the left-hand side, where it says X and Y, input 50 px and 50 px. There! Nicely centered.
Now we're just going to add a nice little glow around it. Double click on the layer to get to the layer effects menu, and click on "Outer Glow." Change the blend mode to Screen if it isn't already, set the opacity to 77%, and for the colour pick the dominant shade in the icon (in this case it was a qt indigo shade, #5358b9). Under the elements heading, make sure the technique is "softer," spread 9%, and size 16 px. Here's a capture of my settings.
»
»
2. Alright, now duplicate this layer four times. Yup. Hide them all, except for the one right down at the very bottom. Hide the glowy effect for now so the next step's a bit easier to see (click on the eye next to "effects" under the layer name). We're going to crop this version, and right now I can't even remember why I thought it'd be a good idea. Anyway. Go to the rectangular marquee tool and cut part of the right side off. I... really don't know why I did this :|
Whatever whatever! Drag it down to the bottom right hand corner and shift it over to the left a few more pixels.
Okay! And now it's time to quickly colour it. Go to variations (IMAGE > ADJUSTMENTS > VARIATIONS) and make sure the slider is halfway between fine and coarse. Click on yellow three times, then red three times.
Now we can put the glow back on! Change the colour to whatever's standing out in this version of the icon; in this case, it'll be an orange-y red (#ea422d).
»
»
3. Now for the next corner! Go up to the next layer and drag it down to the bottom right corner. Same for the top left corner. It's hard to explain how I decided to position them, but it involved a lot of moving and shifting around as I decided if the shift in pixels looked better one way or another. Just a ton of experimentation, lol.
For the bottom right corner: variations again, making sure to click on original to reset the last time you were here before you start clicking anything else!!!, click on cyan 3 times and blue 3 times. Adjust the colour in the glow again, this time to bright cyan (#63d9ce).
Same thing for the top left corner: red 3 times, yellow 6 times, glow colour yellow #dac12d.
»
»
4. Now for the last corner, top right! This one crops part of the left side out. For the variations, I hit green 3 times and yellow 3 times. Then for the glow, I used a bright green (#315b729).
Finally, go ahead and make the last top layer (the original centered purple one) visible.
»
5. Alright, let's go all the down to the bottom left corner layer again (red), duplicate it, and drag it down so it's the very bottom layer. Hide the glow on this one and start shifting it up and over to the left. There's no need to change the colouring on this one since it seems to transition fairly nicely between orange and red, thanks to the glow from those two, so the only change we're going to make is change the normal opacity of this layer to 75% so it doesn't steal any thunder from the corner icons.
»
6. Go ahead and duplicate that layer one more time and move it down between the red and blue corners. This time we'll go and change the colouring a bit to make a little more purpley, so in variations just click cyan and blue each twice.
»
7. Okay, now duplicate the top right green layer. Drag it down to the very bottom and get rid of the glow effect, then move it so it's positioned in between the blue and the green. For image variations: cyan and blue, twice each. Make sure the opacity is set to 75%, we don't want it to be brighter or as eye-catching as the corners.
»
8. ALMOST DONE!! Duplicate green again, get rid of the glow, drag it down to the bottom, and move it in between orange and green. To make it yellow: red 3 times, yellow 6 times. Phew! As you can see, it's hardly a difficult process, but I was having a hard time trying to remember how many times I clicked on what for variations as I was writing this up lol.
Anyway there's really only two special (?) things I did here, which was a helluva lot of duplication and moving around, and the outer glow which emphasized the vividness of all the colours everywhere.
Pretty simple tbh, and if you had any trouble following along it's probably just because I don't know how to string words together into coherent sentences. Feel free to let me know if you need me to clarify anything, this part of the tutorial really used a lot of words and not very many / tiny tiny tiny pictures, so I'm actually sorta expecting all of you who're reading this to be very confused right now. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
» »
#03 The second icon
Here's how to get to the one that was requested by zhaoxun! Super super easy, it's really just a bit of rotation and text work.
»
1. Take the results from part #01 and copy merged all. Duplicate that and rotate it counterclockwise 90 degrees (EDIT > TRANSFORM > ROTATE 90 CCW), and then flip it vertically (EDIT > TRANSFORM > FLIP VERTICAL). This is going to make a nice gradient bar at the bottom of the icon.
»
»
2. Go back to the first copy merged and duplicate that, then drag it up to the top. Now just push it up a few pixels. That's it.
Then go duplicate the copy merged again, bring it up to the top of your layer stack, and rotate it 90 degrees clockwise. Take a rectangular marquee tool, with the style set to fixed size (100 px by 95 px, up at the bar at the top), and layer mask out the majority of the icon except for a single bar at the top.
But it's a bit harsh, so apply the layer mask to the top-most layer (right click on the layer mask, apply layer mask) and gaussian blur just a tiny, tiny little bit (FILTER > BLUR > GAUSSIAN BLUR > 0.5).
»
3. Text time! TW Cen MT, 8 pt, #ac4694 (grabbed from her arm, I think), tracking 160, vertical compression 99%, horizontal compression 91%, and anti-alias set to strong. Here's a capture of my character box.
Double click the text layer to get to the layer options menu so you can make the text pop just the tiniest little amount. Under drop shadow, put the blend mode to normal, the colour a little off-white (a little blue, #d0d5e4), opacity 75%, angle 151 degrees, distance 2 px, spread 0% and size 0 px. Here's a cap of my settings.
I decided to just simply position my text over her face because 1) you couldn't see any details in her face anyway, and 2) I wanted all of the focus to be on THE MOST HEARTBREAKINGLY FUNNY MOMENT OF THEIR CONCERT ;~; I hate how she feels like she can't cry in front of her fans omg okay /end fangirling
»
4. New text layer now, TW Cen MT 9 pt, #54238e (from her shirt, I think), tracking 100, vertical expansion 130%, horizontal expansion 101%, italicized, and the anti-alias is still strong. Here's a capture of my character box.
This time the drop shadow is pure white set to normal, opacity 48%, still 151 degrees, distance 1 px, spread 80%, and size 1 px. Here's a cap of my settings.
»
»
5. Finally, this texture by ellaangelus, inversed and set to screen 38% for a light washed out effect all over the entire icon. AND YAY THAT (FINALLY) CONCLUDES THIS LONGASS POST.
Comments would be faaaabulous, and if you have anything else you'd like to ask, feel free to (please!) hit me up here! :)