» tutorial 007; i drank the wine of youth, and ended up in a coma
Phew, I needed a quick break from spamming my own comm with tutorials lol. The next post is going to be an icon post or bust, I promise, but for now: sorry for the wait, john_scorpy, and here you are! :)
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A few notes, before we start:
» This icon was originally posted here, for War 1, Trial 1 at 21tvthrowdown.
» Program: Photoshop CS5. Vibrance is used a lot (a lot a lot), but a hue/saturation layer should be able to replace it though.
» Difficulty: Easy.
Here's the original screencap of Michael from Nikita 1x22, courtesy of the now defunct disparue.org :(
As you can see, there's a lot of great movement happening in this image already, so I wanted to sort of make a nice simple icon emphasizing that motion. Which... was actually a lot harder than I'd expected the first time I tried, so I scrapped the first version and tried again with some healthy (?) texture vomit mixed in, in order to get what I eventually ended up with, lol.
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1. Alright, the first thing I did was crop the original image (nothing special there), and then make a new curves layer. After hitting auto, I still wanted to brighten it up a lot, so I created two new points on RGB: 59, 32 and 189, 153. Both of these points raise the contrast, but not too harshly.
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2. It's really grossly coloured right now, so let's fix that: new vibrance layer, +100 (or hue/saturation +35).
Okay, well, that didn't do as much as I had hoped. So let's force a bit of colour everywhere: new fill layer, red (#bc2020), set to soft light 100%.
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3. It's super gross right now, but it's about to get grosser: take this texture by lumsx, gaussian blur it at 1.5 (FILTER > BLUR > GAUSSIAN BLUR > 1.5), and set to screen 100% to add some rough light blobs. We'll cover this up in a bit.
But first! More grossness of colour. Make a new gradient map layer, and click on the third preset (black and white). Instead of white, though, we're going to replace that with red (#ff0000).
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»
4. Now that we have sufficiently ruined this icon, let's try to salvage it by slapping on ten million and one textures and adjustment layers, yay. First, this texture, by youcallitwinter, set to soft light 100% to add some faint light blobs everywhere.
And now for the magic of auto levels!!! Under RGB, change the settings to: 0, 0.81, 255 to really light everything up.
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»
»
5. This texture, by sinking_theship, set to screen 75% for some more light, since the blacks are starting to get waaay too black and heavy-looking.
I decided that the reddish pink of his neck was getting a little out of hand, and instead of going back and masking the texture layer that caused it (because I am lazy and would rather just cover up my mistakes than fix them), I decided to just try to make the entire icon a little more red so it wouldn't look as jarring. So I took this texture, by youcallitwinter, since it was conveniently red in the right spots and added a white blob to the part of his neck which was too red, and set it to soft light 75% for some more colour everywhere.
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6. I really like this texture by spud66cat; it's got great lines and has the approximate sense of movement I originally wanted to add to this icon, anyway. So let's take it and make some changes to fit this icon.
I didn't want to start turning the icon yellow, so first, desaturate the texture (CTRL-SHIFT-U).
But now you can see that the shades of grey are all too similar to each other and also all too light! I already know I want to add this texture on under soft light, but at this rate you won't be able to distinguish the lines and the icon will get too washed out. To fix that, let's go to IMAGE > ADJUSTMENTS > BRIGHTNESS/CONTRAST and max the contrast (+100) and lower the brightness (-40). Then, finally, apply soft light 100%.
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»
»
»
7. Alright, more texture work! I took this one, also by spud66cat, because of the lighting and colour possibilities. I wanted to light the top half of the icon, so flip the texture vertically (EDIT > TRANSFORM > FLIP VERTICAL).
If you look at the direction of the light in the icon right now, specifically around his face and neck, you can see it's kind of going downwards to the left. So let's motion blur the texture to capitalize on that (FILTER > BLUR > MOTION BLUR). I can't recall what my exact settings were, but I basically made the angle somewhere between 70-80 degrees and the distance roughly 25-30 pixels or so.
The small lines of light going on are still a bit too defined for my taste, so I quickly gaussian blurred at 1.5 just to smooth everything out before setting it to screen 82%.
»
8. Not done with the last texture yet! I eventually noticed that the light blob over the top of his head was way too strong, so I grabbed a layer mask and a large very soft brush going over it, to get rid of that pretty quickly.
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»
»
»
9. More light blobs!! After desaturating this texture by happy_harper13, it was set to soft light 100%. This made the icon too dark in the corners for my tastes, so I masked out the corners using a large soft brush again.
»
10. Now it's time to go back and undo some of the hot mess I just made everywhere. Duplicating the base, from waaaay back down right at the bottom, I dragged it up and gaussian blurred it at 2.0 before setting it to soft light 100%. What this does is 1) adds some depth back into the shadows, and 2) adds some normalcy back to the insane colours I somehow managed to add.
»
11. Another levels layer to further bring out the blacks (0, 0.87, 255) and then a curves layer (auto, then under RGB two new points: 58, 64 and 165, 179) to increase the contrast a little more.
»
»
12. Time to start on my finishing touches! Sharpen the icon while simultaneously increasing the contrast some more by copy merging all the layers (CTRL-ALT-SHIFT-E), then going to FILTER > OTHER > HIGH PASS > 10.0 and setting it to soft light 100%.
Then jack up the vibrance (+100) or saturation (+25) to really go crazy with the colours that're there, since the whole icon looks crazy by now anyway.
»
»
»
13. This texture, by lyckaa, desaturated and with the brightness -150 and contrast +100, then again contrast +50, adds a nice great bit of grunginess after being set to screen 50%.
»
14. The contrast got washed out again :( So let's make yet another auto levels layer to even out the contrast.
While we're at it, let's hit up another vibrance layer (+50), or saturation +15. Yay now there is a ton of contrast and a ton of colour and a ton of messiness!!
»
15. Almost done! Copy merge all to sharpen the icon (FILTER > ARTISTIC > PAINT DAUBS > 1, 1). Now normally I would go and mask out the parts that are too sharp, but in this case I figure the waaaaay oversharpness kinda works since the contrast and colours are also super heavy-handed right now.
»
»
»
16. Last finishing touch! This texture by rebel, which pretty much is perfect in terms of movement and pixellation to match the sharpness and colours we've got going on in the icon right now, set to screen 100% and nudged over a bit to give a sharp 1px line around certain sides (I don't really remember if I did this intentionally or accidentally though tbh). Anyway, I found parts of the texture overall to be distracting/overwhelming, so with a small light brush I masked those parts out.
And that is how this mess of an icon came to be!
Comments would be faaaabulous, and if you have anything else you'd like to ask, feel free to (please!) hit me up here! :)
» »
A few notes, before we start:
» This icon was originally posted here, for War 1, Trial 1 at 21tvthrowdown.
» Program: Photoshop CS5. Vibrance is used a lot (a lot a lot), but a hue/saturation layer should be able to replace it though.
» Difficulty: Easy.
Here's the original screencap of Michael from Nikita 1x22, courtesy of the now defunct disparue.org :(
As you can see, there's a lot of great movement happening in this image already, so I wanted to sort of make a nice simple icon emphasizing that motion. Which... was actually a lot harder than I'd expected the first time I tried, so I scrapped the first version and tried again with some healthy (?) texture vomit mixed in, in order to get what I eventually ended up with, lol.
»
1. Alright, the first thing I did was crop the original image (nothing special there), and then make a new curves layer. After hitting auto, I still wanted to brighten it up a lot, so I created two new points on RGB: 59, 32 and 189, 153. Both of these points raise the contrast, but not too harshly.
»
2. It's really grossly coloured right now, so let's fix that: new vibrance layer, +100 (or hue/saturation +35).
Okay, well, that didn't do as much as I had hoped. So let's force a bit of colour everywhere: new fill layer, red (#bc2020), set to soft light 100%.
»
»
»
3. It's super gross right now, but it's about to get grosser: take this texture by lumsx, gaussian blur it at 1.5 (FILTER > BLUR > GAUSSIAN BLUR > 1.5), and set to screen 100% to add some rough light blobs. We'll cover this up in a bit.
But first! More grossness of colour. Make a new gradient map layer, and click on the third preset (black and white). Instead of white, though, we're going to replace that with red (#ff0000).
»
»
4. Now that we have sufficiently ruined this icon, let's try to salvage it by slapping on ten million and one textures and adjustment layers, yay. First, this texture, by youcallitwinter, set to soft light 100% to add some faint light blobs everywhere.
And now for the magic of auto levels!!! Under RGB, change the settings to: 0, 0.81, 255 to really light everything up.
»
»
»
5. This texture, by sinking_theship, set to screen 75% for some more light, since the blacks are starting to get waaay too black and heavy-looking.
I decided that the reddish pink of his neck was getting a little out of hand, and instead of going back and masking the texture layer that caused it (because I am lazy and would rather just cover up my mistakes than fix them), I decided to just try to make the entire icon a little more red so it wouldn't look as jarring. So I took this texture, by youcallitwinter, since it was conveniently red in the right spots and added a white blob to the part of his neck which was too red, and set it to soft light 75% for some more colour everywhere.
»
»
»
6. I really like this texture by spud66cat; it's got great lines and has the approximate sense of movement I originally wanted to add to this icon, anyway. So let's take it and make some changes to fit this icon.
I didn't want to start turning the icon yellow, so first, desaturate the texture (CTRL-SHIFT-U).
But now you can see that the shades of grey are all too similar to each other and also all too light! I already know I want to add this texture on under soft light, but at this rate you won't be able to distinguish the lines and the icon will get too washed out. To fix that, let's go to IMAGE > ADJUSTMENTS > BRIGHTNESS/CONTRAST and max the contrast (+100) and lower the brightness (-40). Then, finally, apply soft light 100%.
»
»
»
»
7. Alright, more texture work! I took this one, also by spud66cat, because of the lighting and colour possibilities. I wanted to light the top half of the icon, so flip the texture vertically (EDIT > TRANSFORM > FLIP VERTICAL).
If you look at the direction of the light in the icon right now, specifically around his face and neck, you can see it's kind of going downwards to the left. So let's motion blur the texture to capitalize on that (FILTER > BLUR > MOTION BLUR). I can't recall what my exact settings were, but I basically made the angle somewhere between 70-80 degrees and the distance roughly 25-30 pixels or so.
The small lines of light going on are still a bit too defined for my taste, so I quickly gaussian blurred at 1.5 just to smooth everything out before setting it to screen 82%.
»
8. Not done with the last texture yet! I eventually noticed that the light blob over the top of his head was way too strong, so I grabbed a layer mask and a large very soft brush going over it, to get rid of that pretty quickly.
»
»
»
»
9. More light blobs!! After desaturating this texture by happy_harper13, it was set to soft light 100%. This made the icon too dark in the corners for my tastes, so I masked out the corners using a large soft brush again.
»
10. Now it's time to go back and undo some of the hot mess I just made everywhere. Duplicating the base, from waaaay back down right at the bottom, I dragged it up and gaussian blurred it at 2.0 before setting it to soft light 100%. What this does is 1) adds some depth back into the shadows, and 2) adds some normalcy back to the insane colours I somehow managed to add.
»
11. Another levels layer to further bring out the blacks (0, 0.87, 255) and then a curves layer (auto, then under RGB two new points: 58, 64 and 165, 179) to increase the contrast a little more.
»
»
12. Time to start on my finishing touches! Sharpen the icon while simultaneously increasing the contrast some more by copy merging all the layers (CTRL-ALT-SHIFT-E), then going to FILTER > OTHER > HIGH PASS > 10.0 and setting it to soft light 100%.
Then jack up the vibrance (+100) or saturation (+25) to really go crazy with the colours that're there, since the whole icon looks crazy by now anyway.
»
»
»
13. This texture, by lyckaa, desaturated and with the brightness -150 and contrast +100, then again contrast +50, adds a nice great bit of grunginess after being set to screen 50%.
»
14. The contrast got washed out again :( So let's make yet another auto levels layer to even out the contrast.
While we're at it, let's hit up another vibrance layer (+50), or saturation +15. Yay now there is a ton of contrast and a ton of colour and a ton of messiness!!
»
15. Almost done! Copy merge all to sharpen the icon (FILTER > ARTISTIC > PAINT DAUBS > 1, 1). Now normally I would go and mask out the parts that are too sharp, but in this case I figure the waaaaay oversharpness kinda works since the contrast and colours are also super heavy-handed right now.
»
»
»
16. Last finishing touch! This texture by rebel, which pretty much is perfect in terms of movement and pixellation to match the sharpness and colours we've got going on in the icon right now, set to screen 100% and nudged over a bit to give a sharp 1px line around certain sides (I don't really remember if I did this intentionally or accidentally though tbh). Anyway, I found parts of the texture overall to be distracting/overwhelming, so with a small light brush I masked those parts out.
And that is how this mess of an icon came to be!
Comments would be faaaabulous, and if you have anything else you'd like to ask, feel free to (please!) hit me up here! :)