Illustrate With Photoshop Genius Guide Vol 1 Revised Edition

A comprehensive masterclass in becoming an instant expert

Illustrate with ®

The professional guide to mastering digital illustration

For every version of Adobe Photoshop, including CC


Welcome to

Illustrate with

Photoshop

®

Now part of the Creative Cloud family, Adobe Photoshop is undoubtedly the most popular image-editing software around. The appeal of Photoshop lies in the fact that it is simple enough for a beginner to use to re-touch images as well as for a professional who wants to manipulate and add advanced fnishing touches to their work. With its plethora of tools and capabilities, it’s a software that gives the user an infnite level of control. Illustrate with Photoshop Genius Guide is written for advanced users who are looking to take their Photoshop skills to the next level. The illustration section will show you how to use assets to create artwork. Infographics are the new fad and we have an entire feature on it from the best artists in the industry. Photoshop also lets you experiment with typefaces and we’ll show you how to create some wonderful types of your own. Mixed media is a fun section that will show you how to efortlessly blend graphics and images to create professional fnished products. If you want to re-create the tutorials exactly as they are, don’t worry, we’ve got all the assets used in the book on the free disc, along with premium typefaces, 53 brushes, a texture pack and stock images for you to use in your projects.

Illustrate with

Photoshop ®

Imagine Publishing Ltd Richmond House 33 Richmond Hill Bournemouth Dorset BH2 6EZ % +44 (0) 1202 586200 Website: www.imagine-publishing.co.uk Twitter: @Books_Imagine Facebook: www.facebook.com/ImagineBookazines

Head of Publishing Aaron Asadi Head of Design Ross Andrews Production Editor Sherwin Coelho Senior Art Editor Greg Whitaker Design Sarah Bellman Photographer James Sheppard Printed by William Gibbons, 26 Planetary Road, Willenhall, West Midlands, WV13 3XT Distributed in the UK & Eire by Imagine Publishing Ltd, www.imagineshop.co.uk. Tel 01202 586200 Distributed in Australia by Gordon & Gotch, Equinox Centre, 18 Rodborough Road, Frenchs Forest, NSW 2086. Tel + 61 2 9972 8800 Distributed in the Rest of the World by Marketforce, Blue Fin Building, 110 Southwark Street, London, SE1 0SU Disclaimer The publisher cannot accept responsibility for any unsolicited material lost or damaged in the post. All text and layout is the copyright of Imagine Publishing Ltd. Nothing in this bookazine may be reproduced in whole or part without the written permission of the publisher. All copyrights are recognised and used specifically for the purpose of criticism and review. Although the bookazine has endeavoured to ensure all information is correct at time of print, prices and availability may change. This bookazine is fully independent and not affiliated in any way with the companies mentioned herein. Photoshop is either a registered trademark or trademark of Adobe Systems Incorporated in the United States and/or other countries and is used with express permission. Illustrate with Photoshop Genius Guide Volume 1 Revised Edition © 2013 Imagine Publishing Ltd ISBN 978-1908222886

Part of the

bookazine series

Contents 120

ILLUSTRATION FEATURE 18 Editorial Illustration

24 30 34 38 44 50 56

8

15 Illustration tips & tricks Artists in the industry share their secrets to using Adobe Photoshop

Editorial Artwork Technical Illustration Stylised Illustration Sci-Fi Scenes Creative Designs Striking Pastels Vexel Vehicles

GRAPHICS FEATURE 64 Master Infographics

86 6 Illustrate with Photoshop Genius Guide

204

72 76 82 86 90 94 100 106

Build Infographics Pixel Art Poster Graphics Shape Symmetry Textures and Depth Character Illustration Vector Layers Photoreal Icons

Illustrate with Fantasy Photoshop Art

Genius Guide

Photoshop can open so many new and exciting doors for the adventurous art enthusiast 172

TYPOGRAPHY

FEATURE 112 The Art of Type

120 124 128 132 136 140 146 150

Type Effects Fluid Type Illustrative Type Collage-Style Type Vintage Type 3D Type Dynamic 3D Type Typographic Designs

MIXED MEDIA

FEATURE

156 Applying Mixed Media 166 172 176 182 188 192 198 204

Blending Mixed Media Paint Textures Master Polygons Graphics and Photos Type and Photos The Pen Tool Advanced Selections Zero-Gravity Effects

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72 Illustrate with Photoshop Genius Guide 7

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in c

en t e

G ar c i

a Morillo

15 illustration tips & tricks

ARTISTS IN THE INDUSTRY SHARE THEIR SECRETS TO USING PHOTOSHOP IN ORDER TO ENHANCE THEIR ILLUSTRATIONS, WHICH RANGE FROM EDITORIAL WORK TO PACKAGING AND HIGH PROFILE ADVERTISING 8 Illustrate with Photoshop Genius Guide

Illustrate with Photoshop

© Vincente Garcia Morillo

Genius Guide

www.vicentegarciamorillo.com To promote DJ sessions by electronic music label Black Book Sessions, Vicente Garcia Morillo created the Alive Objects series, which encapsulates the artists and presents them as just one entity: “In this case, I was playing with the combination of elements that represent two of the most popular musicians in Chicago and the L.A. scene, respectively.” “The first step is always to conceptualise the piece. I consider this one of the most important phases of the development process as this is the base of the piece. I like to invest all the time that’s necessary to come up with a good idea. Once I have the concept, I start doing sketches of the composition and also the analogue elements, such as drawing and painting, in case I want them later. I create the vector elements in Illustrator then import and edit them in Photoshop, fitting them together like a jigsaw, then apply effects like gradients, layer styles, shadows and noise. I like to experiment, mixing methods and software in my projects, adding elements like pencil drawings to my artworks when I get the opportunity. I usually play with Photoshop to edit the compositional elements and finish my pieces, but I avoid photographic finishes as I like to preserve an illustrated element.”

© Diego L. Rodriguez

1. INVEST IN A CONCEPT VINCENTE GARCIA MORILLO

2. MANAGE SHADOWS AND HIGHLIGHTS DIEGO L. RODRIGUEZ

www.paranoidme.com Diego L. Rodriguez set about creating options for HBO’s How To Make It In America and drew on inspiration from the Big Apple: “Once I presented this idea, the agency loved it and they gave me the green light to create the poster. The brief came with some promotional images for the second season of the show. They were good, but not exactly what I had in mind. However, having the figure of Kid Cudi as a graphic inspired me to gather extra material. I had the structure clear: start with the character’s portrait, then the body had to be connected to the buildings in some way, and New York’s iconic symbols, and finally the slogan below the illustration. For the New York buildings, I had a ton of pictures that I took back in 2009. I use a specific technique to manage shadows and highlights – I began using it years ago for high-end retouching in skin or objects, then applied it to manipulations and illustration work. Create a new layer above your illustration. Go to Edit>Fill>50% Grey and click OK. Put this grey layer in Soft Light mode and reduce the Opacity to 30-50%. Take a soft brush, with Opacity 30-70%, and paint in those zones where you would like to increase the shadows or highlights using only grayscale tones. This technique is similar to Dodge and Burn, but allows more control over certain zones without affecting the main layer.”

Illustrate with Photoshop Genius Guide 9

15 illustration tips & tricks 3. PAINT YOUR ILLUSTRATION ANDREA FEMERSTRAND

www.noukah.blogspot.co.uk Concept artist and illustrator Andrea Femerstrand regularly contributes illustrations to short stories aimed at younger readers. This piece was created for a short story in Swedish kids and teen magazine KP (KamratPosten): “There’s always a section where young readers’ stories are published. Usually, they’re around 10 to 14 years old. I use Photoshop for drawing and painting and do all my work from scratch, the old fashioned way. Layers, custom brushes and adjustment layers make my work much faster and more efficient. I don’t have many secrets; mostly, I just paint.” ■ Line drawing I always start out with a rough sketch or line drawing. After that, I paint a rough colour scheme to decide upon colours and overall lighting. This illustration had to cover a whole spread, with a lot of empty space so that the text could be added on top of it.

© Andrea Femerstrand

10 Illustrate with Photoshop Genius Guide

www.markverhaagen.com Tasked with creating 36 robot playing cards for kids magazine Bonbeck, Mark Verhaagen, the brain behind the Zoobles toy line, had to build in originality and then deliver uniformity. “The challenge here,” says Mark, “was to create 36 different robots, each of them looking interesting. I started sketching a lot of robots, focusing on shape and character, bold versus fragile, round versus square shapes, etc. I had to think about how the robots would move and do things, which also helped determine their looks. I tried to keep things simple, as the final illustrations wouldn’t be that big. All the robots and card designs were made in Illustrator using fairly basic shapes and shading.” Mark then turned to Photoshop for the final touches. To save time and to make sure each card looked the same, he recorded Actions to use as part of his workflow. “I primarily used Photoshop for adding texture and a glow effect around the robots,” he explains. “As I was working with 36 different files, I saved a lot of time by using Actions for these things. I also used an automate batch Action to save all the files into formats.” The cards were featured in Bonbek magazine, where kids could cut out the different cards to play with. Later, an actual card game was produced too.”

■ Add form and shading I start fleshing out the painting, working a lot with form and shading. I create a separate layer on top of everything to serve as my ‘light’ in the piece. Separating the regular layers from the light is extremely helpful, since you can work on one thing at a time.

© Mark Verhaagen

■ Block colours When I’m satisfied, I move back to the line drawing, lower the opacity and create new layers underneath it, and then start blocking everything in with clean, solid colours. I lock the transparency for each layer and when I’m done with that, it’s time to paint.

4. MAKE USE OF ACTIONS MARK VERHAAGEN

■ Simple silhouettes I started with a blank canvas in Photoshop and created simple silhouettes for the robots, working with big shapes first and details last. It was important at this stage to work with speed and boldness because of the short time I had to create.

■ Limit the palette With the basic silhouettes in place, I picked a limited colour palette; one colour for shadows, one colour for the highlights. Limiting my colour palette up front helps me focus on stronger designs and compositions.

■ Direct the imagination It’s important for me to add only as much detail as is needed to point the viewer’s imagination in the right direction. Too much detail keeps the viewer’s imagination from engaging with the piece, which is the opposite of my goal.

5. WORK QUICKLY WITH A TABLET BRIAN MILLER

Genius Guide

■ Wear and tear Once my silhouettes and colours were established, I moved on to detailing the piece. This was actually a fairly quick process that just involved me placing enough specific details on the robot to suggest overall wear and tear.

© Brian Miller

www.orlincultureshop.com Artist, illustrator and owner of The Orlin Culture Shop Brian Miller created Totes Adorbots, a two-hour style exploration in response to a call for ‘cute vintage robots’, for a potential picture book. “I worked from start to finish in Photoshop CS6 using my Wacom Cintiq,” he tells us. “I use the Lasso tool to quickly create sharp edges where I need them. However, it’s the years of study, practice and exploration that are most vital, no matter what tool or medium you’re using.”

■ Keep it simple I use a limited number of brushes in Photoshop to keep my approach as simple as possible. This allows me to focus on the strength of the drawing and design, not the tools.


■ Mixed-media Though I often sketch with traditional materials, I love the challenge of trying to create pieces in Photoshop that blur the lines between traditional and digital mediums.

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15 illustration tips & tricks 6. LOCK TRANSPARENT PIXELS MARK VERHAAGEN

www.markverhaagen.com When faced with a brief to create an image out of a sound, Mark Verhaagen used his imagination to turn the project into a vintage science illustration. Audio designer David Kamp (davidkamp.de) came up with the Sound Creatures project in which he first created imaginary creature sounds. He then sent these audio files to selected illustrators, including Mark, who used them as inspiration to create images of fictional animals. The illustrations and corresponding sounds can be seen on www.sound-creatures.com. “The audio file that I got featured some sort of sad trumpet sound, so a trumpet-like nose was my starting point for the look of the animal”, he says. Once he’d created the main shapes of the animals and plants in Illustrator, Mark exported his various objects to Photoshop. “I added shading using the Airbrush tool and then locked transparent pixels in the Layers palette so I could easily paint within the shape of an object. Drawing the birds’ feathers was a bit more tricky, but as soon as you have one feather in a particular shape, you can re-use it. Use the Free Transform, Skew and Warp tools to make each feather look different to the last, and draw some extra detail here and there to diversify them further. When the illustration was ready I added some textures so it would have a nice, old look.”

© Mark Verhaagen

A trumpet-like nose was my starting point for the animal’s look

www.tomskipolanski.com In order to create eye-catching packaging for a new vegan brand started by a friend of theirs, Ila and Luke of Tomski & Polanski envisioned a vintage feel: “We started with classic floral patterns and then changed the flowers for cupcakes and cocoa, before adding quality typography. We used Photoshop to draw in the details of patterns, to complete the composition and for the final colouring and post-production, and used a lot of custom brushes and a variety of preset Actions and filters. Since we use a lot of textures we often add Smart Object layers, which saves us a lot of work.”


© Tomski and Polanski

7. USE SMART OBJECTS TOMSKI AND POLANSKI


Genius Guide

8. REFINE YOUR COLOUR PALETTE STEVE SIMPSON

www.stevesimpson.com Steve Simpson was given a brief to create packaging for a frozen yoghurt start-up that required a loud message to kids declaring its contents yummy while also telling parents it was healthy: “To do this, I decided to create kid-friendly, energetic, cartoon-ish characters but make the fruit more realistic. “I was brought into the project by Dublin design agency IDEA,” Steve tells us. “I was trusted to create the look and feel for the project while the agency looked after the client liaison and production. After scanning my pencil sketch and setting up the size, colour mode and resolution of the artwork – usually at least twice the size that’s needed – I copied the sketch to a new layer, reduced the Opacity and Multiply’d the layer. This allowed me to trace the artwork onto multiple layers beneath it. Once I had the eyes, eyebrows, mouth, head, jumper, etc on separate layers I looked at tweaking and balancing the colours.” Steve also has some advice on colour: “Try to pick a limited palette of colours before you start. I put mine in a small swatch somewhere in the image as a reminder while I’m working on it. I then swap the colours around between elements until I’m happy with the balance. Don’t be afraid to experiment – grass isn’t always green and cows can be blue.”

■ Rough sketches All my work starts with pencil sketches – lots and lots of them. Over a couple of days my extremely rough ideas are moulded into something more solid and presentable. Usually, I’ll present my rough sketches, but with this project I wanted to take them a little further.

■ Label Top Each of the Chilly Moo characters was adapted so that it would fit the different areas of the packaging, such as the lid label.

■ Defined colour palette I coloured the sketches to show how the characters could represent different flavours through the use of colour, and how that colour would come together as a palette.

■ Final product The three flavours of Chilly Moo yoghurt – Strawberry, Banana Strawberry and Mixed Berry – are easily identifiable by their completely distinct but also complementary colour palettes. © Steve Simpson

9. UTILISE COLOR OVERLAY MAX GREGOR

© Max Gregor

10. SKETCH WITH WACOM WANCHANA INTRASOMBAT

www.kun-victorior.com Wanchana Intrasombat, aka Vic, created a series of character designs for a project entitled Life. One is a mischievous boy scout on a trip with his classmates: “My paintings and illustrations are all done with Photoshop and a Wacom Intuos. It’s the main tool I use and I just used the normal Brush here. I also use the standard brush to sketch, and sometimes create my own brushes for projects. For me, the Brush is Photoshop’s most important tool; I use it for all my work as though it was a traditional tool. It’s similar to using real pencils and brushes.”

© Syd Brak

© Wanchana Intrasombat

www.maxgregor.com

Max Gregor’s fashion illustrations are a harmonious mix of traditional sketches and digital finishes: “Here, I started with drawings of the different elements of the model’s outfit: her body drawn in pencil, an ink drawing of her shawl and a few brush patterns drawn in blue gauche. I then scanned all the images and cleaned them with Levels, then used the Eraser to remove messy lines and dust left from the scan. A Color Overlay was key to this image as it allowed me to add a flat graphic feel and still maintain the loose organic detail of the brush stroke.”

11. DELVE INTO FILTERS SYD BRAK

www.sydbrak.co.uk For this delicious array of fruit, Syd Brak reached for the Filter menu: “The idea was to illustrate a product’s ingredients in a clean, healthy and appetising way. I created rough images then enriched the colours to an attractive and appetising level while retaining a believable realism. It was important to ensure the light source was constant on every object, with an enhanced gloss to emphasise the liquidity and create a sunny feel. I rely fairly heavily on the subtleties of the Filter dialog to achieve a realistic but painter-like quality, and avoid a plastic feel.”


15 illustration tips & tricks

© Vincente Garcia Morillo/Converse

12. ADD NOISE VINCENTE GARCIA MORILLO

www.vicentegarciamorillo.com Vicente Garcia Morillo worked on Converse’s Pro Leather campaign: “I had to present a graphic interpretation of the Converse logo based on concepts relating to urban street culture. Here, I represented basketball. Once I got the concept, I did sketches of the composition on paper for the client. After the concept was approved I started to develop the digital phase. I created all the vector elements in Adobe Illustrator and then imported these into Photoshop. Here I applied the Noise filter, which helps to provide a uniform aspect and give the artwork some vibration.”

13. ILLUSTRATE IN 3D SASHA VINOGRADOVA

www.behance.net/MelaMel Working to create four characters in a detailed environment under the heading of Mercenaries, Sasha Vinogradova choose a funny and quirky style: “The first step was character design and deciding how they would look. Next I made a rough sketch of compositions, colours and lights and then created my scene and 3D models in 3DS Max and ZBrush. I set up lights and materials in a 3D scene then rendered my image. After that I added details like eyes, grass and hair, and also some postproduction edits like air perspective and colour/contrast correction. I created all the sketches and textures for elements such as the scarf in Photoshop. I also added some details in postproduction. When you create an image, try to keep the final result as clear as you can in your mind and never ignore composition. I love to add details, but if you start adding them too soon without keeping the entire image in mind then you risk losing the integrity of your image. Finding your favourite artists and researching their work is a great way to improve your own.”

© Sasha Vinogradova



Genius Guide

14. PRESERVE YOUR TRADITIONAL FEEL MITCHELL NELSON

www.behance.net/mitchellnelson Mitchell Nelson was asked by California-based publisher Devious Publications to create a quirky and unique logo, which had to tell a story reflecting classical and vintage qualities: “I drew the illustration with pencils and then scanned this into Photoshop for postproduction and retouching. Subtlety is the key; I try to remember why I start with pencil in the first place and enhance its qualities rather than destroy them. However, if you are after a highly digital piece but still mix with traditional media, strong contrasts of the two can give contemporary looks.”

■ Work in lead I create the base of my illustrations using 5H to 8B pencils. This helped me achieve a fantastic tonal range, adding the depth and textures that clients request.

www.liquidpixelstudio.net

■ Clean up For the retouching stage I use tools such as the Clone Stamp and Healing Brush to remove unwanted imperfections caused by the traditional stage.

it ©M

■ Pen Pressure I tend to use a hard round brush with Pen Pressure set to Add Details and like to add softened tonal areas, as seen in the waves.

15. COLOUR WITH COLOR OVERLAY YANA BEYLINSON

c he

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o el s

Yana Beylinson, principal of Liquid Pixel Studios, took the vision of a family-owned business and turned it into packaging for their range: “Casacao is a family-owned producer of organic cocoa beans, nibs and powder. The farm is located in the Dominican Republic, with its headquarters in New York. The initial brief had multiple references to the organic nature of the business and admiration of the beauty and health benefits of cacao plants. Photoshop was a cornerstone of the process, as it is for all my illustration and pattern work. After the drawing is scanned in, the entire process of rendering, separating the elements and colouring is done in Photoshop. The pattern is also created in Photoshop, with careful attention paid to detail and the placement of elements. Each element, such as the outline or silhouette of a bean, is cleaned and placed in a separate layer. One simple plant illustration can use up to 10 layers. I use the Color Overlay (in the Layer Style menu) technique to colour each layer; it’s the most time-effective and easy-to-change method. For patterns, I duplicate each plant, create a layer group for each, then try different positions. The resulting files are very large so I make flattened TIFFs for production.” ■ Pencil drawing The lovely shapes of cocoa branches and beans was a starting point. It was suggested to create a line drawing that depicts a branch. A series of pencil drafts was created before a perfect depiction was selected and rendered in pen and ink.

© Yana Beylinson

n

■ Add colour I add base colours using a Selective Color adjustment, altering the White, Neutral and Black channels. I create these colour layers until I achieve the desired look.

■ Logo application The next step was the typography and logo design. Several versions were suggested and a seal option was selected. Several variations and colourings were then presented.

■ Package label An intricate pattern based on the cacao branch illustration was decided upon. Again, several versions and colour options were shown in order to select the strongest version.


Illustration Discover expressive design 18 Editorial Illustration Learn industry routes and practices

24 Editorial Artwork

Master the Pen tool via a zombie poster

30 Technical Illustration Create a ghosted technical illustration

34 Stylised Illustration

Explore style, balance and harmony

38 Sci-Fi Scenes

Build a futuristic battle scene

44 Creative Designs

Build a mechanical bug from stock

50 Striking Pastels

Use filters and layers innovatively

56 Vexel Vehicles

Develop realistic vexel artwork

24


38


Genius Guide

44 34

50


Illustration

EDITORIAL ILLUSTRATION

WE EXPLORE THE BEST INDUSTRY ROUTES AND WORKING PRACTICES WITH OUR GROUP OF PROFESSIONAL EDITORIAL ARTISTS, AS THEY REVEAL THEIR COMMERCIAL STYLES AND TOP TIPS

You might think editorial illustration is constrained by certain rules and conventions, predetermined by clients and established templates. However, the boom of various digital formats is redefining the terms. Common sketch-based art is matched with richer visual devices and a multitude of illustrative styles are employed – cartoon, mixed media, graphic design and super-digital methods are all acceptable. There’s still a great respect, though, for the original art forms, with digital styles often replicating traditional application. One tradition that certainly hasn’t changed is the impact such imagery serves. Cover art still needs to entice readers to pick up a book or magazine, with artists needing to present a product or brand’s attitude and persona in one compact visual – no easy feat. All editorial artwork is used to capture the personality and character of the publication, piquing consumers’ interest and proving it’s worthy enough for them to pick up and, ultimately, buy. In this feature, we delve into what defines current commercial standards, delivering you in-depth industry advice to give you a head-start in your own editorial design career. When it comes to making it as a commercially viable editorial illustrator, it seems you can do it the easy way, or the hard way. Never to deter self-initiated careers – which can be fruitful when coupling robust aesthetics with an enthusiastic work ethic – following these blindly can result in misunderstanding a variety of practices and conventions. Many of our professional artists present a strong case for education, in order to really appreciate applied techniques and working standards. Renowned illustrator Andy Potts (www. andy-potts.com) is one such artist. Graduating from Portsmouth University, UK, with a BA in Illustration, he explains: “This Illustration course was ideal as it was tailored to answering editorial briefs and working to commercial demands, while encouraging you to develop a visual language and


style. That course has changed [since I attended], but I’m sure there are similar illustration or arts-based courses that would fit the bill.” Caricaturist and member of the Society of Illustrators NY, Jason Seiler (www.jasonseiler.com) did the same in a roundabout way. He self-studied and copied drawings produced by published artists, such as Roberto Parada and C F Payne, which extensively improved his appreciation of industry styles. This was enough for him to get exposure and paid work via smaller publications such as Cracked magazine. While he openly admits to not having a definitive plan of action when starting out, he knew education was vital. “At the age of 26, I decided to attend the American Academy of Art in Chicago,” Seiler says. “I got a lot out of my life-drawing classes there; it was just the thing that I needed. The classes taught me a lot about values, colour and light.”

PROFITABLE AGENTS

So is education the only means to this end? Perhaps, as Seiler goes on to reveal: “During my third year of school, I went to New York City to attend the annual show of The Society of Illustrators. When I was there I met many big artists and art directors – all of them asking why I was going to school. They all thought I should be working full time. The ironic thing was that I was turning down jobs so that I could do schoolwork, in order to get a degree in illustration, so that one day I

graduation is just the beginning of the road, as Andrew Archer (www.andrewarcher.com), freelance illustrator from New Zealand, puts into perspective: “I think it’s always been an entry point into illustration, as it’s one of the more common and fast-moving mediums within the industry. With that in mind I also think editorial illustration is one of the most difficult and challenging areas; it proves a great test to see if you have what it takes out of [the] school [environment].” So how do you close this gap and reach out to clients? Our artists were again all in agreement that exposure is the key, even if they go about this in individual ways; for instance, design blogs and societies, personal websites and quarterly newsletters with working updates are all endorsed as good promotional devices. However, one thing they all have in common is agent representation, which can be a massive advantage in the commercial arena. The Association of Illustrators (AOI), début art, the Central Illustration Agency and Anna Goodson Management are just a few examples of who is out there. However, be as careful in choosing your agent as they are when choosing you. Our artists err on the side of caution as far as agent fees are concerned. These can have a significant impact on your yearly income. Taking upwards of 25 per cent of the commission, this can be considerably detrimental when applied to all projects, especially those with smaller editorial fees. But Archer explains: “The main downside, obviously, is that they take a commission of the entire fee which, depending on people’s opinion, can outweigh its worth. I personally think if you use your agent’s skillset and experience well, they definitely pay off in the long run.” A good agent should know what you’re capable of – what your strengths are, as well as your weaknesses. A good agent works for and with you, to which Potts agrees: “I have two: Good Illustration Agency in the UK and Anna Goodson Management in Canada

All editorial artwork is used to capture the personality and character of the publication, piquing consumers’ interest and proving it’s worthy enough for them to pick up and, ultimately, buy could get work. It didn’t make any sense!” Realistically, for most artists seeking a career,


Genius Guide


Illustration covering North America. Having an agent brings great benefits in terms of increased visibility and workload, particularly abroad where it would be difficult to establish yourself without tapping into an agency’s client network.” An agent’s workload often goes unnoticed, but this can determine how much time you have for creative pursuits; negotiating contracts, image usage and chasing invoices, etc, can all take up a sizable portion of your day. Professional mixedmedia illustrator Darren Hopes (www.darrenhopes. com) says: “Editorial is fast turnaround work. That’s one of the reasons I like it so much, along with the varied subject matter – so with any luck you spend most of your time working. This means less time for advertising yourself so it’s great to have that in the hands of a dynamic group like the Central Illustration Agency; the team there is fantastic at coming up with ideas to promote artists’ work in very imaginative ways, which as an individual I would be hard pushed to afford or have time to execute.”

STYLE CYCLES

Establishing that an affiliation with an agent can open you and your work up to global markets, this also means that your portfolio needs to be diverse and comprehensive. But must this confine you to solely contemporary styles? Some of our artists are

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very particular about using a combination of the latest trends, but most are dedicated to an entirely individualistic approach. We asked if one of these approaches is more productive than another. “I’m not really sure,” says expert Seiler. “Fads in illustration come and go; I think the artists who stay for the long-haul are the ones who have strong drawing, painting and compositional skills, as well as humility and honesty about their own work – a willingness to grow and improve.” Potts agrees: “There are always particular stylistic fads and trends that capture the imagination only to be imitated into

Interestingly, Darren Hopes opens a whole new avenue of discussion. Believing the industry to also be in a state of flux, he infers: “There are specific and noticeable trends – perhaps they create each other through counteraction? In the Nineties there was a surge of digital-looking illustration, due to the rise of the technology and perhaps also reflected politics, looking ahead to the Millennium. Slick and visually complex, this seemed to be then counteracted by a return to very basic mediums, at least in appearance and skills; pencils and drawing were back [if still through digital means].” Archer’s thoughts on this are less abstract: “Styles and trends are forever changing – as are people’s perceptions as to what is good or relevant to the time. I’m not sure why, but I think it’s just the natural evolution of anything visual. The most noticeable style loop that rotates frequently is the whole computer versus hand situation. It seems that just when computer-generated images are cool, the whole thing flips vice versa and handdrawn images come back in.” Many styles emerge in tandem with software innovations, but more recently there does seem to be a technophobia backlash against digital design and a growing fascination with handcrafted, more low-fidelity or retro-themed approaches. That’s not to say that artists aren’t amalgamating the two to get the best of both worlds.

An agent’s workload often goes unnoticed, but this can determine how much time you have for creative pursuits. Negotiating contracts, image usage and chasing invoices, etc, can take up a sizable portion of your day a swift and unfashionable grave. I try to avoid stylistic pitfalls by stubbornly ignoring the zeitgeist and concentrating on my own visual approach. Possibly this is to my detriment, but at the moment it’s a case of ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’. In a bid to avoid any stylistic overlaps, I tend to look for inspiration outside the confines of the illustration world generally; films, art, photography and music, and so on.”


Genius Guide

001 | T-Pain ”KING magazine asked me to come up with the idea and so I did. I wasn’t very familiar with T-Pain, so I listened to some of his music and felt that painting him in space would be sort of cool” © Jason Seiler/KING magazine

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002 | Dra ing Illustration about dra ing and slipstreaming techniques used within triathlons © Andrew Archer/Art director Marco Crisari, Triathlete’s World

003 | 2008 Hair review Illustration for a review of the cool men’s cuts and trends of 2008, featuring three of the top haircut trends in one © Andrew Archer/Art director Jill Thompson, Style Clip magazine

QUICK TIPS MANAGING YOUR STYLE Be aware of your limitations and use these to your advantage – simplifying workflows when completing deadlines

FAMILIARISATION When working with new clients, provide them with an example of your process so they understand how your roughs relate to the final image

BE PUNCTUAL Handing in your work early can be beneficial. It calms your nerves and you have time if the editor suggests changes

INTERVIEW

WE DISCUSS WAYS TO DRAW REPRESENTATION WITH VICKY HOBBS, STUDIO MANAGER AT LEMONADE ILLUSTRATION AGENCY Lemonade is a multidisciplinary illustration agency, serving clients in all sectors and in all media, working in over 17 countries out of two offices. Studio manager Vicky Hobbs explains: “Lemonade gives its artists access to a worldwide client database and the client often will take a risk on a new talent because they’re with the agency.” Editorial commissions generally come from a variety of clients with very tight deadlines to meet the next issue. “We have supplied clients as diverse as The Wall Street Journal, Vanity Fair, The Guardian and more,” explains Hobbs.

Being part of Lemonade is a sign of excellence in itself, as the studio requires a certain quality and attitude from represented artists. Hobbs tells us: “Reliability goes without saying. Illustrators seldom understand that professionalism is just as important as talent. All our illustrators are extremely talented, but what makes a successful editorial illustrator is their ability to have ideas and a conceptual imagination; style is not as important as the content of the images. The type of illustration required varies from publication to publication and our large variety of illustrators are

more than equipped to cover this – but we always look for the right attitude to the job as well as the quality of the illustrator’s work.”


Illustration INTERVIEW

004 | Design Week supplement ”Cover illustration for links to websites,” he explains. A usual brief Design Week’s from Freeman will feature basic concepts, a full Interaction supplement, part of a series of five brief and samples of the artist’s work he illustrations. particularly likes. “Being a weekly, the Commissioned by Sam turnaround time is often tight. At best, it’s a week Freeman” © Andy Potts/Design and at worst, it’s two days,” he reveals. “If it’s a Week

WE TALK TO SAM FREEMAN, ART DIRECTOR AT DESIGN WEEK

Design Week magazine, providing information on graphics, digital media, commercial interiors, product and exhibition design, regularly commissions editorial illustration for its articles. Art director Sam Freeman sources designers both from agencies and extensive web searches. “Illustrators are generally very good at self promotion, so I’m constantly getting samples in the form of printed cards, emailed PDFs and

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A large amount of editorial illustration is now made up of hand-rendered elements, pencil lines or paint textures, adding life and spontaneity to imagery. Many believe that there is no real computer-generated substitute for such, yet digital media is essential in controlling and manipulating different media upon scanning. Hopes puts it into perspective: “I use Photoshop extensively, relying on custom brushes I have created from real media to apply a more natural, painterly feel. I can work very quickly and almost entirely in Photoshop if the deadline is very tight. The beauty is the layer-based nature of Photoshop makes tweaks and colour alterations quick and simple.”

CREATIVE INTERVENTION

So our artists aren’t only using digital media to replicate traditional types, but also for cutting production times extensively – keeping on top of


longer lead time, I’ll request a rough after a couple of days to ensure things are developing the way I envisaged. If there are any changes, I’ll request them at this stage. From that point on, it’s in the hands of the illustrator.” Asked which styles are currently emerging in the industry, he says: “A move away from vector to more of a hand-rendered feel is evident. Collage illustration is something I’m seeing more and more of – artists like Ciara Phelan, Chrissie Abbott and James Dawe are all great examples of this.”

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007 | Bad Bets Obama ”The concept for this one was basic. The art director for The Weekly Standard will sometimes do a rough sketch to show what he’d like to see and then it’s up to me to bring his idea to life” © Jason Seiler/The Weekly Standard

the demands of the commercial client. Seiler reinforces this point: “Painting digitally saves a lot of stress and frustration when working on an editorial illustration. To work traditionally means that you have to paint fast enough and finish with enough time for your painting to dry so that you can scan it. If there are changes that need to be made, forget about it; too much to deal with and, in my personal opinion, magazines and books don’t pay enough for traditional painting. This is why I prefer painting digitally for my editorial work. If changes are needed, it’s never the end of the world. It may take a little while to get it right, but no where near the time if painted traditionally.” New artists should prepare for amendments and intervention, yet the complexity of an editorial brief lies with the art directors themselves. A standard brief consists of the image dimensions and the article that needs illustrating, with a date for the initial rough and the final deadline. Some art directors have a specific idea that they want to

005 | Futurism “Illustration for an article on the futurist Ray Kurzweil” © Andy Potts/ Independent On Sunday Magazine; artistic direction by Ben Brannan

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OCD – Stairs ”Work for The Sunday Telegraph on Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. I was struck by the story of a girl who was unable to go up stairs” © Darren Hopes/The Sunday Telegraph

Many styles emerge in tandem with software innovations, but more recently there does seem to be a technophobia backlash against digital design and a growing fascination with handcrafted, more low-fidelity approaches explore and others like to see what you can come up with. “A good art director will give you guidance and then trust you to deliver your interpretation of the brief,” explains Potts. “Once you have built up a body of work, clients can use your previous illustrations to establish what they’re aiming for, which is useful, as long as they aren’t looking for a carbon copy.” With more blasé directors, you have to learn to be flexible, punctual and able to work with them in a polite and patient manner. “This can be difficult sometimes, especially when it’s about a topic that I have no real interest in,” admits Seiler. “Sometimes the ideas that I come up with are way off what the art director and editor might have in mind for the article, but it will spark ideas and a dialogue.”


Genius Guide

Such skills let you ride the changes between style and formats that editorial clients demand. Traditionally, editorial illustrators tend to be employed by the newspaper and magazine industries; but these fields are adapting to the digital age, and many publications are now developing an online or app-based presence. “I’ve found that my commissions are increasingly for print and digital use,” explains Potts. “Editorial illustration is a large chunk of what I do, but the same skills and visual style are now transferable to other creative markets

such as advertising, design and packaging.” This is all great news for the next generation of editorial illustrators. Art directors will always be attracted to a new aesthetic because it stands out on the shelf. “Diverse in terms of style as well as subject matter, and because of the fast turnaround and sheer amount of commissioned imagery, I think editorial art directors will take a chance,” suggests Hopes. “Many students get their first commissions from the editorial industry as directors know that students are a great [source] for fresh ideas.”

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Witness “This illustration is a piece that was commissioned by Fortean Times magazine for an article on witness statements of supernatural phenomena” © Darren Hopes/Fortean Times

Opener for MLB “I was commissioned by Major League Baseball to paint three illustrations for the 2010 World Series Program, so I illustrated a player strolling around in Chicago looking like a tourist” © Jason Seiler/MLB

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A standard brief consists of the image dimensions and the article that needs illustrating, with a date for the initial rough and the final deadline. Some art directors have a specific idea that they want to explore and others like to see what you can come up with

Ricky On Subway for MLB “This painting is one of the smaller spot illustrations that I did for Major League Baseball. For this piece I wanted to show how this player enjoys riding the New York subways” © Jason Seiler/MLB

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PROJECT RUNDOWN

WE RUN THROUGH A REAL-WORLD EDITORIAL COMMISSION

Most issues of Advanced Photoshop use editorial illustrators to bring the features in the magazine to life. At the planning stage of each issue, editor Julie Bassett and senior designer Sarah Bellman sit down to plan a rough concept. For one issue, they had the task of illustrating a feature on the Adobe Photoshop Exchange. After deciding the editorial would run as a series of mini reviews of the best resources, rather than running text, they went to work laying out the basic structure to see what space would be available for the illustration. They picked Radim Malinic (aka Brand Nu, www.brandnu.co.uk) to illustrate the feature shown here to the right, as his online portfolio showed many examples of high-quality work on similar projects. Malinic was sent a full commission, detailing the concept of the illustration, the editorial layout and the type of resources being featured. After a few days’ hard work, they received the first draft of the artwork, which had a fantastic style but required tweaks for it to work effectively with the editorial. More progress shots were sent in, until both Advanced Photoshop and Malinic were happy with the final artwork.


Illustration


Genius Guide

EDITORIAL ARTWORK

WE EXPLORE THE ART OF DESIGNING FOR EDITORIAL COMMISSIONS, WITH THE CONCEPT OF A FEATURE ON ZOMBIE MOVIES Zombies are still big business at the moment. There are horde upon horde of them in contemporary literature, cinema and videogames – including comic phenomena such as Marvel Zombies, DC’s Blackest Night and TV series The Walking Dead. Coinciding with these were the launches of the Red Dead Redemption, Dead Rising 2 and Left 4 Dead 2 videogames, all out in 2010. So, what better subject to focus on for grasping editorial styles? For this tutorial, we set up a mock brief for international illustrator Simeon Elson, who shows you how to re-create an iconic and cinematic illustrative style which engages viewers – one which is as gruesome as it is cool. We’ll

reveal how to use Adobe Illustrator to create realistic graphical characters and, subsequently, Photoshop to add texture and work up the final composition. During this workshop you will learn how to master Illustrator’s Pen tool in a simple but highly effective way, as well as how to create dynamic visuals with powerful and intuitive Photoshop colour and layer effects. We have used a wide variety of stock images from two texture sites, Fotolia and iStockphoto, so you will need to download these beforehand if you want to follow the tutorial exactly; however, we recommend gathering your own zombie stock as originality is imperative to editorial design.

OUR EXPERT SIMEON ELSON

www.simeonelson.co.uk

Simeon is a freelance illustrator and graphic artist. He creates his work by fusing vectors with pixels, working mainly in Photoshop and Illustrator. He has worked on flyers, posters, logos, websites and more.

SOURCE FILES You will find links to all of the stock images that we have used on the disc, but we encourage you to try this tutorial out with your own resources.

PEN A ZOMBIE POSTER

MASTER THE PEN TOOL AND CREATE DYNAMIC VISUALS USING ILLUSTRATOR To create this particular style of editorial design, we must make use of both Photoshop and Illustrator. If you don’t currently have the latter app, then you can download a free 30-day trial directly from the Adobe website (www.adobe.com) so that you can follow along with all of this workshop’s steps. In particular, Illustrator’s Pen tool is an essential part of this tutorial, so take time to familiarise yourself with it. Draw some random abstract shapes to get used to the click-and-drag motion needed to create accurate curves, and also make some shapes with sharp edges and corners, as this will help you learn how to produce more rigid elements. Take time to learn the different elements of Illustrator’s Pen tool too: the Add Anchor Point tool, the Delete Anchor Point tool and the Convert Anchor Point tool, etc. The most important thing is to express yourself from the get-go by creating interesting shapes that are quite edgy and abstract to give you a striking and graphical end product.

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01

FILE PREPARATION

Open up Fotolia’s ‘serious man rifle’ in Illustrator, then change the mode to CMYK via File>Document Color Mode. Double-click on the photo in the Layers palette and call it ‘Reference’. Click the Lock tab, to prevent the image moving. Create a new layer and call it ‘Black Lines.

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OUTLINES

Next select the Pen tool to draw the character’s deepest shadows. Before drawing each shape, set the Pen tool Opacity to 0% – this way you can see the shape you’re drawing and the photo below simultaneously. Try to create interesting abstract shapes.

SKIN TONE

Select a flesh colour with the Eyedropper tool – if the colour is too dull then tweak its values to brighten it. Create a new layer and call it ‘Skin Base’, position it above the Reference layer and then draw out the flesh areas.


Illustration 04

ADD DETAIL

Open a new layer and name it ‘Medium Contours’ for the midtone shadows of the character’s skin. Repeat this process to create the ‘Darker Contours’ layer. You should now start to see your character emerging. For a more realistic look we are now going to blend some areas of the face using gradients.

QUICK TIP Experiment when using textures. Use different colours, Opacity settings and blending modes and go for it! Also, try mixing various blending modes together, for example Screen with Hard Light can give a great contrast in colours, although you will need to fiddle about with the values to get the best results.

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BLENDING COLOURS

Still with the Darker Contours layer active, open the Gradient palette, setting Type to Radial. Place the Darker Contours swatch at 0% and the Medium Contours swatch at 100%. Add another gradient slider at around 65%. Remove the Medium Contours swatch from the gradient and drag the swatch located at 65% to 100%.

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ACCURATE COLOUR SELECTION

Next, let’s draw his eyes. Use the Eyedropper tool to pick the lightest part of the iris, then place it right next to the pupil. Adjust the colour until your selection matches your character’s natural eye colour. The iris consists of four or five different shades so use this colour selection process to re-create them all.

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BLENDING CONTINUED

Keep making the 100% location colour darker until you get an effective blend. Apply this technique to any other shape that you feel requires a more realistic contrast. You may find in some cases the darker 0% location colour needs to be made lighter.

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EXTEND THE RIFLE 2

Choose the Direct Selection tool, pulling the top-right corner anchor point up slightly to create a diagonal angle. Finally, with the Ellipse tool, draw a thin oval shape, then angle it and position it at the top of the rifle. Then add any final detail to make the join seamless.

QUICK TIP

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EXTEND THE RIFLE

Continue to add detail to the portrait, applying highlights, facial features and mixed skin tones – but be sure to keep each colour on a separate layer. The gun has been cropped, so we need to top off the rifle. Use the barrel as your reference guide to draw a small slanted rectangle.


Drawing stubble can be very tricky. Pick a tone or gradient similar to the gunman’s eyebrows. Use this colour to draw around the beard area, set Opacity to 70%, then add one or two hairs with a small brush in order to boost their realism.


Genius Guide

10

CREATE THE MAIN ZOMBIE

When illustrating the main zombie in the background (our reference is the ‘Zombie’ image from Fotolia), features such as the eyes (enlarge the pupils) and teeth need to be changed. As seen in this reference photo, features are more vampiric. For this illustration we’re going to use a more simplistic style with only a few colours, leaving the rest transparent. Repeat these Illustrator steps with as many characters as you want to include (see the links on the disc for the ones we used).

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SWITCH TO PHOTOSHOP

Now all of our characters have been created, it’s time to jump over to Photoshop. Create a new CMYK file and set your workspace to a multiple palette layout – meaning you can see your Color palette as well. Open a new layer and then use the Paint Bucket tool to fill it with a deep orange tone.

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TEXTURE THE CANVAS

We add in ‘old paper texture’ from iStockphoto (link on the disc). Stretch the texture so that it fills the page, then Edit>Transform>Rotate by 90 degrees clockwise. Set the blending mode to Linear Burn and Opacity to 67%. Open the main zombie image and the gunman. Create a new group and call it ‘Gunman Files’, placing the man inside it.

WOOD TEXTURE

Now we source a wood texture from CGTextures (‘WoodFine001’), rotate the image so it’s at a similar angle as the gun, then set the blending mode to Lighten and the Opacity to 48%. Select the gunman by pressing Cmd/Ctrl and clicking the layer’s thumbnail, then invert the selection (Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+I).

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MORE TEXTURE

Hit Delete to clear the selected area. Select the Eraser tool set to a 27px Brush (at 90% Opacity). Erase remaining texture around the wood. Select the man and wood texture layers, then click the Link Layers icon so they move as one. We are now going to use splatters to add a bit more edge to the gunman.


Illustration Position the splatter so it looks like zombie blood has splashed onto him. Then set the colour to red by double-clicking the layer and applying a Color Overlay

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WORK UP THE BACKGROUND Enhance the background by adding in a new texture (we use the ‘stone pebble’ texture from Urban Dirty). Place it just above the main zombie layer and stretch it so it fits across the top half of the page, setting Opacity to 40% and an Overlay blending mode. Add a layer mask and select the Gradient tool set to black-white, and draw a small gradient starting just before the halfway vertical mark.

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ADD SPLATTERS

Position the splatter so that it looks like zombie blood has splashed onto him. Then set the colour to red by double-clicking the layer and applying a Color Overlay. Use an inverted selection on the gunman to clear the excess splatter, then erase any unwanted areas. Repeat this process on other areas of the gunman. Use the Eraser set to 400px, 0% Hardness and 18% Opacity to reduce the prominence of the splatters.

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TEXTURE CONTINUED

Duplicate this layer and then flip it vertically (Edit>Transform> Flip Vertical). Drag the duplicated layer to the bottom half of the page so that it fits seamlessly with no visible joining point. Follow the same process with another texture (we used Urban Dirty’s ‘glass frosted crack’ image), setting the blending mode to Soft Light at 51% Opacity and place this just below the main zombie.

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ENERGY THROUGH COLOUR

Add another zombie and use an Eraser at 35% Opacity to fade out the bottom of the zombie. Duplicate your ‘glass frosted crack’ texture again, placing it above the second zombie and changing the blending mode to Multiply. Place in a position where you get an interesting contrast, then clear the area around the second zombie. Set the Opacity of the texture to 74%.

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JEEPERS CREEPERS

Create a new layer placed below the main zombie layer. Select a light green colour and, with the Brush tool set to 34px, Hardness at 53%, 100% Opacity, colour in the zombie’s eyes. Add the ‘Urban Highway’ image (from iStockphoto), duplicate twice, setting the bottom duplicate to 100% Opacity and applying a Overlay blending mode.



Genius Guide

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THE END IS NIGH

Apply the same technique using the ‘zombie girl’ image from Fotolia to add a little more variation. Add splatters to increase contrast in the image. Colour the main zombie’s teeth and add a Stroke to the gunman to help him stand out. Colour the Stroke light yellow, set its blending mode to Screen, then choose an opacity that suits.

ADD EMOTION Our gunman has a mean look as he’s on a mission to blast every zombie in his hometown to pieces. We can enhance this emotion by adding textures and blood splatters. Use the ‘glass frosted crack’ texture, duplicating and placing it above the gunman’s face and shirt. Experiment with blending modes such as Multiply, Linear Burn and Darken for a grubby look. Use the Eraser tool set to Brush mode, 30% Opacity, with a so edge and sized between 300-500px to carefully remove unwanted areas. Try not to overdo it to the point where the gunman is lost, but at the same time we want to inject a sense of chaos and commotion. Also the gunman’s shirt starts as a blue/green colour, but this is too bright. We could simply edit it in Photoshop using Hue/Saturation or a Color Balance adjustment, but with a vector illustration like this you would be hard pressed to do so without losing detail and sharpness. We can amend this in Illustrator by simply reducing every shape of the gunman’s shirt’s Cyan value by 5% and then saving it as a new file. Then position it in place of our previous gunman in our final PSD file.

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ENHANCE THE COLOURS

Add a Radial gradient to the orange base layer and set the outer colour to a deep red and the inner colour to transparent. Change the blending mode to Linear Burn at 20% Opacity. Next, we add more two-tone zombies, and apply the ‘glass frosted crack’ texture for more grunge.

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MORE ELEMENTS

Continue to build up more detail by duplicating the silhouettes and overlapping them. Use blending modes like Screen and Lighten, and reduce the opacity if needed. Also tweaking the positions of the characters can make all the difference to the final composition. Create another splatter layer with a yellow Color Overlay set to Screen.

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FINISHING TOUCHES

Lastly, we need a bit more dynamism. Use your splatter texture to add lighter areas around the zombies. Reduce opacity in places; also use a large, low-opacity Eraser to fade edges. After any final compositional tweaks, we’re done.


Illustration

TECHNICAL ILLUSTRATION

REV YOUR CREATIVE ENGINES AND CREATE THIS GHOSTED TECHNICAL ILLUSTRATION USING LAYER MASKS

LINE DRAWING This technical illustration starts out as line art created from a basic sketch


OUR EXPERT TONY LINKA

www.tonylinka.com

Tony Linka is a freelance technical and scientific illustrator, based out of Toronto, Canada. He also works as a 3D Lighter for March Entertainment (www.marchentertainment.com).

SOURCE FILES You can recreate this image by using the layered ‘linka_progress_shot1 (LAYERED).psd’ line art file provided on the CD or you can work from your own sketch.


Genius Guide

If you’ve ever looked at a ghosted technical illustration and been amazed by the technique and how much information has been revealed in one image, then this tutorial is for you. What was once done traditionally using an airbrush, armed with an x-acto knife and frisket film, can now be completed digitally, with the help of Photoshop. In this tutorial, you will learn how to use Photoshop’s layer mask options, along with the Magic Wand and Brush tools, to recreate this ghosted muscle-car illustration. The main advantage of this technique is that layer mask settings give you full control over the visibility

WORK IN PROGRESS

of every aspect of your illustration, while simultaneously keeping your original artwork intact. This means that if you decide that you aren’t happy with your ghosting on a specific layer, then you can simply delete the layer mask, and revert back to your original artwork, and start all over again. This technique requires a little time and patience, so work slowly and build it up layer by layer. You want the ghosting to be subtle and smooth so that it feels like you can actually look through the car’s exterior and at its internal components. That’s the key to the illusion’s success.

FROM LINE-ART TO FINISHED DESIGN

Step 2: Create the layered line art

You will learn how to use Photoshop’s layer mask options, along with the Magic Wand and Brush tools, to recreate this ghosted muscle-car illustration. If you aren’t happy with your ghosting on a specific layer, then you can delete the layer mask, and revert back to your original artwork

Step 5: Paint the internal parts

Step 10: Start the ghosting effect

LAYING THE GROUNDWORK

GHOST YOUR MUSCLE CAR USING LAYER MASKS, THE MAGIC WAND AND BRUSHES

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IT STARTS IN THE SHOP

As with any technical illustration, you should research before you begin. Gather as much reference as you can. If you can’t see the vehicle in person, you can always look for photos online. Next, come up with a plan. Decide which internal components you want to show, and sketch them on paper. This way, you can break down the illustration into separate sections for ghosting.

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STARTING LINE

Once you’ve broken down the initial sketch, create separate line drawings for each section of the illustration. This can be done in Photoshop, or by hand. Next, place the layers in order – put the objects closer to the viewer on top, with their blending modes changed to Multiply. You should be able to see all of the line drawings on your canvas overlapping each other.

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PIT STOP

Create a base colour layer in the folders behind each internal component’s line drawing, and an exterior base colour layer as the bottom layer. This way, the exterior of the car will be revealed when you ghost the internal components. Before you move on to the next step, stop and double-check to make sure everything is overlapping properly. The layer order is essential to getting this technique to work, and it’s much easier to fix any problems now rather than later.


Illustration 04

BODY WORK

QUICK TIP

Since we’ll be painting all the layers separately, it’s important to decide where your key light will be coming from. Stick with that direction for all the layers – this will hold the drawing together. A tip for painting a car with no background environment is to add a ‘horizon line’ highlight along the body of the car. This, along with a cast shadow, will act as visual cues to the viewer that the car is sitting on a ground plane.

A graphics tablet is highly recommended for this type of technical illustration. Whether you’re painting the exterior of your car or ghosting its parts, the tablet’s pressure sensitivity can’t be beaten. Hit F5 to go into your Brush menu and then turn on Pen Pressure for the Size and Opacity controls.

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PARTS DEPARTMENT

Now, you can move on to painting all the internal component layers. Remember to stay true to the materials you’re painting, whether it’s reflective, matte, glossy, etc. Since you don’t have a background to reflect into your objects, you can simulate materials like chrome by painting planes facing up towards the sky a cool blue, and planes facing down towards the ground a warm brown. The Gradient tool is a very fast and effective way to paint cylindrical objects.

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START YOUR ENGINES

Now, we’re ready to begin ghosting our internal components. The primary advantage of the layer folder setup is that you can apply layer masks to the folders for ghosting, which will be applied to both line and colour layers, as well as any other layers that you may have in the folder. This will also leave the option available to edit your line or colour layers if you need to make any future changes, and still have the ghosting applied. Add a layer mask to each layer folder.

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BACK SEAT DRIVER

Start with the back seats, and hide all the component folders. You want the seats to show through the windows, so initialise the Exterior Line layer, and use the Magic Wand to select the window openings. Initialise the layer mask for the back seats by clicking the mask icon, then Select>Inverse. Paint the mask around the window openings using a 100% Opacity black brush so you only see the seats through the window.


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PASSENGER SEAT

Follow the same steps as the back seat – except you’re only going to mask out the window trim and roof, leaving the passenger seat visible in the window opening and on top of the car. Use the Magic Wand tool again, and select the parts of the body of the car that the passenger overlaps. Use a large, soft brush with Opacity no greater than 20%, and slowly paint the layer mask to reveal the exterior of the car.

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UNDER THE HOOD

It’s time for the exciting part – ghosting the drive train. This may look daunting, but if you break it down into smaller steps it becomes manageable. The first step is to approach it like the back seats, and remove all areas outside the body area. You can use details like the hood scoop intake and front grill as ghosted-out objects to bring more of the exterior forward. They also act as points of reference for the internal components.


Genius Guide

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BREAK IT DOWN

The next step is to reveal the exterior body. Keep a close eye on how the exterior and the internal components relate to one another. You should let the exterior guide your ghosting, so break it down into sections – fender, door, hood, etc – and work on one sat a time using the Magic Wand. To reveal the exterior more along plane changes and panel seems, let the drive train show more clearly in areas of the car’s body.

SLOW AND SUBTLE To successfully achieve an airbrushed look takes time. When painting your layer mask, use a large, so , round brush, and keep your opacity low – no greater than 20%. Use long brush strokes working slowly from the outside on your ghosted layers so there is a slow, gradual reveal of the car’s exterior. You don’t want the ghosting to be too abrupt or it will have a ‘cut-and-paste’ look. Then, use a smaller brush with a higher opacity to reveal details like the exterior car’s signal lights.

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BEHIND THE WHEEL

Now, ghost the driver seat over top of the drive train and back tire. Use the chrome window trim as a divider between what’s visible and what’s ghosted. Using your soft-edged low-opacity brush, slowly ghost in the back tire and drive train, so they’re visible, but you don’t lose too much detail in the seat. Next, instead of adding an Outer Glow layer style, paint one around the base area of the seat. This will suggest that it’s sitting on the floor of the car.

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POWER STEERING

Before ghosting your steering column, add your dash and trim layers, since they’ll be overlapping objects. Next, follow the same steps as with the front seat (Step 11). Once you have it looking the way you want, add an Outer Glow layer style by Ctrl/ right-clicking on the Steering Column Colour layer, and going to Blending Options. You’ll want to keep it subtle, so lower the Opacity to around 24%, and increase the Size to around 60px. This will help separate the steering column from the background. Take your time and experiment with how much you want to show.

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SHIFTING GEARS

Add highlights to the windows. Use the Magic Wand to select the window areas in the Exterior Line layer. Create and rename a new layer below this layer, and paint in the highlight for the windows. You’ll want to find a happy medium that shows off a strong highlight, but also allows the viewer to see the interior, so use a soft, round brush with Opacity set at around 20-35%. Change your palette colour to near-white blue.

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FINISHING TOUCHES

To add finesse to your illustration, paint some edge highlights for your car’s exterior in front of your ghosted layers. This will help to bring your car’s exterior in front of the internal components so they look like they are inside the car. Add panel edges and corners where the hood and side body meet. Use the Magic Wand to select areas on your exterior line layer, and paint the highlights on a new layer below this.

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FINISH LINE

Press Cmd/Ctrl+0 so your canvas is resized to fit the screen. Scan the entire illustration to get an overall impression of how your ghosting has come out. If you feel that one layer is dominating the others, lower its Opacity in the Layers palette. Try playing around with Outer Glows, whether black or white, to add more depth. You’ll want to create the illusion that viewers can actually see the car’s internal components.


Illustration

EXPLORE STYLISED ILLUSTRATION FLIGHT FRENZY

OUR EXPERT BEX GLOVER

www.severnstudios.co.uk

START WITH A PENCIL

Bex Glover is an illustrator and graphic designer from the UK. Featuring in magazines, books and animation, her stylised and vibrant urban-meets-ornate illustrations are generated using handrendered and digital techniques, and are influenced by nature, fashion and street art.

BUILD YOUR SKETCH

SOURCE FILES Sketch.

Stylised illustration is, in essence, an illustrator’s own depiction of reality. Many well known illustrators have an identifiable style which sets their work apart. It may not be instantly obvious why some work looks or feels familiar, but on closer inspection you will find similarities in technique, from use of colour, line and scale to character, perspective and even subject matter. Much of the illustration we see today is stylised, particularly in a digital age where countless techniques can be achieved with 2D and 3D software packages. Whatever the method, a careful and appropriately stylised illustration will have a balanced feel that enhances the process of informing, telling a story or conveying a message. Illustrators such as Charley Harper offer a great example of how to produce effective stylised work. His approach to nature illustration shows how simple shapes and ‘minimal realist’ detail can achieve beautifully balanced results. Rather than mimic nature too closely, he captured shapes, pattern, texture and colour combinations in his graphic illustrations. I also find nature an inspirational theme for my own work, and in this tutorial I look at the process of creating a harmonious and balanced illustration using a combination of several stylisation techniques, most notably those of colour, continuous line, shape, simplified detail and texture. To start with I always sketch out my ideas, exploring rough compositions, characters and ideas, until I have something that I feel will work. It doesn’t have to be set in stone and your idea will likely develop throughout the process, but it helps to have a rough plan of what you are aiming for to keep you focused. My illustrations always start off with a physical drawing. I use a Wacom tablet for colouring and adding detail digitally, but still like the control of a traditional pen to create the initial main elements. So, my next step is to create clear line drawings in real pen to use as a guide once scanned in.


In this tutorial I look at the process of creating a stylised illustration with a harmonious and balanced feel I often use photographs for reference in my drawings, and while I want to capture an element of reality, I focus on these more for the purpose of outlining simple shapes and forms. When drawing, I like to use continuous lines without lifting the pen (something I remember having to do in life drawing classes at college), and this is one feature that is integral to the aesthetic of my work. This technique gives me the freedom to explore the shape of the subject matter and I like the way intersections between lines create new shapes and patterns. Once you’ve scanned your drawings into Photoshop, you need to tidy them up a bit. For a sharper, more digital look, you may want to redraw the outlines in a package like Illustrator. I like to keep a more handdrawn feel to my line work however, so I use Image>Adjustment>Levels to create more contrast between black and white in the image. Select all the white areas and then choose Select>Inverse. Create a new layer and fill it entirely with black and you should now have a good outline to work with. Check carefully to see if there are any further areas that you need to tidy up, using the Eraser or Brush tools to add or remove details. To help create some harmony and build up a style, I have repeatedly used a series of shapes and elements throughout the illustration to emphasise the motif. Using the Polygonal Lasso tool, create a rough outline around each bird and then Edit>Cut and Edit>Paste each

PENCIL SKETCHES Start by sketching out your ideas on paper before scanning. I tend to work in pencil in my sketchbook and then move onto single sheets for more refined drawings.

GO DIGITAL Scan in and tidy up your drawing so you have solid, clean lines to work with, making it easier to select areas for adding colour and texture.

FEATHER FEATURES Start to create shapes for the feathers. Build up overlapping lines using your scanned in artwork as well as adding some freehand details using the graphics tablet.


Genius Guide


Illustration COLOUR THE BIRDS

FILL WITH GRADIENTS AND TEXTURES

02

TEXTURE THE DETAILS

Using the Magic Wand tool, select feather shapes and fill with texture and colour. Stick to a rough colour palette to help ensure a balanced look to the style.

01

GRADIENT TONES

03

Gradients can help to add an extra dimension to an illustration. Choose a background and foreground colour and Edit>Fill the selected area using the Gradient tool.

04

SET THE SCENE Adding a background will help to tie all the elements of a composition together.

DEVELOPING STYLE Shape, pattern, line and colour all help to achieve a stylised look in an illustration. Using these elements consistently throughout will add an overall harmonious feel.

In the first image I started to incorporate small birds from my library of elements. While the birds all look similar in style, I felt like the colours didn’t really work with the larger bird. In the second image, I pulled out colour ranges from the large bird and applied them to the smaller ones, creating a much more cohesive feel. Using a colour palette can be one really useful technique in effective stylisation.


REMOVE LINES

Create a simplified style by removing detail such as line work, leaving areas of colour and texture mixed with negative space.

05

ADD ATMOSPHERE

Custom brush effects and the subtle use of blending modes will help to add those atmospheric finishing touches.

one onto its own layer. This allows more flexibility to move the various elements around. I have also broken each bird down into a number of elements, including wings and bodies, using Layer>Duplicate Layer and then rubbing out the lines that I don’t need. The end result is a library of bodies and wings, which can then be coloured and transformed in a variety of ways to create new birds in different positions but each with a similar aesthetic. I wanted to focus on capturing the movement of the birds and their feathers in this illustration. To begin layering up lines, I first duplicated the wings and scaled and rotated them slightly using Edit>Transform>Scale, and Edit>Transform>Rotate. The next step was to add some freehand lines. Create a new layer and then, using the Brush tool, select a reasonably fine brush and start creating the detail. It really helps to have a graphics tablet at this stage as it allows you to draw more quickly and naturally. I have tried to capture the essence of feather shapes with a range of continual,

organic lines here, but you may want to concentrate on a specific pattern for your own stylised approach. Think about the shapes you create between the lines, as these areas will be built up using texture and colour. Now for the colouring and filling. I have a selection of textures that I use frequently in my work saved on my computer so I can call upon them whenever I need to. These range from scanned material to watercolour and paint effects. I find that using these textures in digital work really helps to add more depth and give a hand-rendered feel. I’ve added a watercolour texture to the main body of the bird here, for example. Next, create a flattened copy of all the line elements of your bird drawing using Layer>Duplicate Group, then Layer>Merge Group. You can now select areas of the wings using the Magic Wand tool and fill with textures and colours to build up the feathers. Keep the various colour fills and textures on separate layers to allow for easy editing. Try experimenting with the blending modes found on


Genius Guide

CREATE SOME VARIETY

ADD INTEREST AND FLAIR WITH DIVERSE ILLUSTRATIVE ELEMENTS

01

USE A LIBRARY

Keep a file that contains a range of elements that you can reuse. This way you can modify to create more variety, within a consistent style.

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02

HIGHLIGHT KEY SHAPES

Select spaces with the Magic Wand tool and Edit>Fill with colour. The more contrast between textures and colour the better.

MIX AND MATCH

Combine wings and bodies to create a range of different positions. Change the dynamic by putting the wings in front or behind the bodies. the Layers palette to create effects that allow the textures to show through the colours. Have a go at adjusting the opacity levels as well (also on the Layers palette) for some subtle results. I like to start simplifying the composition by stripping areas to leave simple shapes, minimal details and negative spaces. One good way to do this is to remove part or all of the initial line drawing. Before turning off the layer with your outline, hold down Ctrl/ Cmd and click on that layer to select the whole line drawing. Select the layer where you created the main background of the bird and Edit>Cut the outline shape from that layer. I have also added a simple red to white gradient to the wing and body shapes, with a Multiply blend mode to give a cohesive tone as well as a sense of shadow and a feeling of spatial depth. Build up the scene with small birds from your library. Aim to create a similar style in colour and texture for all the elements you add to ensure there is a harmonious look to the composition. Think about

04

ARTIST SHOWCASE

STUNNING STYLISED ART FROM BEX’S PORTFOLIO

TREEHOUSE CAFÉ MURALS 2010, Real media, Photoshop Illustrated murals for the walls of The Treehouse Café in a London-based department store, depicting a range of flora and fauna together in an enchanting woodland scene.

COLOUR CONTROL

In a new file (always keep an original), flatten each bird onto its own layer and adjust the Hue and Saturation to achieve different results.

how the various elements interact and aim for a feeling of movement and energy. It’s also a good idea to play around with scale to help create a sense of perspective. I have made some of the birds smaller and lighter so that they appear further away. I wanted this illustration to look as though the birds had taken off from the treetops and were soaring into the sky, and adding in a background helped to tie everything together. I used a watercolour effect and applied 30% Opacity with the blending mode set to Overlay. Sitting just beneath, I added a layer with a blue to white gradient fill. I created some flowers, leaves and blossoms with the same colour, textural and stylistic elements. Finally, take a large feathered brush in white and add some flowing swooshes across the page on a new layer. By putting this above the others and adding a Soft Light blending mode, you can achieve some lovely, subtle cloud effects. Reflect on your final composition and adjust elements to get the balance and style just right.

SELF PORTRAIT IN MARCHESA 2010, Real media, Photoshop Stylised self-portrait in a Marchesa frock. This piece was created for a collective fashion book called Amelia’s Anthology of Fashion Illustration.

THE MAGIC WATERING HOLE 2010, Real media, Photoshop Print design for collective Ink-dot’s Tonic exhibition in Bristol. A zebra quietly sips the magic water amid colourful, dancing fish.


Illustration

SCI FI SCENES

BUILD A STRIKING FUTURISTIC BATTLE SCENE USING STOCK PHOTOS, TEXTURES AND YOUR DIGITAL PAINTING SKILLS In the following tutorial we will take a traditional cityscape and transform it into a futuristic battle scene using Photoshop. The goal of this walkthrough is to learn how to make stock images conform to your imagination rather than the other way around. Some basic understanding of anatomy and a graphics tablet are recommended. Another important thing to bear in mind is functionality. When designing your machinery you should not only think about how it will look, but also how it will work; for example, if your robot has arms and legs, it needs elbow

and knee joints, or if you are building a flying machine it needs to have elements that suggest thrust and lift. This doesn’t mean your machine must abide by the laws of physics, but it should at least resemble an object that does. It’s also paramount not to go overboard. Having an endless supply of imagery makes it tempting to try and find an image for every nut and bolt. However, this will lead to a chaotic design that ultimately doesn’t work. Note, when real machines are built, a designer often re-uses elements. It’s smarter, more efficient and, aesthetically, leads to a more cohesive object.

OUR EXPERT ROB SHIELDS

www.robshields.net

Based in Philadelphia, self-taught digital artist Rob explores a wide variety of commercial and self-initiated projects. To see his latest work, you can visit his online portfolio.

SOURCE FILES We have provided a small version of the background image from iStockphoto, a set of textures for the robot and the aeroplane, a cloud brush and a link to one additional stock image that we are unable to include on the disc.

PIECE TOGETHER THE FUTURE

MAKE STOCK IMAGES WORK FOR YOU

01

CREATE THE CITY

Take the backdrop provided (iStockphoto’s ‘Hong Kong’) and rotate it to the left by about 15 degrees. Extend the image by duplicating the foreground building on the left and painting in additional sky on the right. Afterwards, darken the image using Levels and add a dark purple-to-white gradient map with blending set to Linear Burn (65%) and a layer of black around the edges set to Overlay (50%).

Having an endless supply of imagery makes it tempting to try and find an image for every nut and bolt. However, this will lead to a chaotic design that ultimately doesn’t work


UNDERSTANDING YOUR SPACE Before beginning, it’s useful to decide upon the type of characters and setting that you want to create. Do you want your machine to look human or do you want it to have animal anatomy? Will it be sleek and fast or large and powerful? Where will the ‘camera’ be located? It’s important to answer these questions because of the nature of sci-fi illustration. The genre itself is particularly interesting because it is so focussed on storytelling, and well known for extrapolating emergent aspects of contemporary culture in order to investigate them. As such, sci-fi artwork relies heavily on narrative to add impact. In the following image we knew we wanted the scene to take place over a city. We wanted to have a large building in the foreground and smaller buildings behind it. This helped us to define our open canvas space. It also helped us to decide on a sleeker, faster robot, which was capable of flight. You will notice when looking at the composition that there are a number of complementary lines; the wings of the planes and the robot’s weapon, for example, each follow similar trajectories in this scene.

02

INITIAL SKETCHES

Our first sketches are going to be very basic and made using a hard round brush. The plane will consist of wings, tail fins and an area for a pilot. To sketch the robot, begin with the shape of the head and add the spinal column to suggest the direction of the body.


Genius Guide


Illustration 03

04

DEFINE THE PLANE

To create all the planes we only need to define one and then duplicate it. In this update of the aircraft we have defined the basic aspects by adding slightly more detailed shadows and highlights, as well as adding gun mounts on the bottom and small engines to the wings.

05

The robot is roughly based on human anatomy, so we want to represent the major muscle groups. Starting at the spinal column, add the pectoral and abdominal muscles. Add quadriceps to the legs and then add bicep/tricep areas to the arms. Remember to leave space for joints in the arms and legs. Finally, place the eyes to give a better sense of the robot’s face.

06

START THE EXPLOSION

Open a fire image (we used iStockphoto’s ‘Flame at an offshore oil rig’) and change the blending to Lighter Color. Next add an orange Outer Glow and set the blend mode to Hard Light (75% Opacity). In the colour palette select black and blue, then use the ‘Cloud Brush.abr’ included on the CD to create the smoke.

When painting hands – even at a basic level – it helps to look at your own hands for reference. To paint the right hand of the robot (which holds the weapon) look at your own holding a similar-shaped object

07

DEFINE THE ROBOT

MORE ON THE PLANE

Here we update the aircraft again, adding black to create an interior control centre. Notice that interior lights have a slight Outer Glow. The engines are also more clearly defined and use a Color Dodge glow. The guns are now given explosions of yellow and orange and the outlines of the entire aeroplane are darkened.

BACK TO THE ROBOT

Now we basically fill in the lines that were created in our previous sketch with a darker blue tone. Add more detail to the arms, thickening them and adding a more defined pivot point on the most visible arm. The face and side of the head are also worked up and the eyes are given a new shape and an Outer Glow style.

QUICK TIP Painting the white exhaust fumes coming from the robot’s feet is easy. Use the same cloud brush from Step 5. Make the clouds more concentrated around the feet, widening and fading them out at the bottom. A very light Drop Shadow layer style gives a bit more definition.

08

GET HANDS ON

When painting hands – even at this basic level – it helps to look at your own for reference. In order to paint the right hand of the robot (which is holding the weapon) look at your own hand holding a similar-shaped object. This will help you to decide exactly how much of the fingers will be visible and where the thumb should be positioned.


09

WARP AND BLEND

Using the stock provided, begin to place texture on the largest plane. Use the Warp tool (via Cmd/Ctrl+T) to make the stock conform to the shape of your painting. Next blending options such as Soft Light, Vivid Light and Linear Light are used to make a cohesive scene. There are no strict rules here – it’s just a case of what blends best.


Genius Guide

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11

CLEAN UP THE ROBOT

Before we can add any texture to the robot, as we have for the aircraft, we have to more clearly define the lines of its body. Bear in mind that this will not be our final design – it will simply serve as a solid colour base. In addition to cleaning up some of the lines and angles, we also change the face of the robot once again – remember, this is an evolutionary process – before we flip it horizontally (Edit> Transform>Flip Horizontal).

WORK UP THE COCKPIT

Here we add a few final textures and begin to further work up the interior of the plane. The control panel is elaborated, a small, just-visible pilot is added, and glare is applied to the windshield of the aircraft to suggest its curvature. The glare is created by warping a Lens Flare and setting its blending mode to Color Dodge.

12

QUICK TIP When duplicating the ship you may need to bend it a little in order for it to look more natural in its new position. Keeping the wings in a straight line is key here. An easy way to do this is with the Puppet Warp tool (Edit>Puppet Warp). If you do not have that tool, Warp works too.

BRING THE ’BOT TO LIFE

Now it’s time to start adding texture to the robot. Try to choose pieces that somewhat resemble the muscles that they will be representing. We also add a series of glowing highlights to suggest the internal power source of the machine. Notice that the abdominal area remains clearly defined as six separate muscles.

13

RECYCLE TEXTURES

In this step, we finish texturing the robot by adding only three new textures. Notice that the chest plate’s texture also doubles as the kneecaps, while the texture on the oblique muscles and inner leg muscles are the same and the quadriceps texture (a new texture) is used in various places from the head to the forearms. Recycling saves you lots of time!

14

CURVES HIGHLIGHTS

You may have noticed that the robot in Step 13 has more highlights. An easy way to do this is to create a new Curves layer set to Color Dodge (Layer>New Adjustment Layer>Curves). Brighten the image by adjusting the Curves graph then hide the layer by painting over it with black. Now paint the highlights back in using white.


Illustration 15

16

PAINT ON COLOURS

In addition to Curves, we also highlight various areas of the robot’s body using a colour similar to ‘#03f8f9’. In order to make the effect more subtle we paint it at an Opacity lower than 50% using a small hard brush. Also apply a small Outer Glow set to the Normal blending mode at 100% Opacity.

17

EXPAND THE EXPLOSION

To give the explosion more impact we enlarge the original image to cover the entire building top. We also extend the smoke and the red highlights at the base of the smoke. When painting the explosion’s flares remember to use white-yellow at the tips and darker orange-red at the base to represent varying degrees of heat.

FINALISE THE PLANE

Using the Smudge tool, we are going to pull out the various strands of the gunfire on the main plane. We don’t want it to be exactly symmetrical so pull out some strands further than others to avoid uniformity. Next create a new layer and paint yellow and orange highlights onto the nose and wings of the craft; change the blending mode to Hard Light.

18

HEATWAVE

To create the heatwave effect coming out of the engine, first flatten a copy of the image and isolate the area around each engine with the Circular Marquee tool. Then use Filter>Ocean Ripple or Glass, as shown here. Now place the new image back into the scene and erase the edges with a soft brush as needed.

19

GROW THE SQUADRON

Now that the main plane is finished we can duplicate it. For the one on the left, we rotate the plane and size it down by about 60-70%. We need to continue the wing that is visible and we are also going to cut it to suggest that the robot’s weapon is at work. Again, use a colour similar to ‘#03f8f9’ and then apply the previous techniques.

20

GROW THE SQUADRON 2

For the distant aircraft we must firstly lower the contrast via Brightness/Contrast). Next we need to add a faint highlight to the bottom of the aeroplane from the city light. Use the Eyedropper tool to grab a lighter colour from the city and paint it on at a low opacity. Finally, we must darken the upper portion of the plane.



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21

GUNFIRE

The bullet trails are painted with a soft brush in white and then given a yellow Inner Glow set to Vivid Light and an orange Outer Glow set to Hard Light. We also paint ricochet sparks on the robot using a similar process. This time the Inner Glow is white and set to Screen blending at 50% Opacity with the Outer Glow being yellow (also set to Screen at 50%).

The bullet trails are painted with a soft brush in white and then given a yellow Inner Glow set to Vivid Light and an orange Outer Glow set to Hard Light

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22

EDIT THE ANATOMY

At this point we re-examine the robot’s shoulder anatomy and decide we need to move the arm on the left closer to the torso. We also need to carve out the neck and rotator cuff areas better and increase the shoulder armour on the left. Always double-check anatomy before releasing a final product. It’s easy to miss both minor and major flaws while working.

FINISH ON A HIGHLIGHT

The final highlights occur in a few places. On the right side of the robot where the metal reflects the light from the gunfire we use yellow-orange and set blending to Color Dodge. On the left we add a low-opacity white to the entire silhouette. We also paint a white centre to each of the light swords to accent the weapon, making it more of a focal point in the image.


Illustration

CREATIVE DESIGNS

LEARN HOW THIS AMAZING MECHANICAL BUG WAS PUT TOGETHER USING STOCK IMAGERY, RENDERS AND PHOTOSHOP KNOW HOW In this tutorial we’ll be showing you how to effectively combine a large number of elements into one convincing scene. We’ll do this by carefully blending them together using a variety of Photoshop tools and techniques. In addition we’ll explore ways to use brush presets to achieve more random, organic-looking features that will help bring life to our robo-bug image. In order to create a truly cohesive end result we’ll focus the majority of our attention on

lighting, shading and details that will really help sell the final image. You should have fairly good knowledge of basic Photoshop features such as the Transform tool, layer masks, blending options and of managing layers. This workshop is based on several popular designs that fuse organic creatures with mechanical parts. These types of projects are great for fine-tuning your skill to blend images together and, more generally, can be an ideal opportunity to push your imagination.

OUR EXPERT DEVIN SCHOEFFLER

www.ds9creations.com

Devin is a freelance web and graphic designer with more than seven years’ professional experience and an extensive list of clients from all around the world.

This workshop is based on several popular designs that fuse organic creatures with mechanical parts. These types of projects are great for fine-tuning your skill to blend images together MASTER MIXED MEDIA BLENDING

LEARN TO BLEND ORGANIC AND NON-ORGANIC ELEMENTS

01

GETTING STARTED

Begin by creating a new image, 235 x 300mm, 300dpi in RGB. Create a new layer and fill it with white (‘#ffffff’). Download the flying insect image from http://tinyurl.com/py43b66. Alternatively, search for a different style of insect from any stock photography site and cut it out from the background using your Pen tool. Go to Image> Adjustments> Levels and enter 32, 1.09 and 239 into the fields.

02

CLEAN UP

Our photo has a few flaws that may look off in our final piece so we need to zoom in and clean them up. Use the Spot Healing Brush tool with a Diameter of 55px and a Hardness of 0% to remove all of the white chips from the carapace of the beetle.



Genius Guide


Illustration 04

ADD SHADOWS

QUICK TIP

Make another layer (name it ‘Shadows’) and set it to Soft Light with 80% Opacity. Use a large soft brush coloured black and begin adding shadows to the image in the same way that we added lighting in the previous step. You may wish to add extra layers of shadow and light. Again, use the photo as a guide and simply exaggerate the lighting and shadows already established inthe image.

03

When working with a complex image, it can be easier to group components rather than naming every single layer. O en, you may find yourself adding and deleting layers just to try something new and it can become extremely tedious to label every one. Grouping layers will help you stay organised.

ADD LIGHTING

To give our beetle an ultra-realistic and slightly unearthly look, we need to amplify the lighting and shading. Add a new layer, setting it to Overlay with 60% Opacity. Use a large soft brush filled with white (‘#ffffff’) and apply highlights. Use the photo as a guide for specular.

05

INSERT HAIR

In our first step we lost a bit of detail when cutting out the beetle – mainly the creepy insect hair that covers the legs and back of our bug. To get that detail back, we’re going to use a brush to reinsert it. Select the default Dune Grass brush and use the Eyedropper tool to sample a colour from part of the beetle. Use the brush’s default setting to carefully add hair to the back and legs.

06

START YOUR ENGINES

Download the ‘Jet Engine’ stock image (http://tinyurl.com/ lbjgt3l) and cut it out from its background using the Pen tool. Place this into a layer group and call it ‘Engine’. Go to Image> Adjustments> Brightness/Contrast and set the Brightness to +33 and the Contrast to +52.

08

07

COLOUR THE ENGINE

Isolate the blue of the engine and go to Image>Adjustments>Hue/Saturation. Set Hue to -120, Saturation to -16 and Lightness to -24. Use the Eyedropper tool to sample colour and use a soft brush to paint over reflections. Then go to Filter>Noise and add 1% Uniform, Monochromatic noise to the green paint.

ENGINE SEAMS

Since we painted over the engine seams we’ll need to redraw them. Make a new layer and set it to Soft Light. Set your brush to 3px at 100% Hardness and ‘#000000’ for the colour. Use your Pen tool to make an arc on the engine. Then go to the Path Selection tool, Ctrl/right-click the path you made and select Stroke Path. Repeat this step, but stroke the path with a white brush and place the two lines next to each other to form the seam.

09

SHADE THE ENGINE

Repeat Steps 3 and 4, but this time for the engine. Add a new layer for your lighting and a new layer for your shadows. Once you’ve finished shading your engine, duplicate the Engine layer group and place it under the beetle image. Press Cmd/Ctrl+T to enter Free Transform mode and scale the engine down slightly and move it to the beetle’s right side.



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10

GEAR UP

Download a similar ‘Metallic Gear’ image and cut it out from its background. Scale it and place it around the beetle’s neck. Once you’re happy with its position, add it to a new group and call it ‘Gear’. Apply a layer mask to the group to hide the gear behind the wings and head of the insect.

12

11

SHADE THE GEAR

Go to Brightness/ Contrast. Set the Brightness to +2 and the Contrast to +100. Next go to Hue/Saturation and set the Saturation to -57. This will help the gear to match the other metallic components of the bug. Just like the engine, repeat Steps 3 and 4 with the gear and add highlights and shadows where appropriate.

BUILD THE THORAX

QUICK TIP Continuous blending is necessary to bring all of these separate images together in one convincing piece. You’ll need to experiment with the Brightness, Contrast, Hue and Saturation of every element you intend to combine in order to give them a cohesive look.

Download the ‘Ski doo’ and ‘Mechanical concept in black/ white’ images from a stock photo website. Also download the ‘Gear’ image at this stage. Cut out the black plastic piece to the rear of the seat on the snowmobile as well as the big metal skid. Cut out both gears and arrange them over the thorax of the bug, where you feel they work best. Adjust the Brightness, Contrast, Hue and Saturation of each image to ensure they match the colour scheme and style of the rest of the image.

13

SHADE THE THORAX

Download a ‘Carbon Sport Exhaust’ image, cut it out and place two versions of the image under the turbines that we built. Just as we’ve been doing from the start, add two layers and proceed to shade and light the elements. Use the shadows to help hide parts of the images that may look out of place or that don’t fit together.

14

MORE GEARS

Download a ‘Cog’ image and place it between the wings of the beetle. Duplicate the gear twice and stack these behind one another. Tone the Brightness, Contrast, Hue and Saturation to match the rest of the composition and then apply shadows and light as previously.


Illustration 15

16

ABSTRACTS

Now our bug is starting to look pretty mechanised. Open up the 3D abstract renders (on the disc) and place them accordingly. You’ll want to place one of them on top of the thorax imagery we created in Steps 12 and 13 and set it to Linear Dodge blending mode at 90% Opacity. The renders will help add a bit more of an organic and chaotic feel.

WINGS

Open the ‘wings.png’ image from the disc and place them into the main image. You’ll want to duplicate the wing on the right and move it to the left, scaling it horizontally to help sell the perspective of the image. There’s really no wrong way to place these more abstract elements; you might even try using a derivative of your favourite grunge brush to give them a unique finish.

17

MIX IT UP

Take one of the 3D renders we used in Step 15 and place it over the head of the beetle. Set the layer to Screen at about 85% Opacity. Duplicate that layer and flip it horizontally, applying it to the other side of the head. Repeat this step, applying a 3D render to the jet turbine we incorporated earlier; this will serve as a reflection for the shiny engine.

19

GLOWS

Make a new layer (0% Fill and Opacity) and add a ring around the centre of the top gear with a hard brush (around 5px). In the blending options, add an Inner Glow set to Color Dodge (‘#fbe31a’), with Choke at 23% and Size at 174px. Now add an Outer Glow (‘#ff7800’), with Choke at 11%, Size at 27px. Use these same techniques to apply various glows to the engines and exhaust pipes.

18

ADD SOME CHAOS

Load the ‘beetle_brush.abr’ provided on the CD into your Brushes palette. This brush is set up with a high Scatter, Size and Angle Jitter to provide a really random look when used. Make a new layer and take a few swipes with the brush around the wings and back of the beetle to simulate the pieces flying off of it.



Genius Guide

21

SHADOWS

Use a big soft brush to add a main shadow under the bug. Once you have that, draw a shape with a marquee tool from the end of each leg back under the belly of the beetle. Fill it with black then go to Filter>Gaussian Blur and use a Radius of 9. Adjust the opacity of these shadow layers to get them to blend together.

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BACKGROUND

Make a layer group under the bug and call it ‘Background’. Use a Radial gradient to fill the layer from white (‘#ffffff’) to a light grey tone (‘#bbbbbb’).

In order to create a truly cohesive end result we’ll focus the majority of our attention on three aspects: lighting, shading and details.This will really help sell the final image.

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23

HIGH PASS

As a final step, merge the entire image and Paste a copy on top (Cmd/Ctrl+Opt/Alt+ Shift+E). Set this layer to Overlay at 75% Opacity and go to Filter>Other>High Pass and set it to about 4.5px. You can also use the random brush we used earlier plus a Gaussian Blur to apply some depth-of-field effects around the beetle.

COLOUR ADJUST

Place a Color Adjustment layer over the background and floor shadows and then set the Midtones to Cyan 0, Green +43 and Blue +33. You can also add a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer of the entire image and tweak the settings to help develop a more cohesive colour scheme.


Illustration



Genius Guide

STRIKING PASTELS

USE THE POWER OF PHOTOSHOP’S FILTERS AND LAYER FUNCTIONALITIES TO CREATE ILLUSTRATIVE EFFECTS While there are programs dedicated to creating illustrations, it is possible to replicate similar effects using just the tools in Photoshop. Working from a photo stock base, we can use a combination of layer styles, filters, gradients, layer masks and more to build up a mixed-media style that would look at home as a fashion editorial illustration. The image is built up in sections, isolating key areas with the Pen tool and then using the techniques described in this tutorial to create that illustrated look. Doing it in this way helps us to build up and manage our artwork. Depth is added through shadows and highlights, as well as gradients, plus we have used texture stock photos and brushes to give a more tangible feel to the final piece. Before you begin working on a project like this, it pays to get all of your resources to hand. We have supplied you with some custom brushes and texture photos, and we reference further stock imagery and custom brushes that we have used throughout the steps. We have completed this entire artwork using free stock, except for the main model image, which we sourced from Dreamstime (image number ‘14999622’.)

WORK IN PROGRESS

FROM PHOTO TO UNIQUE FASHION ARTWORK

OUR EXPERT ADAM SMITH

www.advancedphotoshop.co.uk

Adam is the Photoshop expert for Advanced Photoshop magazine. In this tutorial, he combine his passions for both digital and traditional styles.

SOURCE FILES On this resource disc you can find a host of royalty-free assets to mimic the effects in this tutorial. These include a range of fabric photos, as well as custom brushes.

DISSECT THE DETAILS

SEPARATE YOUR SUBJECT INTO LAYERS TO MANAGE YOUR WORKFLOW

01

SELECT SECTIONS

03

ORGANISE THE GROUPS

We’ll be working on the subject in sections, so separate each work area first. Start by pasting your subject into a new workspace (235 x 302mm, 300dpi). The quickest way to start sectioning is by making a selection of the dress with the Pen Paths tool. In the Paths palette, Ctrl/ right-click the path layer and click Make Selection.

02

SPLIT THE SUBJECT

Back in the Layers palette, with the selection active, copy and paste into a new layer named ‘Dress’. Do the same thing to separate out the other key elements of the model, namely the arms, the legs and the head. Paste each element into their own layers and name them logically to keep organised.

Step 2: Separate into layers

Step 12: Texture your garment

Step 17: Replicate traditional media

Now we’ll pop our sectioned layers into designated group folders to manage them more easily. Make sure the Dress group sits on top of your stack. First, we attend to the Head group. Minor retouching is necessary to give our subject a more synthetic, illustrative look, so start by duplicating the Head layer and using the Patch tool to clean up wrinkles and blemishes.


Illustration 04

SMOOTH THE SKIN

QUICK TIP

Getting that doll-like look with your subject’s features is allimportant to the subsequent effect of your artwork. You can heighten the synthetic look of the skin using two Curves adjustment layers: one saturating shadows, the other increasing highlights. Invert their layer masks and paint to them with a low-opacity, soft, white brush.

All you’ll need for this manual paint effect is a soft-edged brush (set to 0% Hardness). Create a new layer called ‘Face Paint’, setting your soft-edged brush to 30% Opacity, and then select skin tones with the Color Picker as you go, gradually building up a smoother facial surface. Relieve this effect slightly by dropping the layer Opacity to 85% and working within a selection of your head, so that there are no overlapping paint edges. You can then edit highlights and shadows with two Curves adjustment layers, painting to their respective layer masks and emphasising the facial contours.

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05

Hit Cmd/Ctrl+Alt+Shift+E to merge all the Head layers. Select Image>Adjustments> Shadows/Highlights. Set Shadows at 65%, Tonal Width at 75% and Radius at 50px. Set the adjustment’s Color Correction to -38. Once saving out, set the blending mode to Screen, apply a layer mask and invert this to black. Paint skin back with a soft brush. Also apply a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer, with Saturation at -30 and Lightness at +10. Mask away cheekbone and eyelid areas to bring back in contours.

FOCUS ON THE GARMENT BASE

Activate your Dress group. Make a selection of your Dress layer (Cmd/Ctrl-click the thumbnail) and create a new layer, filling the selection on this with the Gradient tool. We’ve used a brown (‘#8a3705’) to pale yellow (‘#ffeebc’) style. Apply a layer mask to remove from the subject’s jewellery. Next select, copy and paste one of the fabric textures from the supplied ‘RS10170_Batique.JPG’ file into your group, above your gradient layer. Make a selection of your dress layer as before, applying a clipping mask (Cmd/Ctrl-click the layer).

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DEFINE FABRIC FOLDS

Apply a Luminosity blending mode to the RS10170_Batique layer, decreasing Opacity and Fill to 30%. Duplicate your original Dress layer and place this at the top of the group’s layer stack. Select Filter>Artistic>Poster Edges, setting Edge Thickness at 1, Edge Intensity at 0 and Posterization at 3. Set the layer blending mode to Overlay at 40% Opacity, integrating with a layer mask to create contour.


ACHIEVE A PALE SKIN TONE

08

PREPARE THE SUBJECT’S LEGS

To finalise the look of our illustrative garment we’ve selected, copy and pasted the trim around the neck into a new layer on top, as this was covered by our previous layer. Apply an orange-red tone (‘#ff4707’) with Color Overlay layer style at 35% Opacity. Next, move to the Legs group. Start by making a selection of the subject’s shoes, with the Pen Paths tool as in Step 1. Apply and edit with a layer mask, to hide the shoes, as you can see in the thumbnail to the right.


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WORK WITH THE LIMBS

CREATE STYLISED ELEMENTS USING TEXTURES, GRADIENTS AND TEXTURE BRUSHES

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ADJUST THE LEG GRADIENT

Make your masked leg layer a Smart Object, then Cmd/Ctrl-click the layer thumbnail to create a selection. Add a new layer and fill this with a dark (‘#c1d0e4’) to light (‘ecf9ff)’ blue gradient, top to bottom. Deactivate your selection, placing your Smart Object above this gradient layer. Set the Smart Object layer blending mode to Overlay at 40% Opacity. Make another selection of the legs, creating a new layer titled ‘Knees’. Here, apply a 30% Opacity light-blue soft brush to highlight the knee and shin areas, again creating added contour.

Here, apply a 30% Opacity, light-blue soft brush to highlight knee and shin areas, again creating contour

10

MIXED-MEDIA TEXTURES

Once again make a selection of the legs and create a new layer titled ‘Brushwork’. Import the supplied ‘Media brushes.abr’, selecting Marker 2 from your preset options. Open the Brush palette and activate the Brush Tip Shape options. Set Angle at -128 degrees at a 1,800px Size, applying over the legs. Set this layer’s blending mode to Overlay at 50% Opacity and apply Sharpen filters to create greater delineation. Continue to build effects with multiple layers using masks.

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ALTER THE ARMS

Open the Arms group, again making a selection of your Arms layer and creating a new layer. Fill this selection with a solid colour selected from your subject’s neck area. Apply a white to transparent Gradient layer style. Set Opacity at 64%, Angle at -6 degrees and Scale at 10%, pulling this to the left to create reflection down your subject’s left arm. With another active selection made from your Arms layer, create a new layer titled ‘Arm Edges’.


Illustration 13

INSERT MORE TEXTURES

Attach textures to the arms like in Step 10, but use a wet brush photo texture (such as image number ‘1083318’ from www.sxc.hu). Copy and paste this texture into your group and desaturate (Cmd/Ctrl+U, -100 Saturation). Make a selection of your Arms layer as before, then apply a layer mask to your texture layer. Set the blending mode to Overlay, tweaking opacity and Levels (Cmd/Ctrl+L) to get defined texturing. You can vary the effect by applying more textures.

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FOCUS ON THE ARM EDGES

Select a 100% Opacity soft-edged white brush and paint this to the outside edge of the arm, creating a reflection effect. Apply shadowed areas to the insides of the arms using a skin-toned brush, set to Multiply, 50% Opacity. Set the Arm Edges layer Opacity to 80% and duplicate it, placing this new layer at the top of the stack. Set the blending mode to Multiply at 10% Opacity. Edit away the top parts of the arm with a layer mask, leaving only details visible in the hands.

APPAREL AND BACKDROP

LEARN HOW TO LAYER TEXTURES TO CREATE CONTOURS AND DIRECT VIEWER ATTENTION

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PLACE ACCESSORIES

We need to simulate some sort of movement in what is so far a static image, so we’ll start with the bag element. Create a new layer above the others called ‘Tassels’, painting these in with the Marker 3 brush from the ‘Media brushes. abr’ file and using Transform>Warp to create a wind-swept effect. We’ve also applied a teal to transparent Gradient Overlay, at 90-degree Angle.

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APPLY MORE FASHION ELEMENTS

Open a photo of a ribbon ( we used image no ‘1117848’ from www.sxc.hu). Copy, cut and paste this into your Dress group. Press Cmd/Ctrl+U, increase Hue to -180, decrease Saturation to -40 and Lightness to -10, co-ordinating with the teal colour of your bag. Lengthen the band of your ribbon by making a Marquee selection, extending with Edit>Content-Aware Scale.



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BRING MOVEMENT TO THE RIBBON

Flowing ribbons are drawn out with the Pen Shape tool and rasterised, editing edges with a layer mask and painted with low-opacity black brushes. We’ve then merged all ribbon-related layers into a new layer (Cmd/Ctrl+Alt+Shift+E) and applied brush textures as in Step 10. We’ve also comped in flowers, scattering petals using flora stock (we used ‘642560’ from www.sxc.hu).

QUICK TIP

Juxtapose your lined model illustration with elements that have a cutout style. We’ve applied the Pen Shape tool to bunny stock (sourced from www.sxc.hu, image numbers ‘438073’, ‘479659’ and ‘1115471’) and made selections of butterflies. Copy and paste from bright texture stock to create an abstract fabric example.

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ASSIGN LINE DETAIL

Merge all related model layers into a separate layer (Cmd/Ctrl+Alt+Shift+E) and duplicate it. Apply a layer mask to the original merge and invert this to black. Select a Splatter style white brush, set to 30% Opacity and apply to your mask, painting your model back in as if with coloured markers. Apply Filter>Stylize>Find Edges to the duplicate, working with a layer mask as before. Set this layer’s blending mode to Multiply at 70% Opacity. Duplicate and experiment with layer opacity to get suitable line quality.

ACHIEVE DEPTH WITH ABSTRACT SHADOWS

BUILD THE BACKDROP

The backdrop should look to support the model detail. You don’t have to go crazy with effects, but try to add visual interest. We’ve created backdrop textures from media brushes and grunge textures (www.sxc.hu image numbers ‘1345387’ and ‘1083318’), raised with a soft pink to purple gradient and set to Multiply blending mode. We’ve also added in splats (sourced from DeviantART, called ‘Grungy Ink Splatter Sprays’ by dennytang) in behind our subject, as well as abstract shapes and even reworked our subject’s hair using brushes (sourced from DeviantART, called ‘Hair.Part.1’ by trisste-brushes) to highlight movement.

At this late stage there are still a few additions that you can make to further improve your fashion image, such as refining detail and tweaking colour. We also felt that the depth of field wasn’t quite right, so went ahead and made further alterations to suit. You won’t want to deviate too far from a mixed-media look, so solid, lifelike shadows are out of the question, leaving us to work with abstract types. To create these, simply copy and paste in a texture section, changing the orientation with the Transform options, setting a Linear Burn blending mode, editing with a layer mask and opacity settings.


Illustration

VEXEL VEHICLES WE SHOW YOU HOW TO USE COMMON PHOTOSHOP SELECTION OPTIONS AND LAYERING TECHNIQUES TO MASTER REALISTIC VEXEL ART

OUR EXPERT THIBAUT MAETZ

www.thibautmaetz.com

As a full-time mechanical engineer, Thibaut is a self-taught Photoshop artist. Virtually tuning his styles, he’s now fully grounded in vexel art. You can see more of his design work on his website.

SOURCE FILES You will fnd the car reference image we used from iStockphoto on the CD, as well as a background image, but feel free to substitute your own.



Genius Guide

Digital artists have readily embraced vexel design recently, giving rise to many a cool car image. In this tutorial we’ll reveal how to replicate these vexel art techniques, specifically geared towards the automotive genre. Heavy use of the Pen and Brush tools and the layer-focused workflow make this a style almost synonymous with the Photoshop program. All designers will need to re-create this vexel car is a minimal knowledge of the Pen Path tool – as this will serve as your main application device, in addition to a shedload of patience and time. Using layers is also integral and the layer-driven process will enable

you to apply various colours and flattened gradients in order to reproduce realism through lifelike textures and exposure. This type of construction may achieve different end results depending on the level of precision that you work at. However, if you remain concise and pay attention to delineation then Photoshop users will undoubtedly achieve a look that’s more photorealistic than cartoony. The degree of photorealism will depend on how far you want to push the details, but with the advice presented in this guide you’ll at least be armed with the vexel fundamentals, from which you can evolve at your own pace.

01

PIMP YOUR RIDE

Begin by opening your document (235 x 302mm, 300dpi) then pasting in your vehicle image (‘1370069’ from iStockphoto). You might want to modify it a little as we have – eg you can change the ride height and the size of the wheels. Do the former by selecting the car body with the Pen Path tool, copy, cut and pasting then shifting the new layer down slightly. Touches like this will give the car a more sporty look.

02

COLOUR MODIFICATION

Don’t be afraid to change the colour of your car. Make a duplicate of the bodywork layer (Cmd/Ctrl+J) then make an active selection of this (by Cmd/ Ctrl-clicking the layer thumbnail). Go to Image>Adjustments and use the various layers at your disposal such as Brightness/Contrast, Hue/Saturation and Levels. Use with caution to get your preferred colour effects.

VEXEL ART 101 Vexel art is not strictly defined, as it can be done in a variety of ways. You should also know that vexel art is not very suitable for making prints, as it’s not possible to resize the final result as you would with pure vexel work. So, if you want to print your art, don’t forget to create a very high-resolution canvas. Also, you need some digital drawing ability to work on vexels, as you’ll o en be using manual PS tools like Dodge and Burn to apply gradient effects etc. The methodology for this tutorial is not without its flaws, but it does guarantee to deliver realistic renderings.


Illustration 03

PIMP YOUR RIDE 2

To further enhance the look of the car, we’re going to add two blue bands concurring with those already present on the side of the body. Use the existing lines on the hood and roof to create your selection using the Pen Path tool (once again, Cmd/Ctrl-click the thumbnail in the Paths palette to make a selection).

04

COLOUR THE LINES

Create a fill layer with a blue tone (‘#23356e’) and apply Multiply blending at 74% Opacity. Create a second layer with the same colour, this time setting the blend mode to Hard Light at 65% Opacity. The result will be very close to existing lines, while maintaining a certain amount of transparency.

05

WORK UP THE BACKGROUND

We have a pretty basic background at the moment that we can change to bump up interest (we’re using ‘background.jpg’ on the CD). Whichever image you use, ensure that visuals are consistent with the shadows already on the car body. Properly integrate the image with the windscreen; create a cutout of the screen so we can see the background and then place a new layer with the same dimensions as the cutout, fill with blue (‘#2e596b’) and set Opacity to 70%.

06

OUTLINE

With the car retouched and reshaped, we can now begin the vexel work. Make an outline of your car with the Pen Path tool, using the Ctrl/right-click>Stroke option from your Paths palette. When the outline is complete, hit Ctrl/right-click so you can create a contour plot using the Pen tool. Set a 7px brush with the Hardness parameter pushed to the max then apply.


07

INLINE

Now you must create the internal contours that enable you to define each element of the car chassis – for example, the headlights, windscreen wipers, etc. Create a new layer and apply the same process as in Step 6, but with a finer brush of 3 or 4px at the same hardness. Zoom in to around 200% when completing this step so all detailed edges are accurate.

QUICK TIP If you do not see the lines correctly traced by your Pen Path application then we advise you to create a new 100% solid white layer, lowering Opacity to around 40%, just above your car. You will now see areas that are already completed as well as those which need to be finished.


Genius Guide

Start by applying these techniques to the most simple body sections of the car; this is a great way to familiarise yourself with vexel techniques

08

VECTOR MASK

Still using the Pen Path tool, we now make a clipping path for each area (eg door, windscreen, mirror, etc) of the car. This will define our future layers properly thanks to the vector mask. To begin this process, create a path along the black outlines previously created – for the front of the car, for example, close the path, Ctrl/right-click and hit Create Vector Mask. Repeat for each part of the car on a new layer.

START IMAGES For this tutorial we used a photo of a car that was shot outside. It therefore has many reflections that can complicate the implementation of a vexel process. But at least with an approach like this you’re prepared for the difficulties that may be encountered. If you don’t feel like taking on this type of image for your first stab at vexel art, we recommend that you choose an image shot in a studio instead, where the reflections are much less of an issue. Once you have the basic method nailed then you can try portraits. Portraits are more difficult because there are very few uniform planes or well-defined sections of colour like those found on a vehicle. There is also hair, which is a constant source of problems, and it can take a very long time to get convincing results.

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CLIPPING MASKS

09

FILL WITH COLOURS

Now that we have created our vector masks, we can fill them with paint. Always try to fill the mask with the most dominant colour in the area. For example, fill the bodywork with a white colour, but use a blue tone for the metal bumper and grey for the car’s interior.

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DON’T RUN BEFORE YOU CAN WALK

Start by applying these techniques to the most simple body sections of the car; this is a great way to familiarise yourself with vexel techniques as often they will only require large, flat blocks of colour. You can then move on to the windshield, lights, wheels and rims, which are elements that demand more precision – and therefore more layers.

Using clipping masks at all times will enable you to create flattened colour without any unwanted elements around the edges, as they will be captured by the vector masks created in Step 8. We can quickly make clipping masks by holding Opt/Alt and clicking between two layers in the Layers palette.


Illustration 12

COLOUR AREA

QUICK TIP

Go to the first layer just above the layer bearing the vector masks, and start creating an initial colour area using the Pen tool. Don’t forget to gather up colours of the same hue. For instance, dark tones should be on the same layer and the bright shades on separate layers. This makes it much easier if you need to modify any colours later on.

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FEATHER EDGES

Once your selections are made, use Path>Make Selection to apply a selection then go to Select>Feather and add a 2px Radius; this will better integrate your edges with colours beneath and will also simulate gradient effects, disposing of hardedged sections. You can then play with the Feather parameter to adjust the level of the gradient. We tend to use a 2px Radius, but you can push it up to 6px if you desire.

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Put layers of each main car section into groups so you can see more clearly what you have produced and where it should go in your layers stack. As soon as an area is complete, do it straight away for your convenience later on.

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WORK THROUGH CAR SHAPES

Always start with the biggest sections of uniform colour to create the car shapes, and work back down to the smallest. For example, begin by creating layers for each tone of car paint and finish with shadows that fall over the bodywork and other more subtle details.

LAYER LOVE

Do not deprive yourself of layers – use as many as necessary to achieve the most accurate finish. The more layers there are, the more tones you can apply to faithfully re-create the original image. This will result in colour gradients that are much more uniform and also make the rendering more realistic.

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DODGE AND BURN TOOLS

Photoshop’s Dodge and Burn tools are key to integrating your various layers together. They will also apply gradients to the most expansive layers. However, use these tools with caution because they can be extremely sensitive. Usually, we set the Range to Midtones and Exposure to 50% for both tools.



Genius Guide

17

WHEEL RIMS

For the rims, make only an outline of the rim itself using the Ellipse tool instead of the Pen Path tool, and also apply the Free Transform options to refine the path. Once you are satisfied, create a clipping path and, utilising the previous techniques, use as many layers as needed to achieve a result as close to the real rims as possible.

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BEGINNING TO TYRE

According to taste, you can create the tyre tread or not. This depends on the overall visual that you want to produce. If you prefer a cartoony rendering, apply only a flat black shade. You can also customise tyres by applying colour tints to the edges; think The Fast and the Furious!

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RADIATOR GRILLE

Trace the car’s grille using the Pen Path tool by following its different features. Ctrl/right-click on your path, selecting Make Stroke. Create outlines with a 3px hard brush set to maximum hardness and a brown/ grey tone (‘#181819’). Duplicate this layer to create all the grille bars and then merge them together.

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FINAL TOUCHES

The bottom doesn’t completely fill the canvas; fix this with a black band or a gradient. And here you are with your first vexel vehicle! Free your imagination to further improve the result by customising your car, or try out this workflow on an alternative source image.


Graphics Generate for modern styles

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64 Master Infographics Top tips from experts in the industry

72 Build Infographics Present data in exciting ways

76 Pixel Art

Create epic isometric pixel art with flair

82 Poster Graphics

Advertise a product without using words

86 Shape Symmetry

Combine organic and geometric forms

90 Textures and Depth

Bring artwork to life with layered textures

94 Character Illustration Make a bespoke character design

100 Vector Layers

Master CC’s new Vector Shape tools

106 Photoreal icons

Illustrate realistic icons from scratch


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Genius Guide

Photoshop has proven to be an incredibly powerful tool for image creation as well as image manipulation

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86 90


Graphics ■ 3D beginnings At first, I rendered a simple 3D model of the pie using a plain grey material, so I didn’t worry about perspective and shadows

■ Add textures I mixed some textures and photos in masked groups and used them in Multiply mode above the 3D shot

■ Add details Some of the small details were drawn with my tablet pen

■ Further details Other details are simple, free 3D models rendered in grey and coloured with Photoshop

■ Smoke effects The black-and-white photo of the smoke was used in Screen mode

© Anton Egorov Client: Japan Tobacco International. Agency: re:point - Kazakhstan

BUILD INFOGRAPHICS WITH A THEME ANTON EGOROV

www.behance.net/egorov Anton Egorov is a freelance CG artist who has worked for clients including Toyota, Japan Tobacco International and Saatchi & Saatchi LA. He created this infographic on the area and population of Central


Asia and Mongolia for a client. He explains how to create a theme with data: “Usually, after collecting the information, it’s just a bunch of facts, some pages of text and a couple of fearful tables into the bargain. From this junk, we should carefully extract nice and

■ Landmarks For famous sights, I made plain 3D models and textured them in Photoshop using photos

pretty data that we want show to our viewer. Ideally, you can describe your purpose with one word. But usually it’s several ones. In my case, it’s something + something + entertainment. Despite that, I still respect fully utilitarian infographics.”


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PROFESSIONAL DESIGNERS SHARE THEIR TOP TIPS FOR CREATING INFORMATIVE AND VISUALLY APPEALING GRAPHICS THAT WORK HARD TO REPRESENT THE GIVEN DATA HOW TO PLAN AN INFOGRAPHIC SABRINA SMELKO www.sabrinasmelko.com

© Sabrina Smelko, created for Bright Almond

Sabrina Smelko, illustrator and designer, shares her top tips for planning an infographic: “The first step to creating a great infographic is gathering information – be that from a client or not. You need to ask: What’s the mood of the infographic? What are the dimensions of the piece? What is the style? What medium is it being created for? But most importantly, you need the statistics. They are the bones that all great infographics are based on. The right kind of stats are also important: the more direct, the better. Any time you can use concrete numbers or percentages, the more hard-hitting the graphics.”

CLIENT REQUIREMENTS

01

© STUDIOJQ

I met with the great people at Bright Almond over dinner. We chatted about their needs and I gathered as much information about the project as possible. At this stage, they also supplied me with their brand guidelines that specified the colours and fonts I had to use, so I could think about a look and style to execute in.

INFOGRAPHICS IN A DIGITAL AGE JONATHAN QUINTIN

03 02

EXPERIMENTATION

As Bright Almond spent some time fishing for statistics, I started playing with styles, shapes and the overall look of pieces in Illustrator before diving into anything too specific. After this, I was supplied with a long list of statistics from which I could pick and choose the best nuggets of information.

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER

Once I established a look, I laid out the boxes of soon-to-be text and graphics using a grid to ensure the infographic would be visually balanced. By this point, I had established a look and a layout, gained knowledge of the dimensions, purpose and usage of the infographic and was supplied with colours and fonts, so it was a matter of filling in the blanks. The only task left to do was to translate the statistics into icons and illustrations in a visually pleasing and educational way.

www.dribbble.com/STUDIOJQ Jonathan Quintin, founder and creative director of STUDIOJQ, created this screen printed wedding invitation infographic to celebrate the lives of a couple getting married. He says that you need to consider how people will view your infographics: “It’s extremely important to consider all media types and where the viewer will see your infographics. When the big rave for infographics started, most designed for a standard web format, but these days you need to consider animated elements and better ways to tell a story. This helps to deliver [the data] in a much more visual and interesting way.”


Graphics ■ Focal design Each actor was labelled ‘Notorious for…’, which influenced the design of the hero image

■ Create balance We included the same amount of supporting data on the right-hand side as a secondary way of comparing across all the actors

© Alexis Cuddyre, Christina Winkless and David Paul Rosser

■ Project focus This image is a single screen from an interactive infographic called Notorious James Bond, created by Alexis Cuddyre, Christina Winkless (www.christinawinkless.com) and David Paul Rosser (www.davidpaulrosser.co.uk)

© Marianne Taylor

■ Add context Last, we added a third level of data along the left-hand side in the format of a timeline, where all the movies were listed with their respective ratings in order to provide additional context

USE INFOGRAPHICS TO TELL A STORY ALEXIS CUDDYRE

www.alexiscuddyre.com Graphic designer Alexis Cuddyre has worked on data visualisation projects for a range of clients through her current employer, Digit. She tells us: “If the aim of your

■ Pick an angle This was based on data released by Information is Beautiful. We looked at the data and decided our story was going to be on what each actor was notorious for, be it the highest number of kills, or the number of times the actor was presumed dead

infographic is to tell a story, it’s very important that you don’t just include absolutely every single data point that you’ve captured. It is the responsibility of the team, not just the designer, to make sure the visualisation has a carefully curated point of view. On the other hand, there are really beautiful infographics, especially in the interactive world, where the point of the piece is less about explaining a single story and

more about encouraging the user to explore and play with the data.” She collaborated with two other designers to produce this ‘Notorious James Bond’ piece, which was entered into the Information is Beautiful awards run by David McCandless, a London-based author, writer and designer. The full interactive piece is available to view at http://notoriousbond.info.

PRIORITISE THE INFORMATION PAUL BUTT www.sectiondesign.co.uk

Paul Butt is a freelance designer and has worked with clients including the BBC, Wired, Which?, GQ, the Financial Times and Ubuntu. When creating an infographic, he explains that: “For me, information has the central priority, with graphic design playing the supporting role in presenting it. I try to approach projects with a rational process and everything has to have a reason for being on the page. With that said, there are often little design tweaks and flourishes that can be quite subtle, yet can really add character to a piece. However, they should not obscure the main point of the graphic.” Butt has a set procedure for ensuring that the information doesn’t get lost in the design: “I try to work to a defined grid where I’ll lay out a wire frame of the information, and then work out how to go about the aesthetics. Always question what you are doing and think how other people might interpret the work. Getting other people’s opinions can be very valuable, as the design should be as accessible as possible.”


A close-up of the detail, showing how the labelling had to fit around the graphic

© Section Design

An earlier prototype for laying out the cyclists and the labels. In the end, I had much less space than I thought, so had to simplify these a lot more to fit in.”


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CREATE MIXED MEDIA INFOGRAPHICS JAYMIE MCAMMOND

© Jaymie McAmmond

www.jaymiemcammond.com Designer, Since Photoshop brushes don’t illustrator and work at this scale, all of my textures letterer Jaymie are hand crafted, scanned and McAmmond has worked for a huge imported as separate layers. Although number of well-known clients across the industry standard for printing the world. This amazing and detailed murals is 100-150dpi at full scale, I infographic artwork was created as a work at 250dpi to retain maximum site-specific mural for Starbucks in detail in my textures. At the end of a Toronto, and the actual mural stands project, my files can be upwards of at a gigantic 10 x 20ft. It was created 20GB per image before flattening – a using mixed media tools including speedy processor and extra RAM can pencil, paper, chalk, charcoal, really help with this.” Illustrator and Photoshop. One key element of McAmmond’s “When designing this type of mural, work is the typography she uses to I begin with sketches to determine bring her artwork to life: “Not all content, hierarchy of information, infographics need typography to be composition and typography. During successful. There are lots of beautiful this phase, I also draw any spot infographics out there that have no illustrations I want to include. Although typography at all. However, I always it might be quicker to draw these get really excited working with type. digitally, I find I get more control and Choosing the right typefaces is like accuracy on paper. Next, I redraw the choosing the right cast for a film. The illustrations and assemble the final information is like a script and the composition in Illustrator. Lastly, I add typography are the actors that give it texture and depth in Photoshop. meaning and bring it to life.”

CREATE AN INFOGRAPHIC CV ANNY TRUONG

www.behance.net/anniitron Anny Truong, a graphic designer for April Gold Bags, is one of a growing number of designers who have applied infographics to their CV as a unique way of presenting information about themselves. Truong advises to keep things simple: “Infographics are meant to present complex information quickly and clearly. The last thing you want is to confuse the viewer with something that was meant to be simple. Keep it clean, concise and visually appealing. A little bit of humour or personality doesn’t hurt either.”

Infographics are meant to present complex information quickly and clearly. Keep it clean, concise and visually appealing

© Anny Truong


Graphics DON’T FORGET THE DATA RANDY KRUM

www.infonewt.com Randy Krum is a well-known name in the world of infographics, as the man behind www.coolinfographics.com, a collection of the best infographics around. He is also the president of InfoNewt, an infographic design and visual consulting company. He explains why infographics are so appealing: “The science behind why infographics work is very compelling. The Picture Superiority Effect states that audiences are likely to remember 65 per cent of the content presented if the text is combined with visuals to convey the

© 2010 InfoNewt, LLC, Design by Randy Krum

message. Compare that number to only ten per cent remembered by audiences from text alone, and it’s clear that this is a huge advantage to anyone that uses information design to tell a story in an infographic. Design infographics to tell a story really well. Most readers will only look at one for five to ten seconds, and not at the whole thing. An infographic designer needs to focus on communicating the main message of the design in that short amount of time in order to successfully reach most of the audience. Don’t include extra data just because it’s available, as that will confuse and clutter the design.”

FIND GOOD DATA TO ILLUSTRATE TIFFANY FARRANT GONZALEZ

© Tiffany Farrant-Gonzalez

www.tiffanyfarrant.co.uk Freelance information designer Tiffany Farrant-Gonzalez has a lot of experience when it comes to working with data. Having worked for major corporations around the world, including companies Google and American Express, she says: “The Open Data


movement has recently seen both countries and large organisations release previously hidden data out into the world. This now means that there is a fantastic array of sources out there to visualise: from the economy and healthcare to the extinction rate and environmental data. The Guardian Datablog

(www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog) keeps an A-Z list of open data sources and Andy Kirk, who runs www.visualisingdata.com, has also compiled a fantastic list of open data sources as well as services that work with or curate social, map-based, weather and travel data.”


Genius Guide

A hierarchy of design helping the viewer to navigate and breathing room are a solid foundation. Overcrowding will put people off CAPTIVATE YOUR AUDIENCE LAWRENCE WHITELEY

www.wond.co.uk Lawrence Whiteley is a designer and director at Wond. He explains that creating an infographic that is easy to understand in a glance is “not as crucial as designing something people feel is worthy of a glance. A captivating design whets the appetite for soaking up the information. If you give the viewer curiosity then you have a hook, opening us up to learn.” In order to achieve this, he advises: “A hierarchy of design helping the viewer to navigate and a nice amount of breathing room are a solid foundation, but it would be nothing without a seductive colour palette and some graphic flair. Overcrowding will put people off.”

© Wond Ltd 2013

INJECT HUMOUR INTO INFOGRAPHICS INFOGR8

www.infogr8.com infogr8 designed this quirky infographic based on a survey by GetLenses. The agency was tasked with creating a visual story reflecting the frustrating problems glasses wearers suffer in 2013. The design proves that infographics can be fun: “The data doesn’t have to always be serious, but it must be accurate in order to hold integrity. Each project has different objectives, audiences and formats to consider. The way we approach the data needs to reflect that each time, with open, fresh and innovative thinking.” The company has some essential advice when it comes to introducing humour: “It’s crucial that the data never gets lost in the design, regardless of the angle you’re taking. Without being able to grasp the subject at hand straight away or at least have a basic understanding of it, you’ve just created an attractive piece of graphic design. However, with this specific infographic we were given a bit more freedom by the client and therefore decided to go with a more playful, humorous direction that fitted the target audience and the message we were trying to convey.”

© Produced by infogr8, illustrated by infogr8’s Stavros Siamptanis © Gary Corr 2013


Graphics MAKE YOUR INFOGRAPHIC EASY TO SHARE JOHN PRING

www.designbysoap.co.uk John Pring is the director of Inbound Marketing and Content Creation at Designbysoap. He explains the importance of making an infographic easy to share so that it has the widest reach: “Ensure the page you publish the infographic on has social media sharing buttons, making it easy for the reader to share the content. You can include any number of social platforms for a user to engage with, but I would certainly recommend including Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, StumbleUpon and Google+. Include a HTML embed code with your infographic, to allow people to copy and paste the code to embed the infographic on their own site. An added benefit of this is that you can include a credit link back to your own site in the embed code, sending in more traffic. In order to encourage sharing, you need to think about three main elements; the data, the design and the subsequent promotion of the artwork. The data is integral to the success of your infographic, as it is the angle from

which you decide to approach the information. The data should be at least one of three things: informative, educational or entertaining. Similarly, the story is hugely important – much like a journalist does, it’s better to approach and visualise the data with a story in mind. The design is a crucial part of encouraging sharing – you can have the most interesting data in the world and a great angle to approach, but if the design is poor then you’ll struggle to effectively promote the infographic and will be unlikely to see much engagement in the way of social media sharing. Lastly, the way in which you promote and spread your infographic will dramatically affect how it’s shared across social media platforms. Publishing an infographic on your site and submitting it to a few infographic submission sites will likely result in only a handful of social shares, whereas approaching an influencer such as Mashable and getting your design published on their site will almost certainly give you hundreds (if not thousands) of social shares.”

© Official Charts Company and Designbysoap Ltd, 2013

PICK THE RIGHT COLOUR PALETTE MICHELLE HYEMIN LEE

© Michelle Hyemin Lee


www.milee.co Michelle Hyemin Lee created One Beverage, an infographic that visualises the process of making a drink using an espresso machine. Information is delivered in a circular graph to resemble both a cup and a clock, and is based on Starbucks Coffee Company’s Masterna espresso. An important part in the creation of this graphic was a relevant and simple colour palette: “When designing One Beverage, I selected colours in a subtle range of browns and warm greys to visually suggest the topic and contribute in efficiently organising and delivering the information. Subtle and neutral colours are chosen not only to visualise, but also help the viewer to easily read and understand the information. I believe that choosing a relevant and effective colour palette is one of the most crucial tasks when designing an information graphic, because it is a dominant communication tool. It can effectively suggest the content at glance. An irrelevant or eyesore colour palette can repel the viewer from reading the information or convey the wrong message.”


Genius Guide

STAND OUT FROM THE CROWD GARY CORR

www.garycorr.co.uk One difficult thing to achieve with infographics is balancing lots of information in one artwork. This is something that Gary Corr has achieved in his CV project. The majority of the work is based on typography, so it was important to get all the elements weighted correctly for it to work. “Typography played a huge part in my CV. This was like a sort of cover letter for me, but using nice typography. I also made it into a nice piece of visual art. I wanted to create something that was bold and stood out, creating a memorable style that communicates quite strongly. A fair bit of planning was involved: first, you need to decide which information is going into the CV. As well as the usual CV info, I wanted to include some lighthearted facts that would paint a picture of my personality. Also, I spent time researching others that had been already done. I wanted to create an original layout that I hadn’t seen before which would stand out. I used an unusual shape and fold to achieve this.”

Gary’s infographic CV has an original layout that folds down small so that it is easy to carry around for networking purposes

Thinking outside of the box will make Corr stand out from the many other CVs received by design agencies every day – a definite edge as a recent graduate

© Kimberley Glazebrook and NHS 5 Boroughs Partnership

ALWAYS CHECK YOUR FACTS KIM GLAZEBROOK

www.kimberleyglazebrook.co.uk

Kim Glazebrook is a graphic and web designer, and she created this infographic for NHS 5 Boroughs to help young people deal with depression. When working for clients like the NHS, it is important to make sure that your facts are correct when creating your design: “With an infographic, and especially this one, it is vitally important to check the data is correct, as providing incorrect advice could be very harmful.”


Graphics

BUILD INFOGRAPHICS IN PHOTOSHOP CREATE EXCITING STYLES USING NEW TOOLS IN THE LATEST VERSION OF PHOTOSHOP

Information graphics, or infographics, are visual representations of information, data or expert knowledge. Styles for these pieces vary, but are usually inspired by the topics presented, which is the case with the example we will be using here. In this tutorial we show you how to create your very own infographic, using an example displaying how our Facebook community uses Photoshop. This means we’re giving our graphic design a digital style, inspired by futuristic looks seen in web design, cinema and the design industry. In keeping with the futuristic theme we also explore how new Photoshop tools can be used to augment this digital style. We show you how to apply and edit the new Shape tool options used to create and improve your infographic bar and dial charts. We also take a look at basic yet effective ways to add 3D looks to your designs by applying the new 3D Extrusion functionality. Old favourite Photoshop tools also make an appearance, helping you express the impact of your special effects. By the end of this tutorial you’ll have learnt a few more awesome Photoshop style techniques.

BUILD ELEMENTS

USE BLENDING MODES, LAYER MASKS AND NEW CS6 SHAPE OPTIONS

01

START WITH A SKETCH

Creating multiple layout sketches of your infographic is a great starting point. Here you can revise the sequence of applied graphics, fine-tune the styles of your graphs and charts and even contemplate image colours all before you’ve even begun. Once you’ve decided on your layout you can scan, copy and paste it into Photoshop.

02

THE GRID



Adam is our resident Photoshop expert, but before a life in digital art he was an illustrative graduate. Here he brings his illustration and graphics skills to the table to create this tutorial.

SOURCE FILES On the disc you will find the ‘Infographic Swatch.aco’ file used to apply the colour scheme in this image, as well as the world map PSD to complete Steps 12 and 13.

WORK IN PROGRESS

FROM SKETCH TO FINAL GRAPHIC PRESENTATION

Use your sketch as the blueprint for applying your guides in Photoshop. You can activate these by choosing View>Rulers. Simply drag and drop to designate applicable areas in your layout. One thing to remember is to keep the spacing between objects and fonts consistent. Of course a certain amount of eyeing will take place. Step 1: Devise your layout with rough sketching

03

BEGIN A GRAPH

As our infographic is fuelled by Photoshop-related data we want our style to have a futuristic digital look, so the form follows the function. We start by building our first graph. As we’re working with percentages out of 100, create a new document 100mm high by 10mm wide at 300dpi. Apply horizontal guides to increments of 10mm, top to bottom.


Step 7: Build design elements using Shape tools

Step 12: Enhance the composition

Graphics 04

BUILD A GRAPH

QUICK TIP

Here we’re building a graph with six categories so we need to use six bars. Use your guides to create individual bars – each one’s height corresponding with a percentage. For instance, 57 per cent would be 57mm. Create these bars using the Rectangle Shape tool in a new document. Copy and paste each one into your infographic, aligning equally using guides, or if you have CS6 the automated Smart Guides. Activate your Swatches panel and load the ‘Infographic Swatch.aco’ file supplied.

We have grouped many of our layers in this tutorial as Smart Objects. However, if you are copy and pasting existing Smart Object elements to use again, remember changes will update all associated layers such as shape, shape copy and shape copy 2. Sometimes it’s best to build then import infographic elements.

05

ADD GRADIENTS

Your new swatch contains the key colours you’ll be applying. Start by selecting a bluegrey tone and fill your Background layer with this. Activate and add a gradient to each graph bar shape by selecting fx>Gradient Overlay. Set a teal-to-light-beige style, then set the Scale initially to 100%. Smooth your gradient then position to reflect an increase of values, for instance the more concentrated the teal the lower the percentage. Tweak Scale values to alter accordingly.

06

GET A PIXEL EFFECT

Duplicate each bar shape layer and Cmd/Ctrl-click each, selecting Rasterize layer style to flatten. Select each duplicate layer and apply a Gaussian Blur with a pixel Radius between 16 and 26 and a square Cell Size Mosaic filter between 8 and 16. This should result in a pixelated effect. Edit each duplicate layer’s Size and Edge, using the Transform> Size handles. Next, activate all duplicates and original shape layers and merge all, adding a 70% Opacity Screen blending mode.

07

APPLY THE ELLIPSE SHAPE TOOL

Cmd/Ctrl-click all original shape layers and pick the Shape tool. Open the Stroke options, setting a white Fill at 0.4pt Stroke Width. Add layer masks to all the original shape layers, using a 30% Opacity black brush to the bottom of your layer masks. Select the Ellipse Shape tool, draw a circle, duplicate it, decrease its size and place it inside the original shape. Cmd/Ctrl-click the duplicate the circle layer thumbnail, make a selection, add a layer mask to the original circle and invert it.


08

CREATE A DIAL CHART BASE

Delete the duplicate ellipse shape layer. Set your original circle shape layer colour to a slightly lighter variation of dark navy (1d1f21). Convert this layer to a Smart Object then apply a Rasterize layer. Add a Stroke layer style (fx), setting Size at 1px, Position to Inside and Color to dark navy. Add an Inner Shadow layer style (fx), setting Angle at 120 degrees, Opacity at 50%, Distance at 7px and Size at 29px. Apply a hot orange Outer Glow layer style (fx), setting Opacity to 60% and Blend Mode to Screen. Tweak Spread and Size values.


Genius Guide

BRING IN 3D CONTENT

CREATE 3D ELEMENTS USING NEW CS6 EXTRUSION TECHNOLOGY

09

ADD CHART VALUES

Duplicate your circle layer and apply a Rasterize layer style. Cmd/Ctrl-click the original circle layer thumbnail and erase it from the selection in your duplicate layer. Set the duplicate to Color Dodge and hit Cmd/Ctrl+U, setting Hue to 20. Duplicate your original circle shape layer, naming this ‘dial’ and placing it at the top of the stack. Delete all layer styles. Use guides to split this duplicate layer into four sections then select the Rectangle Marquee tool. Add a layer mask to the bottom-right section of your shape then invert it.

10

FINALISE THE DIAL CHART

Add a navy-to-teal Gradient Overlay layer style to your dial layer, positioning accordingly. Also apply Bevel & Emboss, setting Style to Inner Bevel, Size at 5px, Angle at 131 degrees, Highlight Mode Opacity at 36% and an Inner Glow set to 88% Opacity Screen Blend Mode. Set Technique to Softer, Color to a lighter teal, Choke to 19%, Size to 43px and activate Edge. Finally apply a Drop Shadow, setting the Blend Mode to Multiply, Opacity to 23%, Angle to 131 degrees, Distance to 25 px and Size to 25px.

Choose a group layer and select 3D>New 3D Extrusion from Selected Layer. Tilt your 3D layer away from you to create depth. Go to Whole Scene>Mesh options and correspond your Extrusion Depth to your info values

11

SEE THROUGH THE EFFECT

Duplicate the dial layer and apply a Rasterize layer style. Set a 35% Opacity Color Dodge. Convert the original layer to a Smart Object and add a layer mask to both dials. Cmd/Ctrl-click your duplicate dial layer thumbnail, making a selection, then apply to both this and the previous duplicate layer’s mask. Use a soft black brush at 35% Opacity. Apply a Screen blending mode to your duplicate dial layer and set the Opacity to 50%.

12

NEW 3D OPTIONS

Open the ‘world map.psd’ supplied, then drag and drop the world map group into your image, resizing it to fit your guides. Apply a light-teal Gradient Overlay to each shape in the group. Choose a group layer and select 3D>New 3D Extrusion from Selected Layer. Tilt your 3D layer away from you to create depth. Go to the Whole Scene>Mesh options and correspond your Extrusion Depth to your information values.

13

RELIGHT AND ADD COLOUR

Deactivate Catch and Cast Shadows options. With your guides showing, drag your Infinite Light handle in front of your 3D layer. Activate the Environment options and change the IBL colour to teal. Apply these to all your shape layers in the world map group, then Cmd/Ctrl-click each layer, picking Raster 3D. Duplicate your world map group, converting this new group to a Smart Object, then rasterise it and add mosaic effects.

REAPPLY WHAT YOU’VE LEARNT From here you have acquired several techniques that you can add to new infographic elements. For the clock dials in the bottom-left of the image we just copy and past the original dial layer, resize, position and cut away transparent sections to present new chart values. Feel free to reposition elements accordingly – CS6 Smart Guides will help you achieve symmetry. Apply font styles and text that is legible so people can read the data.


Graphics


Genius Guide

REDISCOVER PIXEL ART CREATE EPIC ISOMETRIC PIXEL ART WITH SOME CANNY DUPLICATION AND A BIT OF FLAIR

OUR EXPERT CHRIS MALBON, AKA MELBS

By the end of this workshop, you will think of the Duplicate Layer command as your new best friend. This image may look super complex at first glance, but look closely and you’ll see that it’s composed of the same graphics repeated over and over. Each copy has a subtle colour change – a different roof or window, or an element that’s been flipped – but essentially it’s the same root illustration. If the thought of a pixel-by-pixel illustration sounds arduous and time consuming, it isn’t; once again, all you have to do is draw a selection of horizontal and vertical lines and duplicate them. Photoshop is the ideal tool for this because of the ease of use it offers with its layer, merging and duplication functions. Overlooked basic tools like the Eraser and Magic Wand will also come into play. Pixel illustrations are great for making computer icons, isometric images and even whole scenes, as shown here. We wanted to give this illustration a twist, approaching it in a very graphic and abstract way, so it would be just as at home in a picture frame in the form of a print as it would be on a computer screen.

WORK IN PROGRESS

MAKE A SCENE OF TOTAL DESTRUCTION

www.chrismalbon.co.uk/blog

With 14 years’ experience, Melbs works for some of the biggest brands in the world. Now based in Bristol in the UK, enjoying the freelance life with his young family, he works for both local and global agencies.

SOURCE FILES The artist has supplied an isometric grid and a few basic buildings, vehicles and trees to get you started.

PIXEL BY PIXEL PROCESS

RECYCLING ELEMENTS AND A LITTLE IMAGINATION GO A LONG WAY

01

ISOMETRIC GRID

To begin, you will need an isometric grid as a guide, even for your rough sketch, to help get the spacing right. Our grid is made up of 30-degree horizontal and reverse vertical lines and is on the disc. Print it out on A4 and we can get started.

02

SKETCH

Like all great ideas, this started in the sketchbook. We opt for a monster-on-a-rampage scene, a nod to King Kong and Godzilla. Be as rough as you like, as this is just a scamp. Using layout paper means you can follow the grid below.

Step 9: Lay out your city

Step 13: Lay into your city

Step 24: Go with the glow

03

CREATE A PIXEL BRUSH

Because our piece is going to be high-res, we can’t use a single 72dpi pixel – instead, we have to create a high-res, printable pixel. To do this, open a new document, sized 5 x 5px at 300dpi. Then go to Edit>Define Brush Preset to make a new brush. Select the Pencil tool and then open the Brushes palette to select your new brush; it should be at the bottom. Now we’re ready to draw pixels!


Graphics 04

QUICK TIP

CORNER TO CORNER

One click at a time – this is the most time consuming part of the process – whenever changing the angle of the line, make sure the corners are edge to edge. To achieve a perfect isometric line draw two squares across and one down (see below); use your scamp as a guide to draw your lines. When your pixel drawing is viewed at 100% (actual size) the Pencil tool at 1px is very small, so you might find it hard to see and manipulate. A good idea is to enlarge the view to 800% so you can clearly see what you’re doing.

Remember to untick the Anti-alias checkbox when selecting inside your pixel outline; this will lead to a cleaner and bolder shape, with no overhang or blur. Pixel art needs to be clean and precise.

05

ONE ELEMENT AT A TIME

The beauty of this piece is it uses the same graphics over and over, but each is treated a little differently. Let’s start with a building. Draw an isometric line on a new layer then duplicate. Go to Edit>Transform>Flip Horizontal and merge the two layers. Repeat this process but, when done, rotate this layer 180 degrees and merge so you are left with a diamond shape. Hit Duplicate Layer and, with an eraser, remove the top half. Drag down and draw two vertical joining lines to create a 3D block.

06

COLOURING IN

Check all your isometric lines are joined and that there are no gaps. Next, select the Magic Wand tool, open your Options bar and make sure the Anti-alias box is unchecked and Contiguous is checked. Click inside the shape with the Magic Wand, create a new layer and place it under your lined drawing, before selecting the Paint Bucket tool and filling each side of the block with colour. Keep tones similar and add some highlights by drawing single key line strokes.

07

SKYSCRAPER DETAILS

Start duplicating your building layers. Now that you have a base, it’s fairly easy to recycle the same graphic and, by adding different details, each building gets its own look. We don’t want to overcomplicate the skyscrapers – a few isometric lines doubled up work great as a row of windows, while some single white lines can serve as passable reflections. You can also try applying some subtle gradients as we have – it’s up to you!


08

CREATE SOME CARNAGE!

This scene is about destruction so be creative with your lines, creating black fills and placing them over the tops of buildings to give the impression of holes and burnt areas. Use the Eraser tool to delete sides of your buildings, but remember to draw back in black outlines. Place black isometric spots across the top of your buildings to give the impression of half-demolished structures.


Genius Guide

WATCH THIS SPACE

This scene is about destruction so be creative with your lines. Create black fills and place them over the buildings to give the impression of holes and burnt areas

MAKE THE MOST OF EVERY AREA OF THE PS CANVAS

09

FILL OUT THE SCENE

Once you have created buildings in various states of destruction, turn your attention to the rest of the scene. Create a background layer filled with a vibrant flat colour or gradient. Use your scamp to give you an idea of where your monster will go and start placing the buildings you just made.

001

002

003

10

HELICOPTERS

Now you’ve got the hang of drawing edge to edge, and creating isometric angles, it’s time to get a bit more creative. Using the sketch we now create some helicopters. Again, it’s fairly simple, but it helps to duplicate your layers of lines to save wearing out your finger with all that clicking! Draw some simple forms first, like the cockpit, which is a box with a steep, angled line at the front. The blades are just an isometric circle coloured blue with its opacity knocked back.

001 |

Use the buildings to create some background negative space. To do this, select one of the building layers and lock it. Fill the shape with white, duplicate the layer and start creating some abstract backdrops; use your grid to keep things roughly aligned, but they can overlap to add interest.

11

002 |

For exposed areas of street around your buildings, create a chequered pattern like paving slabs. Duplicate the building tops and keep them flush. Repeat so you start getting a chessboard effect then place around the base of your structures, eliminating some of the white space.

TANKS

For the tanks, much of the same applies as previous steps. So long as you keep the pixels clean, you can’t go wrong. Keep your sketch close to hand, because drawing tanks, helicopters and the like from memory is much harder than you think. Create the tanks in a piecemeal fashion to keep them editable; we need to flip them horizontally to fill out the scene, but when doing this, remember to reposition the barrel of the gun.

12

003 |

It wouldn’t be a city without roads, and these are very easy to do. They are just isometric lines that are moved slightly apart, then joined at the ends and filled in with grey. Flip some of them around to have the roads going in various directions. Now the tanks have room to play.

BOATS

We don’t want to use too many boats, but it’s up to you. Again use your scamps for reference (see, it pays to do sketches!) and the grid to create your iso-boats. We decide to mix up the size of the pixels making up the boat; the pixels on the top half have a thicker line, giving the impression of a top-heavy control tower. And to continue the recycling theme, we copy and paste guns from the tanks, colouring them to match the boat.

13

ORGANISE YOUR ARMY

Now to place all these war machines, we have inverted our scamp because white lines are easier to see. Use roads as a guide for the tanks, boats will need to go on the sea, while helicopters can pretty much go anywhere. The ocean is just a solid blue isometric square with single 1px lines running over it to indicate the crests of waves. Place some tanks and helicopters peeping out from behind buildings to develop depth.


Graphics BRING IN THE MONSTER

ORGANISED CHAOS

INTRODUCE THE STAR OF THE SHOW: PIXELA

14

GO IN WITH A BANG!

Explosions have no structure, they just… well, explode! So feel free to go a little wild when making these. You will need to do three or four different sizes for some variation. Create them on separate layers and fill them with different colours; we’ve used grey, red, orange and yellow. Add some pixel dots for shading and a few random 1-2px embers as a nice extra touch.

16

PIXELA

Now let’s create the star of the show. Start with the scamp on its own layer and set it to Multiply blending; we do this so that any colour used can be seen without interfering with the sketch. Create a new layer for your pixel drawing. Do your best to stick to your sketch, applying the same technique of edge to edge – two across and one down – as best you can. It might look a little messy to begin with but it will shape up! Key lines inside the illustration also help give it a bold look.

18

PIXELA 3: DETAILS

The monster details may look complex, but they really aren’t. They’re just a combination of flush isometric lines, with the opacity knocked back on different lines. Some areas of Pixela we have coloured in darker, others lighter, and the top of his head has been applied with the chequer pattern from earlier. There’s nothing here you have not used already. However, if you’ve got time, it can be nice to create one or two bespoke patterns for your monster, eg a reptilian scales pattern.


15

PLACE THE EXPLOSIONS

It makes sense to surround the monster with your explosions, also placing near the barrels of guns. You can crop the explosions and place them over the black holes on your buildings too, giving the impression of small fires. Once again, it’s all about the Duplicate Layer command. Add some smoke for realism, which is just some flat bent lines with the opacity knocked back.

17

PIXELA 2: COLOUR

Once you have drawn your monster, create another new layer and place it underneath your scamp. Go back to the pixel drawing and use the Magic Wand tool to select inside the beast, then fill the monster with a colour of your choice. We opted for green as our base colour. Now draw the rest of the main features – such as horns, claws, eyes, etc – all on separate layers so that they are independently editable as we progress.

When creating an illustration as hectic as this, it’s best to keep all the elements in separate folders within their own master file so you have a library of graphics to refer to. To keep these folders even more easily distinguished, you can colour code them, by Shi-clicking on the relevant layer thumbnails in the Layers palette, hitting Cmd/Ctrl+G and assigning a colour. When you have placed all elements and are happy, you can merge everything, but be 100 per cent sure that you’re done, as you won’t be able to edit anything from that point on.


Genius Guide

19

QUICK TIP

PRACTISE YOUR SCALES

The scale pattern is dead easy to make. Draw nine small pixel 2D circles, and inside each corner circle draw something like a cross. Once happy, merge everything, then duplicate your layer and put it next to your first and merge again. Repeat this procedure until you have created several rows. Select All and copy the pattern, go back to the Pixela picture, select an area you want to fill and paste in the scales.

Once you have drawn your pixel art, don’t try rescaling it. This will blur the pixels and automatically give everything an anti-aliased look, and you will lose that allimportant clean pixel finish.

20

HORNS

The monster’s horns are simple triangle forms; it’s the shading that gives them the feel of depth and form. Start by drawing a large horn shape and duplicating it. On the duplication erase away the bottom half, then redraw your black keyline. Duplicate again and continue to do this until you run out of triangle! Place the decreasingly sized triangles along Pixela’s tail.

21

TRAILS

We are now going to create a little more negative space by giving our helicopters some white exhaust trails; this is a nice way to make the piece more graphic and abstract. Duplicate the roads created in Step 9 and fill with white. Place them behind the helicopters and use the Transform tool to flip them horizontally and vertically to create zigzags. Again, it’s a nice idea to have some trails vanishing behind buildings for perspective.

22

THINK GREENERY

To create a tree, make sure your pixels are edge to edge and create a half circle. Then copy and paste before going to Edit>Transform>Flip Horizontal, bringing almost flush with your other half and draw a few pixels to join the top and bottom. Fill in with a green colour and, using single pixels, shade one half of the tree, as per the screenshot. Draw some simple 2-3px trunks in brown underneath to complete the trees.

23

PLACING THE TREES AND FIELDS

Fields are just your roads from earlier placed next to each other and then filled with varying shades of green. Start placing your trees around the fields and one or two here and there between the buildings to break up the skyscrapers. Of course, if you wanted to go on and create alternative scenes with your pixel monster, you could reuse any of these elements to save you time.

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GLOW EFFECTS

It’s not the done thing to add glares, or any kind of effects over pixel art, but we like to break the rules now and then to add a little ‘oomph’. Flatten your image and, on a new layer set to Screen blending, pick a medium-sized airbrush. Use the Color Picker to pull out existing colours and apply around flames and explosions to indicate sparks and heat. Consider also using on Pixela’s teeth and eyes for an extra monstery glow!


Graphics

POSTER GRAPHICS

POSTERS ARE ESSENTIAL FOR ADVERTISING BRANDS, BUT TRYING TO DO IT WITHOUT TEXT? THAT’S HARD BEYOND WORDS…

OUR EXPERT JOSH OVERTON

www.overtongraphics.com

Josh is a graphic designer based in London, UK. He focuses mainly on digital and print work and has worked with a number of high-profile clients. He’s currently working at BaseKit.

SOURCE FILES You will find a paper texture on the CD. Everything else is created from scratch during the tutorial.

We will be looking at creating an advertisement with no words, which can have several interpretations depending on the potential customer who is viewing it


Advertising without words is possibly one of the most difficult marketing strategy briefs you can get. It can therefore require a lot more work than an advertisement with words, because creating an image that gets a point across to a viewer without using any text is much harder than having a quick brainstorming session to think up a tagline. In this tutorial we look at creating a mock poster advert for a brand with an identifiable logo. A lot of current advertising is text-based. However, when viewers are walking by in a rush or driving past at speed, these text-heavy adverts are lost as they have no attention-grabbing, self-explanatory elements that you can take something from in the blink of an eye. We will be looking at creating an advertisement with no words, which can have several interpretations depending on the potential customer who is viewing it. We will be creating this design using purely Photoshop and some simple techniques in the program which are often overlooked.


Genius Guide

MAKE MULTIVALENT ILLUSTRATIONS

LEARN HOW TO SELL WITHOUT WORDS

01

SET UP THE DOCUMENT

First, we need to establish the size of the document. Set it to International Paper, A3 with a dpi of 300. This is convenient as, with these settings, you can print up to A2 posters without compromising on image quality and you also save some space on your computer’s memory. It’s a win-win situation!

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02

ADD A BACKGROUND

Next we need a background image. We are using a textured backdrop (supplied on the resource disc), but you can use any texture or colour that works for your design. Remember, these steps are a starting point for you to go off on your own tangent.

ADD SOME SHAPES

Now we add some shapes to the background just to make the design a little more complex and interesting. This is an optional step as you may be going for a cleaner, more minimalist finish. The shapes we are using are rectangles, which are white in colour with a faded opacity so that they better blend in with the background.

UNDERSTANDING SKEW In terms of geometry, a skew polygon is a polygon which has vertices that do not lie across a single plane. Because they are multidimensional, skew polygons must have at least four vertices. A regular skew polygon is a skew polygon with equal edge lengths and which is vertex-transitive. The interior surface (or area) of such a polygon is not uniquely defined. The vertex of an angle is the point where two rays begin or meet, where two line segments join or meet, where two lines intersect (cross), or any appropriate combination of rays, segments and lines that result in two straight ‘sides’ meeting at a single point.


Graphics

ADVERTISING 101 Sometimes it’s good to go back to basics before starting a project. In essence, advertising is a form of communication intended to persuade an audience to buy or buy into a particular product, idea or service. It traditionally includes the name of the product or service and how that item could benefit the consumer, to persuade a target market to purchase or to consume a specific brand. These messages are usually paid for by sponsors and viewed via various media. Advertising can also convey ideas and principles in an attempt to incite a certain way of thinking.

04

CHOOSE A GUIDE

We have used a hand for this design but anything, within reason, is usable – consider what will work for your advert. First find a good image to use as a guide for the shaping of the rectangles. Once you have your image, we can move on to its construction.

06 05

HANDIWORK

The next few steps are the longest part of this process and require some patience. First make a rectangle at any size and apply a default Drop Shadow style to it. We have used the starting colour ‘#b10d4f’. Next, we skew the rectangle and then repeat the process throughout.

SKEW

Enter the Transform mode for the rectangle (Cmd/ Ctrl+T) and then Ctrl/right-click to drag individual corners to line up with the guide image on the layer below. Try to build it with a 3D head so we can shade certain shapes to give the hand more depth.

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DUPLICATE AND ROTATE

Now our hand is finished we can duplicate it three times so that we have four hands, and then rotate all of them and put them at each corner of the page so that they are pointing to the centre. We can now move on to change the colour of each hand.

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KEEP SKEWING

Continue building up the hand shape. The fingers can be a particularly tricky area of this illustration to get right, so expect to spend some time redoing shapes; however, finishing something this complex can be very rewarding. Continue with the design until you are completely satisfied, then merge all the hand layers together.



Genius Guide

The fingers can be a particularly tricky area of this illustration to get right, so expect to spend some time redoing shapes; however, finishing something this complex can be very rewarding

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09

A SPLASH OF COLOUR

Now simply select the hand you wish to colour and then go to Image>Adjustments> Hue/Saturation and play with the Hue slider. This is a great way to change the colour of the whole image at once without affecting the tones of the hand. Repeat for the remaining three hands.

SHADOW

Select all four hands and then make a merged copy of all four by pressing Cmd/Ctrl+Opt/ Alt+E. Put this layer behind the separate hands and desaturate it. Now we need to apply a slight Motion Blur at a 45-degree angle. Finally, we enlarge and rotate this layer using the Transform controls in order to create a shadow effect.

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POSITION THE LOGO

Open a copy of your logo and place it in the centre of the hands. All we have to do is create a copy of the logo in the same style of the hands using your icon as a guide. This is done using the same techniques as described from Step 6.

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ALL DONE

There we have it: a striking poster without words. A visual statement, which functions like an advertisement, but which allows the viewer to make their own interpretation.


Graphics

SYMMETRY WITH SHAPES

USE BOTH GEOMETRIC AND ORGANIC FORMS TO CREATE FRESH AND UNIQUE SYMMETRY WITHIN YOUR GRAPHICAL DESIGNS Graphic designers are usually defined as producers of form, who combine words, symbols and images to create a visual representation of an idea or message. With digital techniques, solutions have become more instantaneous, reflected in the custom-built compositions and limited adoption of strict geometric styling – layering by eye and sensation is more prevalent. In this tutorial we turn our hand to this contemporary graphic style, using both freestyle and traditional shapes to develop a balanced composition. Also included are several mixed-media approaches that add tangibility to what may

have once been a static style, as well as showing you how to couple 2D and 3D forms. Creating such bespoke projects is never easy, but the common factor that does bind them together and ground them graphically is symmetry. This can be produced by matching up the forms of well-known shapes, creating recognisable and structured geometry, which is then individualised through the application of more personalised forms. Surprisingly when paired, these can create dynamic and visually stimulating designs, appreciated by many modern-day digital creatives.

PLAYING WITH SHAPES

BLEND ABSTRACT AND REALISTIC CONCEPTS FOR IMPACT

01

SET THE SCENE

Settings for a graphical piece are more about sensation than visual detail. Open your document and create a solid grey layer. Fill a new layer with black, then load up the Cloud Brushes from the CD, applying a 70% Opacity Cloud 3 black brush – bottom up – to create fog effects.

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Creating such bespoke [graphic] projects is never easy, but the common factor that does bind them together is symmetry


SKULL SKYLINE

Copy and paste in iStockphoto’s ‘11242613’ image of a nebula. Place central to the skyline, rotating right by 30 degrees. Tweak tones by applying Image>Adjustments>Hue/ Saturation, with Hue at around -175 and Saturation at -20. You should see some semblance of a skull in the reoriented image (see screengrab). Also apply a Smart Sharpen filter to the Orion nebula image – setting this to 100% Amount with a 1px Radius.

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SKULL SKYLINE 2

Apply a Vivid Light blending mode to your nebula layer then a layer mask, integrating edges. Duplicate, flip horizontally and reapply a Screen blending mode, tweaking the mask and position. Next import the ‘1036239’ human skull image from SXC, setting a 70% Opacity Soft Light blending mode. Position over converging nebula layers to complete the main skull visual, integrating with another layer mask.



Adam is a creative tour de force at Advanced Photoshop magazine. For this tutorial, he brings us more of his up-to-date styles.

SOURCE FILES You’ll find a selection of iStockphoto images, as well as free shape resources and links to other stock. We’ve also included the wonderful Cloud brushset, courtesy of designer Lee Pearce (http://para-vine. deviantart.com).


Genius Guide


Graphics 04

SKULL SKYLINE 3

Copy and paste in the iStockphoto ‘2684253’ close-up of the Orion nebula image. Rotate 90 degrees to the left, applying a Screen blending mode, then rescale and position to the right of your skull, extending from the right eye socket. Reapply blue and purple tones as before via Hue/Saturation. Lastly, sharpen and integrate with a layer mask once more.

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QUICK TIP Photoshop is adept at creating both 2D and 3D shapes. The fx options Inner Glow and Gradient Overlay, as well as Bevel and Emboss, effects can be used intuitively to create a sense of the third dimension. Just experiment to get the right look.

05

COLOUR WASH

Copy Step 1’s black layer, placing above all others. Set blending to Screen, then apply a ‘120b91’ blue Color Overlay (15% Opacity) and a 90-degree violet-to-transparent Gradient Overlay. Copy and paste the ‘5260804’ model from the CD and scale down, rotating 30 degrees to the right. Apply Image> Adjustments>Black & White, setting Reds at -120 and Yellows at 75.

HEAD’S UP

Position your model head layer as in the example. Duplicate this, resetting a 50% Opacity Multiply blending mode. Grunge up the area by applying iStockphoto’s ‘10117876’ and ‘4157951’ watercolour layers from the disc, set to Color, Linear Burn and Soft Light blending modes. Tweak opacity and saturation to taste, playing with orientation and editing with layer masks.

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SANDY SPHERES Although used sparingly in our own design, the sand sphere elements are highly contemporary within modern graphic examples. You can see how layering affects these shapes from the examples on the disc. To create one of your own, apply a grey eclipse shape, then apply Inner Glow to illuminate edges, as well as a black-to-transparent gradient to create the 3D form. Paste in a sand section from a desert/beach image and position over your sphere, then add a layer mask. Ctrl/right-click the sphere layer thumbnail and apply to your desert mask, isolating the shape of this layer to the sphere’s edges. Now you can paint in sand contours and sharpen to finish up.

ADD 2D CIRCLES

To create more personalised graphic effects, try applying the Exclusion blend mode to some of these mountain layers and inverting (Cmd/Ctrl+I) to create unique and interesting colour contrasts. Now start to apply your first pass of regular shape – circles. Copy and Paste these in from the ‘2D shapes.psd’ or make them yourself with the Circle Shape tool.


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ADD 3D SPHERES

We’ve varied the 2D circle effects by applying Soft Light and Color Burn blending modes, inverting some, as well as alternating opacity levels. 3D spheres have then been placed. Specifically we’ve added in SXC’s ‘1272764’ moon picture, the ‘Sun shape.psd’ (layer effects visible on the CD) and gloss spheres from iStockphoto’s ‘9928486’ image.

07

ORGANIC FORMS

Let’s offset the uniform shapes we’ll apply soon with more organic samples. We’ve used contemporary rustic stock. Open the ‘IMG_1655.jpg’ mountain image from the CD, then use selection tools (eg Lasso) to draw around sections of the mountain, inserting into your image. Repeat several times, rescaling and repositioning as you go. Drop shadows can add perspective so play with these for best effects.


Genius Guide

10

3D REALISM

As the sun layer acts as a light source, we’ve made sure this affects the lighting of the surrounding elements. We’ve painted to the moon layer directly using Dodge and Burn tools. Duplicate your gloss sphere, apply Hue/Saturation>Lightness -100, lower Opacity to 20% and mask away edges where light would fall. Apply a Drop Shadow layer style to the smaller gloss sphere.

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TRIANGULATION

Hard-edged triangles offset smooth circles well. We’ve strategically placed an equilateral triangle, set to Linear Burn, showing through textures beneath, and a 58% Opacity violet equilateral triangle, set to Vivid Light; masking its edges to create transparent effects, we’ve also applied a white-to-transparent 90-degree Gradient Overlay. An extra line shape serves to unite circles and triangles.

SYMMETRICAL SHAPES

Adjust symmetry and tones of elements, complementing with CD resources and blending. Apply diagonal and horizontal lines to make a triangle, then a circle line using the Pen Path tool and Ellipse shape option. Select Stroke Path within the Paths palette with a 2px white hard brush applied to a new layer.

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IMAGE CUTS

When referring to image cuts, we mean using selection tools to copy and paste from another image into our own – usually a reference of colour and texture without any clear indication of original picture content. These create diverse visuals and can be colour adjusted, blended and used to create further symmetry/direction when mixed with path and line shapes.

BUILD UP SYMMETRY

Inside your circle line shape layer, insert the ‘sand sphere.psd’ from the CD, setting it to Multiply blending mode. Underneath this layer add a ‘335675’ blue tone circle set to 50% Fill Color Burn, and then on top, a white smaller shape (overlapping the sand shape edges) set to Overlay. A small purple shape is placed centrally on top of all these layers.

QUICK TIP Symmetry can be easily achieved when looking beyond the fitting of geometric shapes and aligning your own freestyle types with organic structures and direction built from accidental overlaps and converging edges. Be spontaneous to guarantee individuality.

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14

GET A MOVE ON

Though acceptable with graphic design, our image is quite static, so let’s work it up with subtle movement. We’ve done so by applying the SXC ‘815479’ watercolour image, set to Screen blending mode, over our central shapes, masking edges. We’ve also thrown down some smaller scattered shapes from the disc.

EXTRA ARTEFACTS

With all you’ve learnt, feel free to finish the piece or add extra elements. We’ve included another image cut with a Lens Flare effect and the ‘sand sphere2.psd’ at adjacent ends of our line shapes to create balance. We’ve also added a flyout circle with a numeral – balancing the piece and creating a cryptic visual cue (for an explanation, Google ‘Lifepath number’).


Graphics

USE TEXTURES TO ADD DEPTH LAYER PHOTOGRAPHIC TEXTURES AND OBJECTS TO BRING YOUR GRAPHIC ARTWORK TO LIFE

OUR EXPERT THOMAS BURDEN

www.therewillbeunicorns.com

In this tutorial we’ll show you how to construct this seasonal graffiti-inspired image from elements drawn exclusively in Photoshop. We’ll also show you how quickly and easily a flat image can be transformed, by adding a more interesting aged look with just one texture and a handy free plug-in specifically made for the job. Supplied by illustrator Thomas Burden, he uses this on his very own professional projects, invented as an invaluable production device to halve the time spent producing textures. Rather than simply overlaying textures using the blending mode options, we’ll be building up separate layers of solid textures manually. These are easily edited through colour adjustments. We’ll explore how to target and texture specific image areas using Photoshop gradient maps too, as well as how to detail image elements using Shape toolsets and the Pen Path Stroke command. In its entirety this workshop offers the essential skills for a super-fast workflow for grunge-based illustrative styles. Once you’ve completed this image, why not try creating a piece based on another season?

WORK IN PROGRESS

BUILDING UP OUR COLOURFUL DESIGN

ADD DEPTH TO ILLUSTRATIONS OPEN UP THE SOURCE FILES

01

Step 1: Start out with the flat image

Step 11: Work up the textures


SOURCE FILES ‘Icecream man.psd’ is the main working file. ‘Cutout’ is an editable Photoshop process application, created for quickly keying out white from textures. ‘Texture.jpg’ is the texture applied to this piece.

LET’S TURN SOMETHING FLAT INTO AMAZING ARTWORK Load the source files from the CD. Open ‘Icecream man.psd’. The image is looking flat and missing a couple of elements. We’re going to create the said elements and then texture all within an inch of its life, using a single scanned image of some old paint on glass (also supplied on the disc).

Step 8: Add more elements

There Will Be Unicorns is the studio moniker of illustrator, Thomas. He has mixed a freelance career with longer, full-time stints as a designer at McFaul Studio and CRUSH Creative.

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CREATE A CUBE

To start we’re going to make a cube shape, which is an excellent building block for most of this image’s forms. Create a new layer and draw a square with the Marquee tool (M) or the Rectangle tool (U). A simple yellow square can quickly be skewed, duplicated, flipped and re-coloured to form a cube, using the Edit>Transform options.

02

INSTALL THE PROCESS APP

From the disc drag the ‘Cutout’ icon into Photoshop (Applications>Photoshop>Plug-Ins). Mac users can also place this on their desktop to quickly drag textures as needed. This will become a quick way of keying out white from textures, in order to keep them as easily editable solid layers.


Genius Guide

Graphics 04

QUICK TIP

CONSTRUCT A SANDCASTLE

Sandcastles and sand staircases can then be made quickly and easily in Photoshop, by duplicating (Cmd/Ctrl+J) and resizing cubes using Transform>Scale. Using these as the basis for the image gives it a strong sense of composition and perspective, serving as guides when creating other elements. Their strong uniform lines can really tie a scene together even when scattered. Try creating some elements of your own using this same process.

A good texture library is key to creating good authentic grunge styles. Get off the computer and play around with inks, paints, old paper and anything you can think of. Scan them in, then name and file them so you can quickly locate them in the future.

05

BUILD BESPOKE SHAPES

The summery ice lollies are created using the Rounded Rectangle tool (U). Taper the shape using Edit>Transform>Distort to get a realistic shape. Stripes are then added and the shape is skewed, keeping it in line with the perspective of other elements, using Distort again. This can be duplicated, nudged down and darkened using Brightness/Contrast to create a 3D effect. You can decorate your lollies however you like, but it should complement the overall colour scheme.

06

MAKE A LOLLY STICK

Lolly stick shapes are also made using the Rounded Rectangle tool. Detail lines – such as the grain of the wood – are drawn with the Pen Path tool (P) on a separate layer by eye. Next set the Brush tool to the required colour, sized at around 3px and with Hardness pushed to 100%, then Cmd/ Ctrl-click your wood grain layer thumbnail, selecting Stroke Path. The Pen tool in Photoshop works exactly the same way it does within Illustrator – but by keeping the whole process in Photoshop, we can ultimately speed up the workflow.

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ADD SPRINKLES

The paths can now be deleted. Once the line layer and shape layer are merged (select both and hit Cmd/Ctrl+E), the stick can then be treated as per other elements to give it a 3D perspective. Decorative sprinkles add more realism and we utilise the Rounded Rectangle tool once again, quickly duplicating (Opt/Alt then click and drag), re-colouring and rotating sprinkles to cover the top portion of the lolly.


08

FILL OUT THE COMPOSITION

Now we’ve got some of the more fundamental elements created we can easily duplicate these to begin fleshing out the composition. Using uniform angles and perspective in this way means that compositions and repeat patterns can be executed really quickly – and to maximum effect. Use some of the elements symmetrically and others placed randomly to create greater visual diversity. Have a look at our screenshot to get a good idea of placement.


Genius Guide

APPLY TEXTURES

Using uniform angles and perspective in this way means that compositions and repeat patterns can be filled out really quickly

USE ADJUSTMENT OPTIONS TO TARGET IMAGE AREAS

09

CREATE A TEXTURE

Drag the ‘Texture.psd’ onto the ‘Cutout’ application icon and watch the magic happen. As you can see, it has automatically opened in Photoshop, selecting and separating all black colour value. This will work with any image you use, but it specifically caters to creating textures. It always works best if your texture image is greyscale, with a high contrast.

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ADD TEXTURE TO THE BACKGROUND

Copy and paste the selected texture area into the Icecream man main image. Place the new layer between the Icecream man layer and the Background layer. Colour it however you want using colour overlays; experiment until you get something that you are happy with. For the texture on the background we’ve used white, then duplicated it, rotated it 180 degrees and changed the colour to a dark blue.

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CREATE A TONAL MAP

We’re now going to add a little texture to the main elements. Duplicate the texture layer that you used on the background, placing it above the Icecream man layer this time. Cmd/Ctrl-click the Icecream man layer thumbnail, applying a layer mask so that the new texture only affects the Icecream man layer and not any of the background. Duplicate the Icecream man layer and navigate to Image>Adjustments>Gradient Map.

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TEXTURE INDIVIDUAL TONES

Click on the gradient swatch to bring up the Gradient Editor, selecting the Black, White style. Name the layer ‘Gradient Map’, using it to target different image tones, texturing them individually. Using the Magic Wand tool (W) with a Tolerance of 40, select the midtones of the Gradient Map layer, duplicating from another texture layer, inversing and deleting any excess. This part of the process can be time-consuming but it’s worth it.

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ADJUST THE COLOURS

You can then repeat the previous step for the highlights and darker areas, making sure to mix up the position, rotation and scale of each texture layer. We now have separate texture layers for each image exposure. Now simply adjust the colours of each texture layer using colour overlays. Feel free to experiment, but here we’ve kept the colour overlays roughly in line with their respective tones for consistency.


Graphics

TEXTURED CHARACTER ILLUSTRATION

MAKE A BESPOKE CHARACTER DESIGN FOR A T SHIRT USING VECTORS IN ILLUSTRATOR AND TEXTURES IN PHOTOSHOP

In this tutorial you will learn how to create a textured character illustration with the aim to be able to print onto a T-shirt. Digital T-shirt printing has become more and more advanced and artists now have greater freedom to apply colours, textures and any details they want. The entire process will be explained and you’ll pick up some useful tips and tricks for using both Illustrator and Photoshop. You can apply these techniques to any other illustration you wish to create in a similar style, so don’t feel constrained by our concept. After creating a vector illustration in Illustrator we will move into Photoshop to add textures and finishing details. Photoshop’s blending modes, custom brush settings and layering features make adding textures to artwork easy. Before you begin you will need to think about who will be wearing the T-shirt, who is your target market and what sort of style you would like your artwork or character to portray. Will it be humorous, dark, vintage or cute for kids? The textures we’ll be adding in this tutorial can either be created from scratch using photos, handmade markings, or sourced from stock websites.

OUR EXPERT ANNA JOHNSTONE

www.anna-johnstone.com Anna Johnstone is a freelance illustrator based in Nelson, New Zealand. Working with both traditional and digital-media cartoons, cat memes and monsters inspire her creation of whimsical and upbeat characters.

SOURCE FILES On the CD we have included the image files used to create the Photoshop texture overlay effects in the tutorial, as well the starter sketch. These assets can be used freely in any commercial and non-commercial project.

CONCEPT YOUR CHARACTER

INVENT THE RIGHT IMAGE AS THE BASE FOR YOUR COLOUR AND TEXTURE WORK

01

MAKE A SKETCH

First create a rough concept sketch of the character. You can do this either using traditional media or directly in Photoshop – whatever you feel most comfortable with. In this tutorial we are using an original monster character that has been sketched in pencil and scanned into the computer.


02

SET UP THE ILLUSTRATOR DOCUMENT

We’ll start in Illustrator by creating a new document, placing the sketch on the canvas and selecting File>Place. After placing the image and fitting it to the canvas, we want to set it up for tracing. Bring up the Layer Options, select Template and Dim Images to 30%, then lock the layer.

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SWATCHES AND GLOBAL COVERS

Your new document will have preset swatches, but it’s a good idea to start with a fresh canvas. Create new swatches or pick a set from the Swatch Library. Bring up the Swatch Options and make sure the Global checkbox is activated. Changing the tint of a global colour swatch will change anywhere it is used across the document.


Genius Guide


Graphics 04

ESTABLISH THE BASE

QUICK TIP When choosing a design idea to turn into a cool T-shirt, it helps to think about whether it would be something you would wear. If you show your design to your friends and colleagues and get good feedback, the chances are you’re onto a good thing.

Begin by creating a new layer and naming it for easy identification later. Use the Pen tool to trace the basic silhouettes of the face, tail, arms and legs. Think of these shapes as the base that we will be building on, adding further detail on top later. Use the Pathfinder>Minus Front option to punch out the face of the character. These shapes are kept together on the same layer because they will have the same colour applied to them later.

06 05

BRING IN SOME DETAIL

Trace around the markings on the fur, trim your markings to the shapes below using the Pathfinder tool, then select an arm and Copy>Edit>Paste in Place. Highlight the top copy of the arm and marking shape then select Pathfinder>Intersect. Now the marking is fitted to the arm shape with any excess trimmed off. Repeat this with the face and any other markings that need to be trimmed to fit your character’s edges.

The tail needs a different option applied in the Pathfinder window. Select the tail marking and Copy>Paste in Place, then grab both the marking and the base of the tail and in the Pathfinder menu apply the Minus Front option. This causes the base of the tail to be cut back to the shape of the marking above. However, now the base of the tail is on the wrong layer, so in the Layers panel we need to drag it back onto the layer below.

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SHIRTS AND PANTS

By now you should be used to using the Pathfinder tool to trim your overlapping shapes. Trace and set up the T-shirt, shorts and horns on their own layers. As they are all unique elements it’s good practise to keep them separate. This makes it quicker to find and edit them later on. Using the Pathfinder tool to punch out and tidy up any overlapping paths can greatly speed up the tracing process and help keep your outlines and fills tidy.


DRAW IN THE TAIL

BUILD UP THE FACE

To draw up the face of the character, we need to create a new layer and move it below the rest. This will be for the mouth and the main face colour. We need to cut parts out with the Pathfinder again to get the shapes we need. To create the open mouth, first trace around the shape, make a copy and use the Object>Arrange>Send to Back option. Select both the face and mouth and use the Exclude option in the Pathfinder window.


Genius Guide

COLOUR THE SHAPES CREATE SOLID LAYERS AND ADD BRUSHES TO COLOUR YOUR ILLUSTRATION

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TRACE THE DETAILS

Now keep going and trace around the rest of the details such the birds, T-shirt symbol and the lighting in this image. Once again cut each of the inside shapes out with the Pathfinder. To keep things organised, make sure your shapes are on their correct layers, in the right order.

002 We have created named and organised our layers and traced around the main shapes of our character design.

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001

ARRANGE FURTHER DETAILS

Now we have all of our flat base colours fixed, we’ll work on the finer details. Drag the Sketch layer to the top of the Layers panel and double-click. Uncheck the Dim Images option and press OK. Highlight the sketch and in the Transparency panel set the blending mode to Multiply with Opacity set at 30%. Now we can see where the details need to go on top of the character. Lock the layer again so that you don’t end up drawing on it.

002

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INJECT A BASE COLOUR

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MOVE TO PHOTOSHOP

Once you have everything traced and ready to go, select the objects on each layer and fill with one of the preset swatches. Continue until you have all the basic colours filled in and nothing has outlines. The global colours will come in handy. If any of our colours need tweaking it’s very easy to apply the changes across the whole illustration as they are linked to their respective Global Swatch. This is a good time to experiment with different tone combinations and tints.

001 We have cut out and fitted our shapes to the character, using the Pathfinder tool to make sure none of our colours overlap one another.

003 Our new document in Illustrator is all set up, with the colour palette sorted and the rough illustration sketch imported.

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003

ENHANCE THE FUR

To create the fur details we are going to use the Paintbrush tool. On the bottom bar of the dropdown Brush menu click the New Brush icon. Set the Diameter to 2pt with a Variation of 2pt and choose the Pressure setting for Roundness. Tablet users have an advantage here as these settings will mean that the stroke we create will vary in thickness depending on how much pressure is applied. Now go ahead and add some fur detail to your character.

Now that we have finished with creating the vector side of our illustration in Illustrator, we can move over to Photoshop. This is the part where we get to create some awesome textures and add tangibility in our image, as well as some essential finishing touches. Open a new document and set the size to the same dimensions that we used in our Illustrator file back in Step 2. Set the resolution at 300dpi. Color Mode should be set to CMYK.

The global colours will come in handy. If any of our colours need tweaking it’s very easy to apply the changes across the whole illustration as they are linked to their respective Global Swatch


Graphics WORK WITH TEXTURES

APPLY CLIPPING MASKS WITH SMART OBJECTS

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USE TEXTURE AND LEVELS

Open the supplied ‘texture_1.jpg’ file, copy and paste it into your Photoshop document, then rotate and position it. Desaturate the image by selecting Hue/Saturation and setting the Saturation at 0. Apply a Levels adjustment layer on top of your texture and boost the contrast. Levels brings out the detail of the texture and also gives a more grainy look, which adds a nice aesthetic. Clip this Levels layer to the Texture layer so that you can edit it later, once you have overlaid it on the illustration.

QUICK TIP Remember to always take the T-shirt fabric colour into consideration. If you want your design to pop, it pays to choose tones that will complement the illustration. It’s a good idea to test your design by super-imposing it onto a T-shirt in Photoshop before printing.

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IMPORT INTO PHOTOSHOP

Reactivate Illustrator then select and copy your all of your character-related layers except the original Sketch layer. Copy and paste this selection into Photoshop. Make sure you select Smart Object from Photoshop’s Paste options. Smart Objects enable you to make changes to your illustration in Illustrator if needed by double-clicking the illustration icon in the Layers panel. Any changes you make in Illustrator are automatically updated in the Photoshop document after you save in Illustrator.

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ADJUST THE ELEMENTS

Move your Illustration layer below the Texture layer if it isn’t already. Set the blending mode of your texture to Soft Light and adjust the opacity until you achieve a nice balance between texture and colour. Here we have used a setting of 80% Opacity. You don’t want your texture to look too overpowering, as it can make the illustration less appealing – remember, less is more. This enables details previously added in Illustrator to stand out with the texture laid over the top.


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KEEP PLACING TEXTURES

Add more textures to bring depth and highlights across the illustration. Open the ‘splatters. jpg’ file supplied, which was created with watercolour paint splattered on paper. Use Levels to define the contrast between white and black. Create a new layer below your texture layer and apply a solid white tone. Select the white area around your splatters with the Magic Wand tool and delete. This separates the texture from the background and makes it easy to select these in the next step.

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ACHIEVE HIGHLIGHTS AND SHADOWS

Use the Lasso tool to select a part of the texture you would like to use. Copy and paste this into your character image in Photoshop. Clip the texture layer to the illustration layer, then set the blending mode to Multiply or Screen depending on whether you would like this particular effect to be a highlight or a shadow. You can adjust the texture’s intensity by tweaking the opacity and reuse the same texture in different places across the illustration, or even repeat this technique with varying selections.


Genius Guide

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MAKE A BESPOKE BACKGROUND

Our character is coming together nicely, so let’s add a background to make him pop off the T-shirt a bit more. In this case the backdrop doesn’t need to be complex or highly detailed, we don’t want to detract from the character too much. An easy way to create a background is to use Photoshop’s default textured brushes. Change the Opacity of the Illustration layer to around 20%. Then choose a brush and adjust the Transparency of the brush to around 60%.

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ENHANCE THE DEPTH

Hide the visibility of the Illustration layer and shade in the circle that you just drew, making the centre of the circle darker by going over it a few more times. This adds more depth behind the character and helps him stand out more. Make the Illustration layer visible and if needed change the position and scale of the circle, using the Edit>Transform controls, so it sits behind.

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USE A CUSTOM DUAL BRUSH

To draw details we will make a custom brush that combines both the basic round brush and a textured brush, so the brushstrokes match the rest of the illustration. Choose a round brush and open up Window>Brush. Select the Dual Brush option on the left side panel and pick a textured brush option. The blending mode should be set to Linear Burn. Adjust the Spacing slider until the result looks like chalk.

PRINT COSTS The number of colours and applied style is often dictated by budget and the print process. There are two main printing techniques prevalent in the T-shirt industry. If you’re going to be screenprinting your T-shirt, keep in mind that each colour will require an additional silk screen. This means it can be more expensive the more colours you have in your design. It’s more cost-effective for larger runs, however, and often higher quality.

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FINISHING TOUCHES

Use the brush we just created to paint some sparkles around the character. These will sit over top of the background. Choose a lighter colour for the sparkles to make them stand out from the background. Try to add a variety of sizes as this will help create depth. Adding extra details such as these also enhances the narrative of the image. Little details make the difference between an illustration looking boring or exciting.

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EXPORT YOUR IMAGE

Now we are ready to pack up and send our character to print. To export your illustration you will need to save it as a high-resolution PDF file, clicking File>Save As>Format>Photoshop PDF. Most printers can handle a wide variety of file types, but PDF is the industry standard and should be easy for the printer to manage. In this case a PDF has the advantage over a flat JPEG or TIFF, as it’s able to preserve the sharp outlines of our vector illustration.


Graphics TECHNIQUES

MASTER VECTOR LAYERS IN CS6



Genius Guide

HOW TO USE VECTOR LAYERS IN CC USE CC’S NEW STROKE AND FILL SETTINGS PLUS THE VECTOR SHAPE TOOLS TO CREATE A VIBRANT ILLUSTRATION

Photoshop Creative Cloud boasts some really cool features, but the one change that’s got us excited is the introduction of vector layers and their related tools. While this clearly isn’t going to replace Illustrator (for those of you that use it), if you want intuitively simple shapes that you can build into graphical projects, then Photoshop will do a great job without having to delve into any other packages. Unlike previous versions, we have the option to create and resize vectors without degrading quality, as well as adding strokes and fills to shapes in seconds.

WORK IN PROGRESS

FROM SIMPLE DESIGN TO IN-DEPTH ILLUSTRATION

In this tutorial, we are going to be looking at how to use the new vector tools, in addition to throwing in a few tips for using some of CC’s other great features. We will be building an infographic-style illustration, using a combination of shapes created purely in Photoshop, lines and photo stock transformed into shapes with the Pen tool. You will need to collect together a bunch of stock images before you begin that fit your theme, but the techniques in this tutorial are the same regardless of the images that you choose to use.

OUR EXPERT GORDON REID

www.middleboop.com

Gordon has built up a solid reputation as a promising and exciting young designer. His client list includes BBC, Ladbrokes, Halifax, 4AD and Warp.

SOURCE FILES We have included various vector shapes and a colour scheme as a PSD file., as well as paper textures that you can use in the background.

PREPARE THE IMAGE

SET UP THE BACKGROUND AND SOURCE PRELIMINARY VECTORS CHANGE THE INTERFACE COLOUR

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This is a great new technique to use before setting up your piece: controlling the colour of the workspace. Set up your blank canvas, then use Shift+F1+fn to go darker and Shift+F2+fn to go lighter – when working on a piece like this, darker is best. Now we are going to start importing some photo assets to give us our initial shapes.

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CROP WHAT YOU NEED

Open your first photo asset and then use the Crop tool to isolate the area that you want to use. This helps us when we come to creating a shape from the photo, as we’re not distracted by the excess photography. The new Crop tool has some fresh options to play with. First, choose your grid structure and crop as needed.

Step 1: Initial stages

Step 16: Build around focal point

03 Step 24: Line everything up

MAKE AN ADVANCED CROP

What’s more exciting about the new Crop tool is that even with your area selected, you have the ability to move and rotate the entire image around it to select another point. This makes for more customised cropping, meaning you can now change your desired image so that only the area you need is left.


Graphics

04

QUICK TIP

PEN TOOL

Play around with the new shape layer tools. YouÕll find they are really handy to master and with so many new additions they can really form the basis of a solid, unique illustration.

The Pen tool is by far the most reliable tool for cutting images out, so once you have your cropped images, cut the main subjects out from their background. This way you have a series of isolated elements that you can come back to at any time when working on your composition. Organisation is key, so get as many photos and objects together as you might need at this stage before moving on. We will now begin to prepare them for use in our illustration.

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WeÕre now going to turn our isolated photo stock elements into shapes for use in our artwork. As we are going in an infographic direction with this piece, we plumped for some mechanical imagery. Here we are tracing around a spanner using the Pen tool set to Shapes. This enables us to create a vector shape that we can use the new Fill and Stroke options on (more on this later) to colour the elements and add extra effects to them.

CREATE A FOCAL POINT

As this illustration is based around the new Photoshop CS6 options, we feel it makes sense to have a computer as the focal point. Find a photo of the type of computer that you want to use, trace around it as we have done previously using the Pen tool method, line it up in the centre of your canvas and work the illustration outwards from this point. Having a rough sketch of the elements you want to use and where they will go will help at this point.

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START BLENDING

Bring in your treated photo assets from the earlier steps Ð we have got various tools, balloons and pipes, but go for whatever suits your theme. Despite working with a lot of flat colour in this piece, itÕs good to spruce up a few bits by using blending options. Take this balloon for instance. We have added an Inner Shadow layer style, with Distance at 13, Choke at 15 and Size at 46, which gives it a slight 3D look and more depth.


MAKE SHAPES FROM PHOTOS

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ADD A BACKGROUND

We have decided that our plain white background could do with some sprucing up to make the illustration work. Go to the Gradient tool (G) and select two light colours, such as an off white and a pale yellow; we have chosen fbf1d9 and e2e2e2. Select a Radial Gradient and line up your cursor with the middle of the page, then drag down to nearly the bottom of the page. The colours of this gradient will depend on your overall colour scheme.


Genius Guide

GET TO GRIPS WITH THE CC TOOLS

DEVELOP AN UNDERSTANDING OF NEW VECTOR FEATURES IN PHOTOSHOP

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LINES AND VECTORS

Our composition has really started to build up now. One great new addition with CS6 is the ability to craft your vectors and lines like never before, making this kind of style even more accessible. First off, select the Line tool (U) and make sure it’s set to Shape with a Stroke of at least 3pt. Add a gradient fill of contrasting colours to the stroke, then select the dashed line in the box next to it and make your line a little fatter. You can use these while working to connect the elements.

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FILLS AND SHAPE LAYERS

Select the Ellipse tool (U). Draw a circle and you will notice that in the top header there are some new options. Selecting a Fill, you can now choose from a number of options including Gradient and Pattern straight away. Choose a bright gradient and then add a stroke.

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Choose a gradient from the new top header, then make it Linear with an Angle of around 166

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Try different options like a Radial Gradient or Diamond Gradient. You will find there is a lot of potential with this tool

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The new Stroke option is great fun to experiment with. Add a bold colour that stands out well from the gradient

One great new addition with CS6 is the ability to craft your vectors and lines like never before, making this kind of style even more accessible

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USE A STROKE

Add in a polygon from the Shape tool options. You will notice in the top-right that there is now an option to choose how many sides you would like on your polygon. For this pick 6 and add a stroke as before. You can fill the stroke with a gradient, pattern or block colour and there’s even a tab of your recently used colours. Try this effect with different shapes to see how it works.

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DASHED LINE

Once you have your stroke, let’s move along to the next box and give it a dashed line of about 3pt. Experiment with this tool, as there are some great outcomes you can get. Increase the point size to over 20 and you get some really interesting patterns. What’s more, if you increase the size of the polygon, the stroke will realign itself automatically, which can be a real timesaver.

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EXPERIMENT WITH STROKES

Now let’s experiment even further with the new options. Draw a new six-sided polygon and fill it and give it a Stroke of 3pt, selecting the circular dotted line. Try changing the Caps to Round and Corners to Bevel, then click the More Options button at the bottom of the dialog. Add Dash: 0, Gap: 2, Dash: 2. There is a lot of room for experimentation to achieve different effects here.


Graphics VECTOR SHAPES

BLEND NEW TOOLS WITH FAVOURED TECHNIQUES

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ADJUST THE BACKGROUND

This is always a nice effect to use on an image like this. Use the Ellipse tool again (U), making sure it’s set to Shape. Create a small circle and then, holding down Opt/Alt, drag and copy the circle. Use guides to line and space the circles properly. Once you have done a few, group them and do the same again until you have a big pattern. Resize and stick it behind the computer screen.

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CREATE MORE ELEMENTS

Keep a copy of your pattern, as this will be useful going forward. For instance, using the original copy, take the Pen tool, set it to Paths and cut out interesting segments, such as the clouds we have created here. Once you have your shape, Ctrl/right-click and choose Make a Selection, ensuring that the Feather Radius is set to 0 and Anti Alias is checked, then cut out your shapes.

CHOOSE COLOUR WISELY

As you progress in your work, remember your colour palette is one of the most important tools you have when creating an illustration like this. With a free brief and a big illustration, it’s always tempting to fly off and create a piece with hundreds of colours. But really, an even more exciting challenge is limiting yourself and being more creative with a certain amount of colour. For this piece, we have only used the core colours that you can see in the triangle.

QUICK TIP

We will be duplicating many layers in this tutorial, so it’s lucky that this process is even easier to do with CS6, all thanks to the new ability to duplicate layer groups. Simply highlight your group, then hit Cmd/Ctrl+J to copy.

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OPTIONAL ILLUSTRATOR WORK

Now we’ll want to bring out these vectors even more to really make the design stand out. For this, move over to Illustrator if you have it, make a triangle and add it as a new brush. Keep the Scale at Fixed and change the Minimum to anywhere from 9% to 35% depending on the effect you want to achieve. Change Spacing to 100% and keep Colourization at 0. Then create an ellipse with no fill, add the Triangle brush as a stroke and bring it back into Photoshop.

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SELECTIVE COLOUR

This may be a bit of an old trick, but it’s always a good one to harness. Take the selection of shapes we have just created, select part of the shape, then create a Solid Color adjustment layer and choose a corresponding colour. This will create a new layer over the top of the old so you can delete the layer underneath.


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VECTOR SHAPES

Now, as this illustration is being designed in an infographic-influenced style, it’s good at this point to start building up a library of shapes and layers. Use the Polygon tool (U) and experiment with different shapes. In this instance we will use a three-sided polygon. Give it a fill with no stroke and, while holding Opt/Alt, drag your cursor and you will find your shape has been replicated. Continue this process a number of times and use guides to line your shapes up properly.


Genius Guide

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DUPLICATE LAYERS

Included with the many new features in Photoshop CS6 are the new additions to the Layers palette, which are similar to those of Adobe After Effects. You can now alter the blending mode, Opacity and Fill options for multiple layers in one go. This is a really handy little trick to use when dealing with multiple layers. You can now also filter through various effects by typing the required name into the new CS6 Search bar.

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CONVERT TYPE TO SHAPE

Now that the illustration is really starting to take shape, it’s time to add some type. Seeing as this is an illustration to celebrate the new features of CS6, we felt it only right to blend its name into the piece. Let’s pick a nice bold type such as BaseTwelveSans Bold and work out ways of incorporating the type into the piece. A great little tool to aid in resizing is Convert to Shape. Go to Type>Convert To Shape to edit the type more easily.

QUICK TIP

The joy of abstract pieces is that you can reuse elements again and again, so make sure that you label and group layers so that you can find elements again. In CS6 you can search and filter layers, so it’s even easier to find what you need.

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CREATE A TEXTURE

Now that we are nearing the completion of this piece, it’s time to work in more detail to really bring the image to life. First of all, we need to create some texture. Open a duplicate layer of the original background gradient and go to Filter>Noise>Add Noise. Set the Noise at around 12%, ticking Gaussian and Monochromatic at the same time. Now set it to Multiply and change the Opacity to around 34%.

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ADD IN SOME FURTHER STOCK IMAGES

Let’s continue adding to the image by using a stock image to really bring out the illustration. For this we will use Shutterstock’s ‘89076808’ image as a starting point, which is an old vintage paper texture. First desaturate the image by hitting Cmd/Ctrl+U and dragging the Saturation right down to 0. Edit the Lightness by hitting Cmd/Ctrl+L and bringing out the whites and blacks.

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FURTHER CURVES

There are some really great new photo-editing tools with CS6 and with the new interface it’s even easier to really bring out a vibrant photo. In this case go to Adjustments and then Curves. Use the graph to experiment and make the image have a real impact, bringing out the threads and grains of the paper.

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FINISH

Select the layer on top of your image and set it to Overlay. You don’t want it to impede too much on your illustration, so take the Opacity right down to around 34%. Now we’ll bring out the background layer just a little bit more. Use a large soft-edged brush on a new layer behind the illustration, set it to f2ead3 then go around the laptop and main pink triangles a bit more to add to the original gradient.


Graphics



Genius Guide

PAINT PHOTOREAL ICONS

OUR EXPERT MIRKO SANTANGELO

www.mirkosantangelo.com

Mirko is an award-winning visual designer and Adobe Certified Expert from Italy. He is passionate about learning and teaching Adobe Soware and discovering new techniques for his graphic works.

SOURCE FILES

CREATE ILLUSTRATED ICONS USING PHOTOSHOPÕS SHAPE, GRADIENT AND BRUSH TOOLS WORK IN PROGRESS

FROM BASIC SHAPES TO FINAL RENDERING

Step 2: Basic shapes

Icons are fascinating graphic symbols. They represent the synthesis of a concept or an idea, but they differ from standard logos due to the amount of detail that is represented within them. In a certain sense they are somewhere between illustration and logos. One of the most beautiful things about their design is the extreme attention to detail of each item, replicating realism through factors such as perspective and the design of material surfaces. Icons are optimised to be viewable at different resolutions and sizes. They are created to simplify access to the functions of digital devices on

You don’t need any files to complete this tutorial, as we will be creating everything in Photoshop.

graphical user interfaces. The criteria for design changes according to the specifications of manufacturers, mobile devices or operating systems. These specifications need to be taken into account by the designers, as they depend on the correct display of a finished work. There are many ways to approach icon design, but those we will be using in this tutorial are based mostly on digital painting and masking. A cool Photoshop feature to apply to these projects is the Gradient tool, which we will also explore and show you how this enables you to create very special effects, simply using the right styles.

Icons are optimised to be viewable at different resolutions and sizes. They are created to simplify access to the functions of digital devices on graphical user interfaces. The criteria for design changes according to the specifications of manufacturers, mobile devices or operating systems

Step 5: Lighting and reflections

STATIONERY POT ICON DESIGN

CREATE A STYLISH ICON USING VECTOR SHAPES AND GRADIENTS

01 Step 15: Add the objects

CANVAS AND BASIC SHAPES

Open your template at 1,024 x 1,024px, applying an area of 512 x 512 through View>Rulers>Guides, which is one of the highest resolutions supported by operating systems. Set a grey colour background, drawing a shape with the Rounded Rectangle tool (U), setting the most suitable Radius properties to get curved edges. Using the Transform tool (Cmd/Ctrl+T) alter the previous shape using Perspective mode, Ctrl/ right-click on the canvas while the Transform Controls are activated. Add two ellipse shapes at the top and bottom using the Ellipse shape tool (U).


Graphics 03

MASKING AND REFLECTIONS

Use the same method to add lights and shadows to the rim shape and add a sleek border effect by creating a new blank layer and making a rim shape selection. Fill this with white, pressing the up arrow key twice, pressing Backspace to delete part of the layer while maintaining the border. Refine with a mask, setting blending mode to Overlay. Add a shiny plastic look to the pot surface by drawing Solid White Pen shapes to its front and apply a layer mask to each.

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DEFINE THE POT

Add a rim to the top part of the pot, by drawing two ellipse shapes, using the second to erase the shape centre with the Subtract option set (Option bar). Cmd/Ctrl+Shift and click the main pot shape layer thumbnail. Create a new group and add a layer mask from the active selection. In separate group layers paint light (white) and shadow (black) using a 20% Opacity Soft brush, instantly isolating application to your masked area. Try different blending modes too like Soft Light and Overlay.

QUICK TIP Duplicate the crayon, convert the group into a Smart Object and apply a Hue/Saturation layer adjustment through a Clipping Mask, altering crayon colour. Do the same for the brush; apply a layer mask to the Smart Object to alter the bristles’ shape.

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BRISTLES AND CRAYON

The tip of our brush is made from a hard-edged shape with an attached layer mask from which you need to erase with a Small Hard Round brush to simulate bristled edges. On a new Overlay blending mode layer, activate the Dispersion option in the Brush palette and paint bristle texture with small white and black brushes, building up the desired effect. Repeat the lighting method as in Step 2, again in separate layers. Next, begin to build your crayon shape from the effects we’ve shown you, repeating lighting the processes to separate parts.

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BRUSHES

Integrate white shapes using a black foreground set to Transparent Linear mode with the Gradient tool, applying this to the shape layer mask. Set layer blending modes to Overlay. Draw a shape for the metal part, adding a new layer set as a clipping mask and paint it to a Foreground set to Transparent Reflected mode with the Gradient tool set to 40% Opacity. Alternate white and black foreground colours.



Genius Guide

A cool Photoshop feature to apply to these projects is the Gradient tool, which we will also explore and show you how this enables you to create very special effects by simply using the right styles

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FELT TIP

The felt tips are cylinder shapes, between each of which is a rim shape, set with a white Inner Shadow Layer Style set to Overlay, Distance at 0px, Size at 5px and Choke at 20%. Apply highlights and create sharp reflections with drawn Rectangular Marquee tool (M) strips. Fill with solid white and set to Overlay blending. The ruler starts as a rectangle shape, with lighting using the Rectangle Marquee tool in separate layers.

PENCIL

The label is created with a simple black shape, masking away the top parts to create a strip effect. The pencil is constructed in the same way as the crayon, through individually drawn flat colour shape layers, adding the lights and shadows with the brush through your group’s active selection layer mask. Next Import a wood texture - we’ve used a sample from www.jammurch.deviantart.com – applying it as a clipping mask to the top of the pencil shape. Set an 80% Opacity Overlay blending mode. Using a mask, blend the graphite with the wood parts to achieve smooth transition.

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FINAL TOUCHES

In a new layer add a gradient shadow, from the bottom part of the pot’s hole. The metal parts of the brushes should reflect neighbouring objects. Replicate this effect by creating a new Color blending mode layer, using a Soft brush at a low opacity to paint corresponding colours where the objects should be reflected. Using a Hue/Saturation layer adjustment, add a light purple colour to the Background and input a shadow below the pot.

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RULER

Draw a thin line with the Pencil tool (B) in a new layer, applying an Inner Bevel and Emboss Layer Style at 1% Depth, 0px Size and 0% Shadow Opacity. Duplicate and place this layer along the ruler, and finally add the numbers. Place all objects inside a Group and add a layer mask to this, using this mask to hide unseen parts of the stationery. In a new layer select a Soft brush at 20% Opacity and paint the shadows of the objects inside.


Typography Give your message impact 112 The Art of Type

Explore the power of form in type design

120 Type Effects

Blend a 3D render with multiple stock images

124 Fluid Type

Experiment with abstract shapes and textures

128 Illustrative Type

Build typefaces using stock imagery

132 Collage-Style Type

Create personalised type using stock

136 Vintage Type

Replicate effective retro typography

140 3D Type

Integrate 2D scenes with 3D renders

146 Dynamic 3D Type

Create ancient 3D type with layers

150 Typographic Designs Pen a strong promotional design

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120


Genius Guide The creative community is harnessing design software to create even more adventurous and dynamic letterforms

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Typography

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001 | This image was created exclusively for Advanced Photoshop as a typical example of Steven Bonner’s stylish typography Illustration by Steven Bonner

002 | ‘Why Buy a Copy’: This was a type treatment created for Nike, for use on various apparel. The finished piece was applied using a retro-style glitter heat transfer © Luke Lucas



Genius Guide

THE ART OF TYPE

WE EXPLORE THE POWER OF FORM IN CONTEMPORARY TYPE BASED DESIGN AND POSE THE QUESTION: IS THE WRITING ON THE WALL FOR TRADITIONAL TYPOGRAPHY?

In the past, typography has been informed by graphic design, a sophisticated pairing of art and letterform, wielded by a type art elite. In more recent times, however, these styles have trickled into the mainstream. Now designers from varying disciplines, whether that be traditional or digital illustration, or CG design, are signing up to provide their own contemporary take on type. Many of the artists featured in this article, which explores the reasons behind the dramatic rise of a more illustrative approach to typography, agree that greater opportunities afforded by digital mediums such as Photoshop have

meant style shifts have become far more blatant. Another explanation put forward is the expanded access to inspiration from all around the world. With this in mind, it’s perhaps not surprising that designers are exploring new aesthetic elements at such a rapid rate. In this feature we question artists on the personal influences behind their expressive type styles. We also ask if traditional rules are supporting or suffocating the evolution of typography, and how the creative community is harnessing design software to create ever more adventurous and dynamic letterforms, which, as time goes by, seem to have only one boundary: the creator’s imagination.

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‘NY Times’ – Dining cover illustration: This illustration was created for the Dining section of The New York Times to go alongside an article on the various characteristics of wine © Luke Lucas

‘A Penguin’: Gold Awardwinning typographic image making a slobbering penguin from the letter ‘a’ for the jacket cover of The Art Book © Steven Bonner

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That’s the beauty of working with type – the slightest adjustment of a detail on a letter can transform it from being masculine to feminine, aggressive to playful, fun to serious…

– Luke Lucas, www.lukelucas.com


Typography Pictorial lettering. As a term it seems almost a paradox. However, this is a style that has been wholly embraced by the creative and commercial communities alike. This owes a lot to the fact that modern-day illustrators are now able to tap into an art form once considered exclusive to ‘specialists’. This new inclusivity has drawn greater numbers to this discipline, and many see this as an extremely exciting time for typography. This makes it all the more surprising to discover that many of the creatives deploying these styles today aren’t aware of one definitive reason for doing so. Our group of artists – some with a formal art education, some self taught and others transferring skills from alternative disciplines – provide a host of reasons why. Alex Varanese (www.alexvaranese.com) tells us: “I spent a pretty big chunk of my life in computer science and that left me with an instinct for rigidly geometric designs that can be hard to shake sometimes. Orthogonal and algorithmic thinking can be an asset in the world of type, of course, but there’s so much creative potential to unlock by breaking the grid that I feel continually compelled to try and overcome that reflex.” To put it in one friendly soundbite, the real pleasure this style invokes in creators and viewers alike is the chance to reinvent visual boundaries. Jordan Metcalf (http://jordan-metcalf.com) agrees: “We can only ever push such boundaries by allowing ourselves freedom to experiment. I spent a lot of time

doing so with lines, shading and texture within type in my own time, before ever being paid to do so. Having had complete freedom to explore led to a couple of ideas that seemed fresh to people, which thankfully led to some amazing commercial opportunities.” Stefan Chinof (http://chin2off.prosite.com) shares his view: “My own formula for success equates to experimenting plus curiosity times patience.” Luke Lucas (www.lukelucas.com) also reinforces this need to experiment. “That’s the beauty of working with type,” he explains to us. “The slightest adjustment of a detail on a letter can transform it from being masculine to feminine, aggressive to playful, fun to serious… This can be anything from the shape of the basic letterform to the integration of more descriptive illustrative elements within the type. The possibilities are relatively endless.” This approach couldn’t be more apparent than in the work of Steven Bonner (http://stevenbonner.com). His own digitally charged pictorial styles use many different techniques to achieve a particular feel, depending on the desired outcome. He explains: “In my ‘Believe and You Shall Achieve’ piece (show on the opposite page), I wanted to reference a Pathé news-style screen title, and so used a lot of grain and faux-3D while giving it a modern edge through the stronger colours in the ribbon type.” However, Bonner is looking to push boundaries even further, revealing: “I really want to take lettering out of the

Smart Object layers are a godsend… and allow me to make small non-destructive changes on the fly. It means I can get the tone of a piece right from the outset, but still make fundamental changes at a later stage – Steven Bonner, http://stevenbonner.com

005 | ‘Abject Diagonals’: “An example of my Metrobloc typeface. This particular piece presents the letterforms as diagonally hacked-up metal type” © Alex Varanese

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006 | ‘Eat Drink and Be Merry’: “This piece plays homage to the great typographer, graphic designer and art director, Herb Lubalin” © Luke Lucas

007 | ‘Break Fast’: “Personal project and first try-out of Motion Typo. Photoshop CS3 photomanipulation was applied to images, using quick masks and brushes” © Stefan Chinof


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Genius Guide

PIPE DREAM

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WE DISCOVER HOW ILLUSTRATION PLAYS AS BIG A PART AS TYPOGRAPHY IN ALEX BELTECHI’S DESIGNS Pictorial type artist Alex Beltechi (www.behance.net/alexbeltechi) describes his exciting ‘Down the Drain’ image as “a meta-project, a personal project about creating projects”. It focuses on lost inspiration – the good ideas that come to us randomly but that never see the light of day. “Creativity is like water,” he explains. “It gushes out in streams of consciousness only to later drain through the cracks of time. In order to prevent that, I try to channel my ideas into individual works like this.” Well versed in expressive type design, as an artist he aims to blur the lines between what is written and what is depicted by merging the two. “My personal aim is to always balance it midway between readability and visual complexity.” His inclination to treat letters as an image started when creating typography from scratch. “Once you actually draw a letter, you realise that a [character] is nothing more than a standardised shape,” he says. “The distinctions that have been created over the centuries are just a force of habit. Contemporary typographic illustrators are simply using the tools freely available to them [to bridge this gulf].” While Beltechi is an artist who endorses CG – “I tend to create [assets] rather than use existing content such as stock photos” – he says our favourite app is the glue that binds his designs together. “Even though I may use vector or 3D software, my work always ends with Photoshop,” he reveals. “At the very least I’ll use it to separate my rendered objects with Alpha channel masks and correct the contrast and colours with adjustment layers.” In ‘Down the Drain’, pipes were made by using both vector and 3D software to generate the characters. The rust, water and foam were all drawn using a pen tablet in Photoshop. He explains: “When dealing with 3D renders, it’s easy to make them too clean and perfect, so they look less real. I like to age them in Photoshop by creating my own textures. My favourite way to do this is to fill a new blank layer with 50% Gray, add noise, apply a small amount of Gaussian Blur and then add an Overlay blending mode over specific sections. This creates a noise pattern similar to real photographs.”

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EARLY DRAFT

The first draft featured the word ‘going’ as part of the layout. I decided that there were too many hoses and not enough articulated plumbing, so in the end I eliminated the first word.

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LAYOUT

Here is the two-dimensional layout of the final treatment which I put together in Illustrator. I created all the pipes and hoses as paths, which were later turned into splines in CINEMA 4D. By applying a Sweep NURBS effect, I was able to create the final objects in exactly the same positions as in the Illustrator file.

03

3D RENDER

These are the 3D rendered objects as portrayed right before applying materials, calibrating lighting and exporting as a raster file. After this stage, I drew the water and foam and retouched everything in Photoshop.

008 |

‘Down the Drain’: “Down the Drain is my graphic manifesto to lost inspiration,” says Beltechi. “It’s about how every artist needs to capture and manipulate their creativity in order to use it to its maximum potential” © Alex Beltechi


Typography

009 009 | ‘No Lies, Just Love’: “Personal type experiment. The piece contains lyrics from the Bright Eyes song of the same name” © Jordan Metcalf

010 | ‘Blocklab (White)’: “An amorphous cloud of cubic 3D shapes and typography fragments, intersecting with 2D streams of different overlapping letters” © Alex Varanese

011 | ‘Believe and You Shall Achieve’: A promotional image created for Bonner’s UK agent, jelly © Steven Bonner

digital realm and start playing with physical materials to create type. Right now I’m in the middle of several projects including crochet, glass and a set of steps. It could all be really fun stuff, but we’ll see…” Metcalf, on the other hand, has spent years in both illustrative and design work, establishing a running visual theme. Focusing primarily on using a black and white palette, he loves not just the aesthetic but also the reductive nature of this monochrome style. “I find black and white forced me to consider tone and contrast more,” he says. “I’ve played a lot with textural linework in my typography, using thin, offset strokes to create texture and pattern – like in my ‘No Lies, Just Love’ piece (above) – or offset tapered strokes for shading. I’ve also played a lot with gradients and shading techniques to [develop] form and depth.” Colour grading, texture, levels adjustments and cross

010

012 | ‘Idea’: “A mural design commissioned by a large South African financial institution created to communicate the core brand value of creativity” © Jordan Metcalf

013 | ‘Artistic Image’: “Advertising agency brand development, created through extensive exploration of the Mesh tool in Illustrator CS3” © Stefan Chinof


processing may seem like minor tweaks compared to the heavyweight work of vector illustration, photography or 3D modelling, but they’re utterly essential when it comes to capturing the kind of look that turns these otherwise raw materials into something cohesive and striking. Alex Varanese talks of a natural symbiosis between 2D and 3D: “The human sense of vision evolved to perceive the natural world of light, shadow, contour and colour that surrounds us in three dimensions. No matter how much we intellectualise ourselves in the modern world, those instincts don’t switch off when we turn our attention to a two-dimensional type treatment on a poster, gallery wall or magazine page. That’s why the same rules apply, as bizarre as that may seem sometimes, to the abstractions of letterforms. I like creating pieces that sit somewhere near the intersection of flat, vector intangibility and the convincing weight of elaborately rendered 3D scenes.” No doubt modern technology has played a significant role in the invention and elaboration of present designs. Artists can now take fanciful ideas and make them seem more real than ever before, far removed from traditional flat typographic examples. Bonner appreciates this, saying: “Placed in pictures, we can create realistic 100ft-high letters in a park or curl them around buildings – this freedom and ability to make the unreal happen is really exciting. It’s certainly something I want to explore more in the near future.” This has forced artists to shift their paradigm of what typographic design is and, indeed, what it could be. However, Bonner rarely uses 3D software to achieve his type work. He reveals: “I don’t really switch between 3D and Photoshop, but use Illustrator and Photoshop in tandem all the time. Smart Object layers are a godsend for me and allow me to make small non-destructive changes on the fly. It means I can get the tone of a piece right from the outset, but still make fundamental changes at a later stage – which, in a commercial world where clients will make last-minute alts, is crucial.” CINEMA 4D and similar CG packages certainly have a production value, but our pictorial typographers seem hesitant to use such software exclusively, still adhering to a hands-on approach indicative of more traditional principles. Chinof admits: “I’ve tried Xara 3D Maker but I prefer to make [through personal


Genius Guide

TYPE DIRECTORS CLUB

WE LOOK AT THIS GLOBAL ORGANISATION ENCOURAGING INNOVATION IN TYPOGRAPHY

011 012

013

The dominant goal of the Type Directors Club (TDC) for the past 65 years has been to raise both the quality and the profile of typography in the graphics and art communities. The TDC runs a range of creative programmes discussing the letterform – both its design and its usage. The TDC Salon is well known in the industry for having guest speakers who discuss their typefaces and their personal experiences using the letterform. What makes the TDC refreshing is that it appreciates both traditional and contemporary methods. Executive director, Carol Wahler, says: “Today’s world is the world of on-screen art. Typeface designers have been working on this for many years – designing typefaces for the screen. Young children are reading and writing on handheld tablets and smartphones; they’re the future. The need for typographic artwork is more important now than ever before.” Unlike some organisations, the TDC also merits the use of Photoshop in the production of typographic design. “Although not considered a dedicated typesetting tool, Photoshop is often called upon to do just that,” says Wahler. “Book designers often employ Photoshop to help create jackets when the need is for something more illustrative. Similarly, most movie posters are created and typeset using Photoshop. Effects such as warping, embossing or extruding type are easy to add now in Photoshop. Also not to be overlooked are the hundreds of filters and plug-ins that can be employed to create type that looks like chrome, wood, rust, smoke or embroidery, etc.” Log on to http://tdc.org for more information and to have your own designs considered for publication.

014 | 015 | Awards: The TDC holds two yearly type competitions: one for the use of type and the letterform in design and the other for typeface design. The winners are reproduced in the TDC’s Typography Annual, which is published by HarperCollins © TDC

015 014


Typography 016 |

‘Do the Dew’: “Type treatment and art direction for Mountain Dew; the agency was TracyLocke. It was created through applying 3ds Max and Photoshop CS3 photomanipulation” © Stefan Chinof

017 |

‘Solid All The Way Through’: “The first piece in my Urban Cartography series, which deconstructs the look of San Francisco’s Mission District into cube-shaped city fragments – combining these with streaks of typography arranged in the same 3D space” © Alex Varanese

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application]. Most of my projects are pure Photoshop. ‘Do the Dew’ (left) is an exception – starting as a 3D project as it was to become a motion graphic. When I sent the initial screens they liked it so much that they decided to stick with a static key visual.” Chinof received the 3D letters and then added the destruction and lighting effects personally in Photoshop. “The liquid part is a mixture of pictures and brushes,” he adds. Lucas reinforces Photoshop’s postproduction power, explaining: “3D software has its advantages in terms of the ease in a shift of angle and perspective, lighting, changing textures and colours, for example. But finishing details are often easier to apply after a render in Photoshop. You’re able to manually enhance a digital image to a level that the 3D programs can’t match on their own. In terms of working from PS to 3D software, texture, bump and reflection maps, etc, can be created in Photoshop, and then imported into a 3D environment and applied to a model, taking an object from a hyper-synthetic to a hyperreal render.” It seems that 3D applications play a greater role in motion graphics particularly, and in that area have made a considerable impact on type design. However, understandably, our artists creating still designs have adopted the necessary 3D functions that complement such production, chiefly through the benefit of cross-platform workflows. Varanese uses one of his own works as an example: “‘Solid All The Way Through’ [below], from my Urban Cartography series (below), is a particularly clear example of how greatly Photoshop plays in my workflow. The finished piece was rendered in numerous passes, allowing the sun’s shadows, glowing cube fragments and 3D typography to be merged together with far greater precision as Photoshop layers.” Once compiled into a single piece, some extensive colour treatment gave the originally neutral scene a harshly yellowed, sun-bleached finish which was intended to evoke a sense of wistful nostalgia and hazy memory. However, Varanese is at pains to point out that, much like their regards to traditional practices, artists can only adapt digital software to maximise creativity – with the outcome always paramount, technique secondary. “That


Genius Guide

FLUID TYPE EXPERIMENT

EXPLORE THIS ELEMENTAL-INSPIRED TYPE ART, WHICH WAS MADE WITH A COMBINATION OF CG AND PHOTOSHOP BY CREATIVE STUDIO SKYRILL (WWW.SKYRILL.COM) 1. CREATE THE LETTERS We start by creating the letterform in 3ds Max based on an existing typeface. The letter was then extruded to give it a certain volume, which would be enough to work as a container for the particles that would re-form the letter.

2. FILL IT UP

The letter was then imported into RealFlow, and based on the letter, a number of emitters were placed inside to fill it up with particles. The speed of the emitters plays a key role in the final outcome.

3. BUILDING PRESSURE

Reducing and increasing the gravity and pressure levels of the particles enabled them to ‘explode’ in a more natural way, and create nice splashes once the original letterform object holding it was deactivated.

4. MESHING

Adding a mesh to the particles was done in RealFlow; a high Blend Factor and a low Radius Size were crucial to good results. A number of filters were also used at low settings such as the Relaxation filter.

5. REFINE THE LETTER

Using the Clone and Pen tools in Photoshop, new fluid shapes were drawn out in different sizes and then blended with the original letter in order to make the overall look of the final letter more natural.

6. ADJUST LIGHTING

Colour and lighting adjustments were done in Photoshop using Color Balance, along with Curves. The final image is made up of different layers put together using various PS blending modes such as Screen, Overlay and So Light.

emotional punch, subtle as it may be, was actually more important to me than all the 3D and digital work that went into the city scene itself,” Varanese says. Certain creatives still pride themselves on tradition, frowning upon Photoshop use, finding it the ‘lazy option’ that leans more towards the frivolous side of type design. However, our artists believe that traditional and contemporary styles needn’t be synonymous with each other. The strongest typography is that which fundamentally maintains the essence of language, while at the same time contrasts it with a visually striking execution – so why should present styles be regarded any differently? “I think that creative illustrated type and standard type communicate in very different ways and serve very different purposes, and I think they’ll coexist for as long as we have need for design and written language,” suggests Metcalf. The two styles, while being perfect in tandem, will always have their own place it seems, as Bonner adds: “Traditional typography needs to be legible for communication so type design will always need to follow a certain number of rules. Whereas pictorial lettering is different in that it wants the viewer to have another look and, in some cases, have to work to figure out what’s being said. They both communicate but in very distinct ways.” What our artists seem to be saying is that there are fundamental laws that govern the legibility of the written word, but they are only as relevant as the level of readability a particular brief demands, ie the grid, baseline and X height. However, typographic design is predominantly concerned with communicating a message or an idea. Metcalf continues: “I think the primary reason is that typographic illustration is being seen more as a viable standalone illustrative element as opposed to a supportive device for traditional illustration or design. This shift towards type being the medium and the message, as well as the increase in the number of creatives working in lettering and typographic art, has led to it becoming a far more lateral and experimental movement.” Tone, emotion and personality can all be conveyed through treatment and typographic style even without strict letterform legibility. Most importantly the developments in the world of type aren’t putting off or baffling audiences – quite the contrary, in fact, as illustrated type looks set only to grow in popularity. As Varanese finally says: “The power of implicit form is one of the most intriguing aspects of typography. Our minds are shockingly adept at extrapolating entire worlds of detail from the slightest hints of design, and that gives artists a lot of room to convey ideas in challenging or even counter-intuitive ways.”

Typographic illustration is being seen more as a viable standalone illustrative element as opposed to a supportive device for traditional design – Jordan Metcalf, http://jordan-metcalf.com


Typography

STRIKING TYPE EFFECTS BLEND A SIMPLE 3D RENDER WITH MULTIPLE STOCK PHOTOS TO CREATE STUNNING ARTWORK

OUR EXPERT BARTON DAMER

www.alreadybeenchewed.tv

In this tutorial we will combine a basic 3D render and composite an entire wildlife scene in Photoshop using a variety of royalty-free photos. Your final image will probably look quite different from ours depending on what sort of photos you choose to use, but the steps you take to create your composition will remain the same. It’s important to try to match your light source in the pictures you use. Most of the pictures used in this composition were taken on an overcast day where the shadows were very soft. If you are able to find overcast shots, it will free you up to composite the pictures without having to be too concerned about matching a strong light source and shadows. Photoshop is the weapon of choice and the app where we will spend most of our time. We will also be creating a very basic 3D render of typography using Cinema 4D R12, however you can download 3D renders online to work with in your piece.

Barton is a motion designer and digital artist who creates under his studio brand, Already Been Chewed LLC. For over 12 years, he has designed for a variety of mediums including print, web and TV.

SOURCE FILES There is a stock pack of nature photos included on the disc that you can use to create your own unique final design. The images that we have used are not available for the disc.

START THE TEXT

LET’S WORK ON CREATING THE BASIC 3D RENDER WORK IN PROGRESS

BUILD YOUR TYPE COMPOSITE

CREATE 3D TYPE IN CINEMA4D

01

Cinema4D allows you to type 3D text live and update without needing any other software. You can access the fonts that are active on your system. Within the Attributes Manager, you can control the depth of your text along with the size. You will want to create a Fillet Cap using the Caps tab of the Attributes Manager. You want a larger Radius than what looks natural because it’s going to serve as outer layer of bark on our tree typography. The actual Radius size will vary depending on the font size.

Step 5: Basic render

Step 10: Add detail to lettering

Step 15: Final adjustments


03

APPLY TREE TEXTURES

First you will want to make your Motext editable. You will notice the text is separated into five parts: Cap 1, Cap 2, Rounding 1, Rounding 2 and P (or the letter you made editable). Apply your texture to the outside pieces of your letter leaving the front Cap. Once you’ve applied the texture, you will want to adjust the Projection (in the Attributes Manager) to Cubic and adjust the scale by choosing the # of Tiles for U and V until the bark is the size you want it. Create and apply a new texture to the face of the P by repeating Steps 2 and 3.

02

CREATE TREE TEXTURES

Start with a photo of tree bark and use Photoshop to create a duplicate image that will serve as a ‘bump map’. Convert the image to black and white and adjust the Levels so that the darks are very dark and the whites are very white. This mono version of the bark will be used to displace the textures applied to the type in C4D. Create a new material in C4D and apply the photo of the bark to the Color channel and the mono version to the Bump channel. Adjust the height of the bump to suit.


Genius Guide

0121


Typography 04

QUICK TIP

LIGHTING YOUR TYPOGRAPHY

The lighting of your typography will largely depend on the photographs you choose to make up the rest of your composition. It may help to choose these first, but you can at least get started with some basic lighting and then refine it later. You can use a plug-in for C4D called Greyscale Gorilla Light Kit to create a seamless white background and help light your scene. Regular lights within C4D will work fine too. The seamless floor is important since you will be using the cast shadow to help composite your scene in PS.

If creating a bump map for your texture still does not give you the desired depth to your bark, you can use Displacement within the Texture Channels. Load the same monochrome photo used on the bump map into the Displacement channel and adjust the settings. You will be able to control Height and Strength, and by turning on SubPolygon Displacement, you will get better detail.

05

CREATING WOODEN LOGS

You can outline the shape of a log directly in C4D using a Bezier Pen tool. After drawing an imperfect log shape, use Extrude Nurbs to create the desired length of your log. The Extrude Nurbs Attributes panel has the exact same options that the Motext offered. Set your Fillet Caps settings to be the same or whatever looks best in comparison to the size of your log shape. Repeat texturing as in Steps 2 and 3, then place your logs as desired within a letter or all of your letters.

06

RENDER SETTINGS

The Render Settings in C4D are a key part of the final output. Before opening this dialog box, add a Compositing Tag to your text and make sure Object Buffer is turned on. Then you will be able to add an Object Buffer to your Multi-Pass settings inside of the Render Settings box. By including the Object Buffer as a Multi-Pass image, you will have a separate render of just the text so that you do not have to cut out the background in Photoshop. You can also control the size of the render to be really large for print or other.

07

BACKGROUND COMPOSITING

Move into Photoshop now. The background starts to take shape quickly when you have a few strong photos. Use a soft-edged black brush on a layer mask to gently blend the edges of different photos together. Your photo selection may require you to use the Pen tool and isolate specific objects. YouÕll probably need to adjust the Hue/Saturation in order to bring their color temperatures closer in appearance.


08

COMPOSITING THE 3D TYPE

Open your full render and the Multi-Pass render you set up in Step 6. The type can be isolated off of the background using the black and white alpha channel as a selection. However, you will want a copy of the full render with shadows on a different layer. Set the layer containing the shadow to Multiply in the Layers palette. Adjust the transparency of the layer for darker or lighter shadows to be cast across your field photograph.

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ISOLATE FOLIAGE

Choose a variety of foliage pictures to start with. Again, think about lighting as you make your selection. Veer.com has a variety of foliage already available on a white background. You can use Color Range to make your selection and delete the background. In the Color Range palette you can choose a Fuzziness setting, which will give you more control over how much of that colour to include in across the entire image.


Genius Guide

BRINGING THE SCENE TOGETHER

You must keep in mind the large scene you’ve already started compositing as well as compare the pictures to each other for similarity in lighting

COMPOSITING YOUR STOCK PHOTOS

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COMPOSITING THE FOLIAGE

Once youÕve isolated your foliage off of its background, the rest is simply placing the images around the type where you feel it looks most natural. You can Scale, Flip, Rotate and adjust Hue/Saturation to get a large variety of foliage without feeling too repetitive. Because there is no direct light source overpowering any of the images, you can get away with a lot here. Only a handful of foliage photos are needed to create all of the ones you see in the final piece. However, the more photos you can use the better your results.

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ISOLATE ANIMALS USING THE PEN TOOL

Often, you will have to rely on the Pen tool to cut certain elements from your photos. While there are many tricks to save time, the Pen tool ends up being a very reliable method to get the results you need. Again, choose the pictures of your animals keeping the lighting in mind. You must keep in mind the large scene youÕve already started compositing as well as compare the pictures to each other for similarity in lighting. You may need to adjust the Levels as well as Hue/Saturation to get the pictures to composite well together.

ADD ORGANIC DETAIL

You may want to add more organiclooking detail to your 3D typography. Try to find nature objects of interest. The blending of real wooden limbs or knobs, using layer masks and brushes, will help quite a bit in the overall look of the text. Repeat Step 11 to isolate a portion of your photograph from its original environment. Again, you may need to adjust the Hue/Saturation of the image once you paste it into your composition. Levels may need adjusting too.

13

REFINING THE COMPOSITION

Look for ways to highlight your typography from the background. A fog in the environment will help to blend the images being composed and give you an added element that will add interest. Choose the Brush tool in Photoshop and lightly airbrush a transparent white to create some fog where certain areas of your background need blending or highlighting. Use the Opacity value of the layer and adjust accordingly.

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DEVELOP THE DEPTH OF YOUR COMPOSITION

Depth is a basic design principal in this kind of composition that will definitely help to improve your composition. Consider your foreground, middleground and background, and think through whether or not adding some elements to one of those areas will improve your piece. Using Steps 9 or 11, add in new trees or other elements as needed.

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COLOR CORRECTION

You can use adjustment layers over the top of all your layers to help unify the look of the piece. If you want to add warmth to the piece, use a Photo Filter adjustment layer. You can choose a preset or choose your own colour for tinting the artwork. Combine multiple adjustment layers by adding a new one for the Levels. Levels allow you to tweak the tones of your darks, midtones and whites with great control.


Typography



Genius Guide

DESIGN FLUID TYPE WITH ADDED POP BE BOLD AND EXPERIMENT WITH NEW WAYS OF ILLUSTRATING TYPOGRAPHY WITH ABSTRACT SHAPES AND TEXTURES

OUR EXPERT RADIM MALINIC

How often do you find yourself wondering how to carry out a client brief or personal project? You could take a collage approach, maybe mixed media, or even 3D. All of these options can be tried and tested within an hour, without getting your hands dirty or messing up your studio. That’s the great thing about digital art; but breaking the ‘design rules’ can be even more exciting. Custom typography can also be approached in many different ways, usually by butchering an existing font, tweaking the shapes until we like what we see. But how about pushing the envelope a bit further? Does the type need to be instantly legible? Since we’re not creating a headline or logo, we can really let loose and, for once, consider style over substance. In this tutorial, we’ll design the word ‘Fizz’ from abstract fluid shapes. Feel free to experiment with every step to personalise results. We will only be using basic Photoshop tools – giving you the freedom to deviate from this workshop if you so wish. Pay close attention to steps using Shape Layers and Smart Objects, but as for the rest, just let your imagination lead the way.

WORK IN PROGRESS

BREWING UP OUR BUBBLY TEXT DESIGN

www.brandnu.co.uk Radim, aka Brand Nu, provides practical knowledge and working tips on how to make abstract typography with fluid textures.

SOURCE FILES There are no files on the CD for this, but you can get the original AI file from www.advancedphotoshop. co.uk/tutorials.php.

KEEP IT IN THE FAMILY

GET TO GRIPS WITH PHOTOSHOPÕS SIBLING: ILLUSTRATOR FROM A TO B

01

Many PS users don’t ‘get’ Illustrator. For some reason, they can’t get their head around the app. The beauty is most often in its simplicity so let’s start in that vein. Draw simple swoosh shapes and adjust curves for a smoother look. Arrange these shapes to create the word ‘Fizz’.

FILL THE CANVAS

02

You should have a surplus of swooshes that can be used to fill the space around our type. The main idea is to complement the movement of the central message. We are trying to re-create the bubbly feel of champagne in vector form. Although it is abstract, focus on the fluidity of the design.

Step 1: Create flowing shapes

Step 5: Supersize your canvas

Step 13: Work in some depth

03

COLOUR BLENDS

Now each of the objects will need to be split into two curves to give us the option to make stroke blends. This can be tedious, so let’s use a system that will also give our keyboard fingers a little workout. Swap Fill Color to Stroke (X), copy the shape (Cmd/ Ctrl+C), hit A to highlight one half, Delete to remove the curve, lock the result (Cmd/Ctrl+2), Paste in Place (Cmd/Ctrl+F), remove the other part and unlock (Cmd/Ctrl+Opt/Alt+2). Then select both and make the blend (Cmd/Ctrl+Opt/Alt+B).


Typography 04

QUICK TIP

FINAL PREPARATIONS

Now we have the type and colour spectrum to work with, we need to build up some bubbles. There are one or two methods we will use in Photoshop to cut down on time and the number of layers, but it would be a shame not to prepare a few more elements in Illustrator while weÕre here! Simple circles can be given extra dimension via the Gradient Mesh tool (U) and adding lighter colour tones. Also make a couple of copies of the main type element to use later in the main PS layout.

While weÕre creating a fun design that works well as an exercise in typography, if you were creating something similar for a commercial project then you would need to ensure that the typography is clearly legible. Consider making the letters a shade darker or lighter so that they stand out better.

05

SUPERSIZE YOUR CANVAS

Why not work in an oversized canvas of A4 or even A3? You never know when you may want to print your work as a poster etc. Copy and paste in the main swoosh artwork as a Smart Vector Object, apply Quick Mask (Q) and fill it with 30% black to knock everything back Ð other than the main type which should stay at 100%. You can achieve this by pasting only the Fizz type and creating an active selection. Then select the swoosh layer and fill it with white.

06

SHAPE OR VECTOR?

When pasting elements from Illustrator into Photoshop you are always presented with four options. However, for a non-destructive and ultra-flexible way of working, we would recommend always selecting either the Smart Object or Shape Layer options. Both of these will retain the original vector information, which means they can be scaled and edited without Ð most importantly Ð losing any of the quality. In this step, bring in just the flat vector swooshes group as a Shape Layer and place it at the top of your layer stack.

07

SHINY FLUID EFFECTS

Working with the same layer as Step 6, go to the Blending Options dialog. Adjust Fill to 0% and Opacity to 60%; this will hide all colour content of the shape but will let any effect added show through. Jump to Bevel and Emboss to work up a nice shine across the canvas. Use an Inner Bevel style with a Smooth technique to add a 3D-like finish. Experiment with the Size and Smooth parameters to see what effect you like.


08

GLOW OUTLINE

From the Illustrator assets, bring in the Fizz outline with a white stroke and add on top of the main layer. Apply an Outer Glow layer style. Brush out some of the corners and edges via a Quick Mask (Q) selection. For best effect, be sure to turn the layer into a group and add the mask to that. Effects tend to interact with the current state, which doesnÕt always work well; using a layer mask means we can tidy up and tweak afterwards.

09

FOREVER FLOWING BUBBLES

Although at first they seem a little out of place, the green circles will work great in our champagne scene. Add one into the main canvas as a Smart Object and set its blending to Linear Dodge (Add). This will work perfectly against the background, with its subtle 3D effect. Hold Opt/Alt to copy the object, filling in gaps between the type and outer shapes. Repeat until the whole document is looking busy but balanced.


Genius Guide

GOING IN CIRCLES

The most efficient workflow is to stay in one area and use various brush sizes to fill the space, before moving on to the next and repeating

ADDING IN THAT EXTRA POP

10

FILL THE GAPS

Step 9 added many extra layers, so put them in one group for easy navigation. Now, we will fill the extra space around the graphic bubbles using a hard round brush. Adjust Foreground Color to CMYK 5,6,25,0, using the square bracket keys to increase/decrease brush size. The most efficient workflow is to stay in one area and use various brush sizes to fill the space, before moving on to the next and repeating.

11

KEEP ON ADDING

On top of some of the circles we just made, add orange dots – around 75% in size of the originals – to create a button effect. You will not need too many of these – leave some space for later. Next create a new layer (Shift+Cmd/Ctrl+N) and name it ‘Top Bubbles’. Hit B to call up the Brush tool and press F5 for options. Enable Shape Dynamics and Scattering, drastically decrease the tip size and brush over the type and its immediate vicinity in very small circles.

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EYE-POPPING BUBBLES

From the AI file, import 3D spheres as Smart Objects. As earlier, hold Opt/Alt to copy shapes to speed up your process. The idea here is to emphasise the Fizz type with some bubble-like effects. Once happy with the positioning, select one of these spheres and attach a Drop Shadow style. The shadow colour works best as a brownish tone, for better blending. Copy the layer style and paste onto all other spheres for consistency.

THE YELLOW STAGES

During the process we have grown accustomed to our colour spectrum. The question to ask come the end is: are the colours as strong as they can be? The yellow tones might be okay in print, but we want them to really sing. So via a Selective Color adjustment layer, under the Yellows channel, we set Magenta to +5 and Yellow to +10. Next, on a Hue/Saturation layer, we bump up Saturation to +15 and lower Lightness to -5.

13

WORK ON PERSPECTIVE

Next up, we will add a bit more depth to the main type, once again to place more emphasis on this focal point. Since our main shape is transparent, put all spheres into one group below the main type layer and make a selection from the type only; now apply a Quick Mask (Q) to this group. This will hide anything behind the type and leave a number of spheres/bubbles peeking out around the edges of the letters.


Typography

ILLUSTRATIVE TYPE DISCOVER HOW TO BUILD YOUR OWN TYPEFACE USING STOCK IMAGERY AND PHOTOSHOP COLOUR ADJUSTMENTS Both illustrative and collage type are a growing trend among digital artists, combating the saturation of 3D styles and breathing life back into a stale genre. As collage type is experimental, it provides a lure of invention that sparks the imagination. A solid sense of composition goes a long way when producing a successful image like this, enabling you to understand how one element relates to others around it. As always patience is a virtue, as it can take a long time to construct the forms of all the various elements and ordering them. By being meticulous you can appreciate the joy of this style; all

you need to do is play with your elements and keep working until they strike you. A bucket-load of stock imagery that corresponds to your theme is essential. Arm yourself with as many examples as possible that display numerous positions, perspectives and orientations. These are needed to match and signify your font shapes. As always, Photoshop ties your designs together, with colour adjustments letting you control the vibrancy of your elements and Levels paving the way to balanced lighting. Gradients can boost colour and custom brushes will bring your mixed-media and collage looks to life.



Adam is our resident Photoshop enthusiast ready to pit his design skills against almost any style. Here he shows you how to tackle type made from photo stock.

SOURCE FILES

Numerous JPEG stock images have been supplied, which you can use to experiment with your own styles. Also supplied are sets of mixed-media brushes, which will help you to create the exact looks in this tutorial.

A large chunk of your time will be taken up cutting out image elements from existing backdrops. For a solid-colour background, simply apply the Magic Wand at a Tolerance of 25 WORK IN PROGRESS

BUILD YOUR COLLAGE TYPE

01

JUSTIFY YOUR TYPE

03

SPLIT UP VARIED BACKGROUNDS

Start by creating a font sheet in Photoshop. Apply as many styles as possible, considering the correlation between these and your theme, which in this case is tourist photography. A blocky typeface is suited to such mechanical and structured forms, so we’ve chosen Chaparral Pro as our base.

Progress 1: Place your elements

Progress 2: Amend colours

Progress 3: Apply brushes


Sadly, separating your elements from the existing background won’t always be easy. For less-routine backdrops, apply Selections using the Pen Path tool, then perfect selection edges using the Refine Edge object and apply a layer mask to isolate your option. Layer masks will come in handy when editing later in the workflow.

02

SEPARATE SOLID BACKGROUNDS

A large chunk of your time will be taken up cutting out image elements from existing backdrops. For a solid-colour background, simply apply the Magic Wand at a Tolerance of 25, add a layer mask and invert this before saving. Automate this technique by saving it as an Action.


Genius Guide


Typography 04

DRAG, DROP AND CONVERT ELEMENTS

QUICK TIP Want to get rid of product branding, logos and type? This is easy using Content-Aware Fill. Simply pick the affected area, press Shift+F5 and select this option, which will fill in the selected area with surrounding tones. More often than not this creates a seamless fill.

With all your images removed from their backgrounds, itÕs time to drag and drop them into your main image, which also ensures your layer masks stay attached. Convert all your newly imported image layers to Smart Objects, de-scale and arrange them away from your type. By making these Smart Objects you will be able to alter the image size without causing distortion and keep your options open when compositing. Placing away from your text lets you easily organise things.

05

MAKE CAREFUL PLACEMENT

Now you can start to create the building blocks for your letterforms using your Smart Objects. ItÕs important that you scrutinise the placement of your elements, so they initiate and accentuate the shapes of your fonts. For example, weÕve used the image of an arm holding a camera to mimic the curvature of our letter S. We admit to using the Transform>Warp tool to fit our element to the typeface, which we get away with as weÕre using an organic image (a human arm).

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ALTER THE COLOUR

Changing tones in the scene isnÕt always a concern, but random splashes of colour from various objects can really help your final effect. However, there is nothing wrong with boosting the vibrancy of existing colours. While this technique is relatively easy, it will still require focus. Apply a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer and set appropriate values in your Saturation and Brightness sliders for the relevant colour options. You can also use your attached layer mask and a low-opacity black soft brush to work original colours back in where you feel they are needed.


06

BUILD UP LETTERFORMS

DonÕt be afraid to edit the images. ThatÕs why we have applied layer masks so you can work out elements at any time. For example, try using an angled camera lens to again re-create the curve in your letter S. Continue to look for elements that will fit a specific space in the letter, pay attention to the layering and shapes of the images and also notice the relation of their different sizes. As we have more letters to create, weÕve increased the size of our stock to combat any repetition.

07

EDIT THE LIGHTING

This can be quite a painstaking procedure, but itÕs essential to maintain uniformity in your elements. You may find that some of your image elements actually have a similar level of exposure, but some may seem a lot darker or lighter. Target where these images are, then apply Levels to correct the exposure. Also use your new adjustment layerÕs layer mask to target lighting with a paintbrush. Make sure that your Levels adjustment layer only affects the layer in question by clipping this layer to it.


Genius Guide

ENHANCE YOUR PIECE WIELD PHOTOSHOP ADJUSTMENT OPTIONS TO ENHANCE TONALITY AND LIGHTING

09

THE IMAGE SO FAR

As we have used a lot of camera and lens stock, the image has been saturated with dark tones, affecting the splashes of colour, which now seem minimal. We’ve combated this by increasing the vibrancy of our image and applying gradient shapes. 001

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We increased the vibrancy of the red, blue, yellow, green and magenta tones in our image by targeting them with the useful Hue/Saturation adjustment option.

10

ADD GRADIENT SHAPES

13

MAKE A BACKGROUND

We’ve introduced more colours to our image with the use of gradient shapes. They have been added using the Elliptical Shape tool, applied specifically to the camera lenses. This is a lot easier with the new CS6 Shape tool Fill options. You can layer your shapes, combining Screen, Overlay and Vivid Light to affect detail. Make sure you do this inside your Smart Objects, which will automatically update effects in all duplicate layers and enable you to resize non-destructively.

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We’ve used CS6 Vector Shape with Gradient Fill settings to create gradient lenses in our cameras. These have been modified using various blending modes.

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We will improve the contours of our photo elements by applying dodging and burning techniques. This clearly defines form and will improve your texturing later on.

11

DODGE AND BURN CONTOUR

If you plan to resize your elements, dodge and burn them separately by opening each Smart Object and then Opt/Alt-clicking the Create New Layer icon. In the New Layer dialog box we’ve set Mode to Overlay and activated the Fill with the Overlayneutral colour option. This will create a 50% greyscale image that you can paint with low-opacity brushes. White will add highlights and black will create shadow. You can add this to the top of your layer stack if you don’t plan to resize any letter layers.

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12

MORE GRADIENTS

Bring better depth by adding black-totransparent gradients to our image elements that fall behind others. Opacity, scale and positioning will vary and we’ve also emphasised our collage effect using mixed-media textures. You can do this by loading ‘brushfx-paint-splatters-set-1’ brush set supplied and applying black ink splats to a new layer set behind all the image elements. Use different styles, sizes and Brush Tip>Angles to vary effects, matching the direction and edges of your image layers.

We’ve completed our effect by creating more painted layers throughout our layer stacks. We’ve painted to a Screen blending mode layer using a 50% grey soft brush. Make sure you clip these new paint layers to stop noticeable overlapping. We’ve also complemented our background by scattering photo elements then applying Gaussian Blur to simulate a depth-of-field effect. Finally we’ve merged all our layers, sharpened and applied Add Noise at an Amount of 2%.

ADDING SOME FLARE The smallest details can really improve the whole feel of your collage type. Here we’ve added a bit of surrealism by including camera flashes. These have been created by making a black square and applying a Filter>Render>105mm Prime Lens Flare. Pull your light streaks using the Smudge tool and set a Screen blending mode to layer the effect. Larger details are also important, as your backdrop must be suitable and it must enable your type to jump off the page. Sometimes a solid white or black will suffice. We’ve experimented with this expressive style and alternatively applied a landscape photo that has then been heavily blurred. This creates a soft yet vibrant backdrop that lets your detailed type shine.


Typography

CREATE COLLAGE STYLE TYPOGRAPHY

IN THIS TUTORIAL WE WILL BE CREATING PERSONALISED COLLAGE STYLE TYPE USING ILLUSTRATIONS AND STOCK


OUR EXPERT LUCA MOLNAR

www.lucamolnar.com

Luca is a freelancer from Hungary. She has recently launched her own T-shirt brand, Miss Future.

SOURCE FILES On the disc is stock photography and Luca’s own illustrations that she used for the typography. These illustrations are copyright to Luca and can only be used for completing the tutorial.


Genius Guide

In this tutorial, we will be creating three collage-style letters and then organising the letters into a single layout in order to create a final composition. For the letters, we will use our own previously created illustrations and also some stock photographs to make the typography even more varied and exciting. This collage style of lettering is undergoing somewhat of a resurgence, thanks to the popularity of the Mixel app for iPad (http://mixel.cc), which enables users to build simple collages from their photos. There are some great examples of Mixel typography out there, notably from Senongo Akpem (www.behance.

net/senongo). We are looking to create a similar style, but using only the tools in Photoshop. You will need to have a good knowledge of Photoshop in order to get through this tutorial. Another great thing about this style of typography is the fact that we can make it very quickly. We will finish one letter in about an hour, which means that we can then finish the whole typographic illustration in three to four hours. Photoshop is without doubt the best software to create a piece like this. All the tools you’ll need are laid out for you, so this is exactly the kind of project the program excels with.

We will finish one letter in about an hour, which means that we can finish the whole typographic illustration in three to four hours. Photoshop is without doubt the best software to create a piece like this… it’s exactly the kind of project the program excels with

WORK IN PROGRESS

BUILDING UP ONE LETTER AT A TIME

Step 5: Work with stock photos

Step 6: Finish the first letter

BUILD THE BASIC LETTERING

GET YOUR FONT RIGHT AND ADD PATTERNS

01

MAKE A NEW DOCUMENT

Step 9: Final touches

We will be creating the three letters (A, B, C) separately. First make a new document of 2,500 x 3,000px at 300dpi. This is a pretty big document, which is always useful because it enables us to work on the details. Now we select a light grey for the background. After that we add a new layer, select a big, soft brush (700px), set the colour to white and paint a little on the centre of the document. Go to Filters>Blur>Gaussian Blur and set Radius to 250px.

02

SHAPE THE BASIC LETTER TYPE

Choose the Type tool and select the Abadi MT Condensed Extra Bold font, set the Size to 700pt and simply write ‘A’. This letter will be like a guide to us and it will help build our collage. Naturally you can choose any kind of typeface, anything that you think looks cool. After this stage, we will be rasterising (Ctrl/right-click and Layer>Rasterize Type) our type layer. This will make it easier to alter the A if needed.


Typography 03

QUICK TIP Play with layer styles as much as you can in order to put some light in your piece. There are so many of them, and different layer styles can make some interesting light effects, taking your artwork to the next level. We’re sure you will have quite a few happy accidents!

ADD PATTERNS

Now for the fun part. Choose three or four of your favourite illustrations, it’s best if you choose works with the same or a very similar colour scheme. Open the first illustration and drop it on the main document. Set the Opacity to around 50% so we are able to see the letter under the illustration, which can make working with it easier. You can resize the illustration we just dropped on the main document if needed.

There are so many different layer styles, and some styles can make interesting light effects, taking your artwork to the next level. We’re sure you will have quite a few happy accidents!

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04

CUT OUT YOUR TYPE

Select the amazing Pen tool and make a random shape with it, then Ctrl/right-click and choose Make Selection. Now select the Rectangle Marquee tool, go above our selection, Ctrl/right-click and pick Layer via Copy. You just copied your first pattern! You can see that we have it on a separate layer. Now move it on the letter A and place it somewhere where you judge it looks best. After this we have to repeat this step several times with all of our chosen illustrations until our letter is completely covered with patterns.


SPICE UP THE TYPE

Our first letter looks pretty cool already. However, we can still add some smooth details. Open one of the flower stock images supplied, select the Pen tool and cut out the first flower. Ctrl/rightclick, choose Make Selection, then select the Rectangle Marquee tool, go above our selection and Ctrl/right-click, selecting Layer via Copy. After that continue to cut out three more flowers and a beautiful frog. Now all we have to do is to drop our flowers into the main file and duplicate (Ctrl/ right-click on the layer and hit Duplicate Layer) a few times.


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06

MAKE A MOVE

The letter is a little too static. We set the background layers (first three layers) to non-visible, Ctrl/right-click on a visible layer and choose Merge Visible. After this, Ctrl/right-click on the merged layer and select Duplicate Layer. Now place the new layer above the others. Go to Filters>Blur>Motion Blur, set the Angle to 0 and the Distance to 139. Select the Eraser tool, choose a large soft brush and delete some parts of the blurred image until it starts looking nice.

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LIGHT IT UP

We are going to add some sparkling light to our work. First we add a new layer and set the blending mode to Overlay, which is a very good option if you want to add some natural-looking light to your work. Ideally you’ll have some downloaded light brushes, but if you don’t have any then just choose a medium-sized white brush. Click parts of the work that you want to highlight.

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REPEAT FOR B AND C

After finishing the letter A, we’ll be creating two more letters (B and C). Simply repeat the previous steps. You can choose to use different illustrations for each letter or use the same ones. However, if you decide to use different illustrations and stock images for each letter, then we suggest using varying colour schemes for the letters. This way all of your letters will be individual and more fun to look at.

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BRING ALL THE DIFFERENT ELEMENTS TOGETHER

Create a new document of 2,776 x 2,404px at 300dpi. Drop all three letters into this document without their grey background and place them in a pyramid formation. Select the Pen tool, set the brush size to 7pt and the colour to white, then add a new layer above all other layers. Next create a similar path with the Pen tool to the one shown above, Ctrl/ right-click and select Stroke Path.


Typography



Genius Guide

CREATE STYLISH VINTAGE TYPE

USING BOTH PHOTOSHOP AND ILLUSTRATOR, WE SHOW YOU HOW TO REPLICATE EFFECTIVE RETRO TYPOGRAPHY

Typography is a fundamental part of day-to-day life. It’s everywhere we look, but so much of today’s typography lacks any creative flair. Typography in the past, particularly in signs, tended to be more visually pleasing. Inspired by hand-painted enamel signs and old typographic posters, here we’ll show you how to replicate classic vintage-style typography.

OUR EXPERT LOGS MATTHEWS

www.logsmatthews.co.uk

Logs Matthews is a 23-year-old, self-taught, freelance graphic designer from the north-west of England. Here he shows you how to create stylish vintage typography using both Photoshop and Illustrator.

A lot of time will be spent creating the type in Illustrator. This is where we’ll add detail to the type using options, such as the Offset Path, blends and the Pen tool. In Photoshop we’ll apply texture using various blending modes and use brush techniques to mimic cracks and creases. We’ll also explore tweaking hue and saturation, as well as Curves layers, to enhance tones. Some textures and details in Photoshop will complete the piece.

BEGIN APPLYING TEXTURE

BUILD UP MATERIAL EFFECTS IN PHOTOSHOP BEFORE ADDING TEXT

01

PICK A DOCUMENT SIZE

First you will need to decide on the size of your document. Take into account whether the finished image will be printed or solely used on the web. In this case it will be printed, so we’ll open a new 235 x 303mm portrait document in Photoshop, making sure it has a white background.

02

BORDER AND GRADIENT

We want to give this piece a border, so create a new layer, fill it with a solid colour and then drag each edge in by 10mm. Next apply a Gradient Overlay within the Layer Style dialog, selecting the Foreground to Background gradient. Set the Style as Radial, the Angle at 60 degrees and the Scale at 150%, making sure the Reverse box is ticked. Put the Opacity of this layer to 25%.

WORK IN PROGRESS

FROM SIMPLE TYPE TO DYNAMIC RESULTS

Progress 1: Apply texture

Progress 2: Make the type

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ADDING TEXTURE

Now apply some texture. Open up a dark grunge texture in Photoshop and invert it by going to Image>Adjustments>Invert. Once this is done, drag the JPEG into your document and set the blending mode to Overlay. To make the grunge texture more intense, go to Image>Adjustments>Levels and increase the black to darken the texture.

Progress 3: Add final details


Typography 04

INPUT THE TEXT

In Illustrator, open a new 235 x 303mm portrait document and lay out the phrase ‘work hard and be nice to people’. We’re aiming to produce a vintage typography feel by applying a bold Sans Serif font to the words ‘work’ and ‘nice’, as well as a bold Serif font to the words ‘and be’. Now apply a Script font to the words ‘hard’ and ‘to people’, for a softer contrasting effect between the texts. Outline all of the text by going to Type>Create Outlines.

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05

OFFSET THE SANS SERIF TEXT

In preparation for detailing the Sans Serif text, we need to offset it. Begin with the word ‘work’ and go to Object>Path>Offset Path, then set the Offset to 2mm. Once you’ve offset the path, reselect the word and go to Object>Ungroup. While holding the Shift key down, select the inner parts of the word and go to Object>Group. The inner parts of the Sans Serif words will be used as a clipping mask for some of the line details.

CLIPPING THE LINES

06

DETAIL THE SANS SERIF TEXT

Now grab the Line Segment tool to draw a line above and below the Sans Serif words, giving them a 1pt Stroke. Set these lines to a beige tone (#C2B59B). To multiply the lines, double-click the Blend tool and a Blend Options box will appear. Select Specified Steps from the dropdown menu and type the number of steps you would like. Click the end point of the top line and then the parallel point of the bottom line to multiply the lines evenly.

We’re aiming to produce a vintage typography feel by applying a bold Sans Serif font to the words ‘work’ and ‘nice’

Now send the lines to the back. Copy and paste the inner text, give it a beige Stroke of 1pt and put it to one side. Select the inner text you grouped in Step 5 and go to Object> Compound Path>Make. With the inner text still selected, hold Shift, select the lines, then go to Object> Clipping Mask>Make. Doing this will clip the lines into the inner text. Now drag the beige outlined text that you put aside over the clipped lines, then fill the black letters with a dark-red tone that’s suitable.

QUICK TIP Try to add layers as you create your type. You can do this by using the Offset Path tool multiple times, giving your type very thin borders. Once you have a few borders, apply gold gradients to some and fill others with white. This will help embellish your type further.

APPLY SOME MORE DEPTH

GIVE A 3D LOOK TO YOUR TEXT USING THE PEN TOOL

08

INTRODUCE DEPTH TO SANS SERIF TEXT

Copy and paste the word ‘work’ into a new layer and place it underneath your original layer. Position the word down and right to use as a guide. Back with the original layer, use the Pen tool to draw in the 3D shapes. Apply a gold gradient, copy and paste these, fill them red, then send them to the back to add even more depth. Do this once more and fill them with grey to replicate a shadow.


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MOVE BACK TO PHOTOSHOP

Now the type is done, copy and paste it into your Photoshop document as a Smart Object. This enables you to make changes to the type if necessary, without opening the original Illustrator file. Just double-click the Smart Object thumbnail on the type layer to open it in Illustrator. When changes have been made, hit Save and it will automatically amend the type in Photoshop.

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GIVE THE TYPE TEXTURE

Now we need to copy the grunge layer and place it above the type layer. Set the blending mode to Multiply and the Opacity to 60%. We only want this texture layer to affect the type, so hit Cmd/Ctrl+Opt/ Alt+G to clip the texture into the type layer. By adding a mask to this layer, and using a small soft brush with an Opacity of 60%, you can roughly mask out some of the areas where there is too much texture.


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ADD THE FINAL TOUCHES

USE HUE/SATURATION AND CURVES LAYERS

11

ADJUST YOUR TONES

To enhance the colours we’ll need to add a new Hue/Saturation layer above the type layer, increasing the Saturation to make the colours more vibrant. If there’s a specific colour that you want to target, you can select it from the Hue/Saturation dropdown. Also, add a new Curves layer above the type layer, setting the Output at 125 and the Input at 137, to make the colours even richer.

SMALL DETAILS Adding small details can take a lot of time, but they really add quality to a piece of work. Starting with the banner, make a thin triangle shape and place it horizontally at one end of the main rectangle. Copy and paste this underneath and use the same blending technique as used in Step 6. The number of steps will vary on the size of your banner. Repeat this on the other side of the rectangle and the inside of the banner. Once positioned, set the blending mode to Multiply and set the Opacity at 25%.

QUICK TIP Adding noise is great for making a piece of work look less digitally made. When adding noise to a piece of work, make sure you decide whether the piece warrants it. Sometimes adding noise can make what was a bright glossy image look dull and washed out.

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MASK EDGES AND DODGE/BURN

To re-create faded edges, start by adding a layer mask to the gradient layer. Using a 400px soft brush with 60% Opacity, begin masking out small areas towards the edges. Now target individual areas of the grunge layer, use the Burn tool with the Range set to Midtones, brush Size set at 300px and the Opacity set at 45%, then begin to darken them. On the other hand, if any areas need lightening, use the Dodge tool with the same brush settings.

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DRAW IN CRACKS

Adding cracks is a great way to age an image. This technique is easier with a graphics tablet and pen but can still be achieved with a mouse. First insert a new layer, select a hard round brush – with the Size set at around 6px and the Opacity at 100% – and start drawing in some cracks. Once you’re happy with the cracks, go to Layer>Smart Object>Create Smart Object. Set the layer’s blending mode to Multiply and set the Opacity to 20%.

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FINISHING TOUCH

Now that the image is complete, we want to add one final effect to bring it all together. Save a copy of your PSD, flatten it, then go to Filter>Noise> Add Noise. Use an Amount of 10% to give your image a subtle grain texture, making your piece look less digital and more vintage.


Typography



Genius Guide

WORK WITH 3D TYPE CREATE BASIC 3D RENDERS IN CINEMA 4D AND INTEGRATE INTO A 2D SCENE

In this tutorial we will combine basic 3D renders along with photography from all different royalty-free sites including iStockphoto, Wikipedia Commons and the Library of Congress online archives. Your final image will probably look quite different from ours, as you’ll be using your own images, but the steps you take to create your composition will remain the same. Compositing images from different sources can often be complicated, but it doesn’t have to be. Whether you are trying to match the light source across multiple photos or struggling with consistent hue and temperature values, a treated look to your image will help to unify your composition. Ensure you have the Creative Suite – we will be using CS5.5. Photoshop will be our weapon of choice. We will also be creating some very basic 3D renders using CINEMA 4D and Illustrator. If you have yet to incorporate a 3D program into your design process, this exercise will be a great starting point. We are using basic geometric shapes and a deformer called Spline Wrap to create the typographic rollercoaster, our focus. Then we will build the rest of our scene in Photoshop by combining several photos and adding a vintage look.

WORK IN PROGRESS

FROM 3D TYPE TO FINISHED ARTWORK

Step 1: Illustrator sketch

OUR EXPERT BARTON DAMER

www.alreadybeenchewed.tv

Barton is a motion designer and digital artist with 12 years’ experience who creates under his studio brand, Already Been Chewed, LLC.

SOURCE FILES Included on the disc is a CINEMA 4D file with the main Spline Wrap active so you can learn from some of the adjustments made in the tutorial.

PREPARING THE TYPE

TAKE AN ILLUSTRATOR SKETCH INTO CINEMA 4D

01

CREATE A VECTOR PATH

Using Illustrator, we will draw a vector path that acts as the spline for our 3D typography. For this concept, we should choose a font that will work well as one line connected between all the letters and is still legible, we chose to use Cursive. Use the Pen tool to draw the spline and save as an Illustrator 8 file. Note: we will not be able to import into C4D if we save as any other legacy.

02 Step 8: CINEMA 4D render

Step 14: Unify the image

ADJUST PATH

Within CINEMA 4D, we Merge (File>Merge) the path we created in Illustrator. Then we can select a specific point from the path and adjust it forwards or backwards in Z space. This gives our spline depth and prevents our text from intersecting with itself later. Each point of the vector path contains handles that we can pull to smooth our path as we move the vector points.


Typography 03

QUICK TIP

BASIC CYLINDERS

We can use photographs of real metal or even rusty metal to texture our rollercoaster track. For even more realism, we can apply bump maps to our texture. Simply Greyscale the image and adjust the Levels in Photoshop for more contrast between the white and blacks of the greyscale image. The bump map gives real depth to your texture based on the black and white points.

Use three basic cylinders within C4D and rotate them to lie horizontal, making a base for our rollercoaster track. Because we are going to wrap them around the path we imported from Illustrator, we need to increase the number of segments in the height of each cylinder. We can crank the number of height segments way up for now, making the Spline Wrap smoother once we’ve applied it.

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BEZIER TOOL MODELLING

Before we work on applying the Spline Wrap, it’s important to finish modelling our rollercoaster track. That way we only have to apply it once rather than to each object that makes up the track. With that in mind, we can either finish drawing the track with the Bezier tool inside of CINEMA 4D or we can jump back into Illustrator and export another path. Draw the last part of the track in Illustrator if you are more comfortable that way and export for C4D (as we did in Step 1). Merge it into C4D (just like Step 2). Then drag the vector path underneath an Extrude Nurb and adjust the settings until you get the desired effect.

APPLY THE SPLINE WRAP

Now the moment we’ve been waiting for! We’re ready to apply the Spline Wrap to our entire rollercoaster track. First we need to group the three Cylinders with our Cloner Object. Then applying the Spline Wrap will transform everything inside of the group. If you get some odd results, it’s probably because the axis of the Spline Wrap needs to be changed to X, Y, or Z depending on the position and rotation of your centre point. Now go into the Spline Wrap settings and adjust the Rotation of our track to look better based on how it reacts within each letter.

07

LIGHTING

As we will be compositing images from different sources and lighting, make note of the light source in the images and see if you can come close to matching them. Focus on the direction of the light and the types of shadows being cast. Will we be compositing into another picture that has strong daylight and hard shadows? Or more overcast and softer shadows? However, the vintage treatment will help to unify everything.


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TEXTURE

The textures we need to create for this project are very basic, which is why this tutorial is a nice introduction to 3D. The Material Editor enables us to customise all sorts of options. We simply need a bright colour for our track since a lot of rollercoasters are painted a bright primary colour. By default, the Specular is turned on and we should leave it that way unless we decide otherwise. We don’t want reflections on our rollercoaster track, so a basic hue adjustment should be fine for our purposes.

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THE MOGRAPH CLONER

The Mograph Cloner enables us to make copies of our Extrude Nurb object. In the Settings we can offset, rotate and scale along with many other options. For this we want to choose a lot of copies and space them out to be the length of our cylinders we created earlier. In the Attributes Manager of our Cloner, we can choose to space it out along the X, Y or Z axis. By default, the Cloner is Linear so we don’t need to change that, but it could easily be used as Radial, Object or Grid Array for various uses.


Genius Guide

WORK ON THE DETAILS

ADD DETAIL AND SHADOW IN CINEMA 4D

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MODELLING THE DETAILS

We can add details to our typography by using basic shapes within C4D, such as cylinders for the legs and cylinders inside of an Array for the bolts around the legs. Just like Step 8, we can create a new texture, choosing a colour that will not compete with the rollercoaster track so the two aren’t confused. Once you’ve created one set of legs, copy, paste and reposition them around the type.

Choosing photos that have softer shadows and a light source that is evenly lit will help us to combine a variety of images from different sources

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RENDER ALPHA CHANNELS

CINEMA 4D enables us to render out the track in high resolution for print. We can also create alpha channels around just the rollercoaster so that we don’t have to trace and cut out the background from CINEMA 4D inside of Photoshop. Simply apply a Compositing tag from the Objects window and enable Object Buffer. In render settings, turn on Multi-Pass and choose Object Buffer, then select a location to save the fully rendered image with the Object Buffer.

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RENDERING SHADOWS

One thing to note about our Render Settings is the Ambient Occlusion feature. When you enable Ambient Occlusion in the Render Settings, it renders more realistic shadows than if you were to leave it off. It takes a little bit longer to render but the added detail is worth it. Since this is a print piece, the render time really doesn’t matter as if it were motion. Under Multi-Pass, in our Render settings, we can enable Shadows and it will render them separately on its own layer. That way you have some flexibility when compositing in Photoshop to darken your shadows as needed.


Typography 12

CHOOSE PHOTOS

One of the challenges in choosing photos to support our typography is the variety of sources that have to be combined. It’s best to look for photographs that have similar lighting, if at all possible. Choosing photos that have softer shadows and a light source that is evenly lit will help us to combine a variety of images from different sources. Look for all daylight, or all nighttime pictures for instance. Alternatively, look for photos where the position of the sun is very similar, or in the case of a nighttime shot, the position and intensity of the moon.

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PLACE AND CUT OUT IMAGES

Once we find images to help finish our composition, we can begin to lay them out and isolate them from their background in Photoshop. There are various methods we can use but we would suggest the Pen tool for non-organic objects. Some objects require using a different method, which we will look at. Your decision will vary with the background of the image you need to cut out, though combining methods works well.

BUILDING THE SCENE

BRINGING IT ALL TOGETHER

14

MATCH VALUES

QUICK TIP

There are different Effectors that can be applied to Mograph Cloner objects within C4D. A Random Effector can be applied to give variation in the size, rotation and position of the bubbles used. This makes it very easy to create a unique cluster of water bubbles in just a few clicks.

Begin matching the values of all the pictures by adjusting the Hue/Saturation, bringing down the saturation of each object, whilst not completely desaturating the images. Adjusting the Levels will help as well. Try to increase the darks and brighten the whites until the images look similarly toned. Next, use an adjustment layer over the entire canvas to decrease Saturation.

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COLOUR TINT

We can now add some colour tinting on new layers and really start to unify our piece. Using the Airbrush tool, choose a large brush, a warm colour (brown) and paint over certain areas of the image. Blending modes will do all the work for you. Try Soft Light or Overlay and adjust the Opacity. Use multiple layers with a variety of colours over select areas of the composition.



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16

MAKE A SPLASH!

BUBBLE REFLECTIONS

Using Color Range to make a selection, we isolate just the white caps of the waves. The Fuzziness enables you to control a range of values in the waves you want to include. We can then copy, paste, flip, rotate and reposition the same waves to create a group of them. Or we can use several different photos of waves to customise the direction the waves are crashing in our scene.

When creating a custom texture for the water bubbles, you’ll want to use Transparency and add Refraction to the settings. Reflection will help with realism as well. In order to get some interesting reflections in the water bubbles, you’ll need to add some sort of an environment. We can create a custom sky or background image or use a third-party product called GSG Light Kit Pro (www. greyscalegorilla.com). This plug-in for CINEMA 4D comes with presets that include gradient backgrounds or studio backgrounds among others. It’s a great way to get some really nice reflections by simply dropping in one of the gradient environments that come with the product.

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SCREEN MODE

We can also add detail to our water and bubbles by using photographs set to Screen mode. There are a lot of great stock images available including video clips online. Often, the stock video clips are shot at 1,080p, which is a high enough res for our needs. The water bubbles are pretty small in the composition so a still grab from the video works just fine. Desaturate your image and adjust the Levels so that the darks are completely black and don’t show when the layer is set to Screen.

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CUSTOM WATER BUBBLES

We can customise our own water bubbles by blending in some renders from C4D. By using the Cloner Object (Step 5) and creating a new texture (Step 8), we can create a stream of bubbles with various camera angles. A Random Effector can be applied to the Cloner Object as well to give the bubbles variation in size, rotation and position. We render with an alpha channel (see Step 10) and place into our composition. Try these bubbles at Normal, Screen or Overlay blending mode.

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ADD THE VINTAGE TREATMENT

Using a stock image of paper that has a consistent texture to it, we can add layers of grain that will affect the darks and lights of the artwork. Setting the paper layer to Soft Light will give you some nice grain. For more control, we can duplicate our layer of paper and be able to set it to Screen mode. The layer set to Screen will enable us to add a lot of grain to the darks of our artwork, making it feel vintage. Adjust the Levels and Opacity of the layers to achieve the desired effect.


Typography

CREATE DYNAMIC 3D TYPE DISCOVER HOW TO CREATE ANCIENT 3D TYPE BY COMBINING TEXT AND TEXTURED LAYER BLENDING MODES

In this tutorial we’ll prepare a scene by merging two photographs, using layer masks and the Eraser tool. We’ll then create 3D type that we’ll extrude and position around the scene as well as show how to use bevels, lighting and position the camera. We want to give the illusion that the type is heavy and made of eroding brick. To achieve this we’ll use stock photography for texturing and play with various blending modes to create dynamic effects. If you are new to the 3D world, just take it easy and follow the steps slowly. It can be frustrating for a

WORK IN PROGRESS

COMBINE STOCK AND 3D TYPE

Step 1: Prepare the scene


www.marcusbyrne.com www.behance.net/mobdesign Marcus is a digital artist and 3D typography lover. He works across many creative disciplines on a day-to-day basis, where Photoshop is the main ingredient.

SOURCE FILES To download the main image visit Dreamstime and download No. 25807894. On the disc you can find multiple textures to sample and use.

GET STARTED ON YOUR SCENE

DOWNLOAD THE BASE IMAGE AND CREATE THE 3D TEXT

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COMBINE TWO IMAGES

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POSITION IN 3D SPACE

Download the original image from Dreamstime (number 25807894). Open ‘Cover Ground.jpg’ supplied, then copy and paste it onto the Dreamstime image as a separate layer. Position and create a layer mask. Using the Eraser tool, paint out the ruins and the tree so that the ground merges seamlessly with the bottom image, go to Edit>Transform>Warp to help cover this.

Step 6: Add type and extrude

Step 10: Craft and finesse

OUR EXPERT MARCUS BYRNE

beginner, but with practise you’ll master the 3D space. If you are familiar with 3D software like CINEMA 4D or 3ds Max, you should pick it up quite quickly. The scene is set at the enchanting Ta Prohm Temple, Angkor, Siem Reap Province, Cambodia, not far from the famous Angkor Wat. Here, strangler fig trees and creeping lichens devour ruins. If you haven’t had a chance to visit this wonderful place and experience the surreal environment, we advise you to book it in for your next trip. It’s simply amazing for photography and drawing studies.

When in 3D mode you get different panels to work with. It’s a good idea to get familiar with all the navigation tools and the 3D Layer panel. Click the various navigation tools at the top and see how the scene behaves. With the main selection tool, click the 3D layer and play with the axis handles to get comfortable with them.

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INSERT 3D TYPE AND EXTRUDE

Select the Type tool and key in ‘3D’, choosing a font that will work well with the concept. We chose to use the font Sans Black as it has bold characteristics and works well in 3D. With the Type layer selected in the Layer panel, go to Type>Extrude to 3D to extrude the type. Try different font options and see what you feel works best for your piece.


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Typography 04

ADJUST EXTRUSION AND THE BEVELLED EDGE

Go to the Properties menu to see the Extrude options. In Mesh, make sure Cast and Catch Shadows are ticked. In Deform, set the Extrusion Depth to 250, Twist to 0 and Taper to 100%. In Caps, set the Bevel Width to 13% and Angle to 45 degrees, then play with the contour edges. All these settings depend on the effects you like. There are so many options and variables within these panels, so experiment and see what happens.

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MERGE AND WORK OUT THE COMPOSITION

Add a new text layer and type ‘EXPOSED’. Add an extrusion and then bevel. Select both layers using the Cmd/Ctrl key then hit Cmd/Ctrl+E. This puts both 3D and EXPOSED in the same 3D layer. Use the Selection tool and click a letter in the 3D panel. You will see a small 3D widget that enables you to move in the 3D space (X,Y,Z), each axis is coloured with red (X), green (Y) and blue (Z). Move each letter around the scene and work out a rough composition.

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SPLIT THE EXTRUSION AND TEXTURE

Next we need to split the extrusion. With the layer selected, go to 3D>Split Extrusion. Open the Type folder in the 3D Layer panel to see the different letters. Click the 3D faces and see them selected on the comp. Use the Properties box to change the materials. In Diffuse, click Load Texture and add in ‘Type Base Texture 02.jpg’ supplied. Repeat this on all the faces, Front, Bevel and Extrusion, then repeat on both letters.

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CHANGE CAMERA SETTINGS

When you look at the original photo you’ll see that the lens used is quite wide as we can see the top of the middle tree and the windows in the ruins look quite distorted. Next let’s change our camera to 17mm. Select Current View in the 3D panel and change the FOV (Field of View) to 17. You may need to resize your text a few times throughout this process and position the text back into the scene. Make sure to use the 3D mode tools and pan back.

REFINE COMPOSITION AND ADD LIGHT

Try a range different angles for the letters in order to optimise. The trick here is to imagine how heavy letters made of stone would behave. By moving the letters around we can pull them forwards, backwards and rotate every angle. Add light by selecting the 3D layer and click Infinite Light in the 3D Layer panel. Move the light until it looks like the shadows are realistic. Set the Color to white and the Shadow Softness to about 16%.


ESSENTIAL FOR 3D

When working in the 3D world, it’s a good idea to play around with various camera settings and lighting. Another way to help with letter positions is to go to View>Show>3D Secondary View. A Top View window will appear in the top-left of the workspace.


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RENDERS AND TEXTURES

ADD THE LAST FEW TOUCHES TO YOUR TEXT

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MANIPULATE THE STONES

When you’re happy with the letter placements, camera and lighting, it’s time to add some Photoshop magic. Turn off all the layers except the Background, which can be flattened. It’s a good idea to keep a copy somewhere to be safe. Cut out various ground stones with the Selection tool and keep them on separate layers. Think about how the letters interact and lean against the stones. You will need to use the masking and clone tools to get a good result.

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The texture needs to work better, so to replace it select each face separately and, in the Materials panel, go to Diffuse>Replace Texture and insert the ‘Base Texture_Type.jpg’ file supplied. This texture works better with the ruins. For fun, try a few other textures or create your own. Refine the stones with your Photoshop skills by placing them around and in front of the type. Cut out some of the tree roots and place them on top of the word 3D.

TEXTURES

Since the scene is old and ancient, some Noise and High Pass filters will work really well and add texture

To activate Photoshop’s Texture Library, select a 3D object on the canvas and, in the 3D panel, go to Materials and click the Texture Ball image. The textures are great for a base, but to add dimension and create a realistic feel, it’s best to add extra layers and play with the blending modes. There are an abundance of free websites where you can download textures: sxc.hu, www.textureking.com and www. freestocktextures.com to name just a few.

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RENDER IN HIGH RESOLUTION

To change the Render settings go to Photoshop>Preferences>3D. Here you can change the Ray Tracer to 10 for maximum renders. Duplicate the 3D layer so you have a copy and make one invisible. When the Type layer is rendered, Cmd/Ctrl-click it and select Rasterize 3D. Lower the Render settings and see what your computer can handle. The more RAM you have, the faster the render speed.

POSITION AND REFINE

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FINAL TEXTURES USING DIFFERENT STOCK IMAGES

It’s now time to spruce up the image and really make the type seem ancient. Browse through one of the wall textures supplied and copy it into the scene. Next, experiment with different Blend Modes. We found that the Overlay setting works really well, so mask it to the type. We’ve supplied more textures for you to use, so have fun and experiment with the other letters.

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FINESSE AND GRADE

When you’re finished with all the letter texturing and have placed the stones around the scene, it’s now time for finessing and grading. Since the scene is old and ancient, some Noise and High Pass filters will work really well and add depth to the image. Use dark colours to overlay and paint into various areas of the scene, creating shadows and making the type pop out a little. Add a layer on top, fill with white, add noise and set to Multiply.


Typography

TYPOGRAPHIC DESIGNS

COMBINE THE PEN TOOL WITH SOME INSPIRING WORDS TO CREATE A STRONG PROMOTIONAL DESIGN In this tutorial you can learn how to create typography within the boundaries of an everyday object – in this case, a trainer. To recreate this illustration you don’t have to be a Photoshop professional, as it really isn’t difficult to make, but it looks very cool nonetheless and you can adapt the illustration to other ideas relatively easily. You will need a scanner or a camera for the drawing part and you will need some water splash stock as well, if you decide to create a fresh background for the main work.


When we started on this piece, we had so many ideas with this concept as it was possible to go in so many directions. We finally decided to use the shape of a sneaker; first, because we have an obsession with them and, second, because we know many of you feel the same way! The text part was a bit trickier, but we decided to write some lines about art and creativity. You can write anything you want to share with the world. It’s a great way to get a message across if you are the type of artist who likes to express themselves via words as well as design.

OUR EXPERT LUCA MOLNAR

http://lucamolnar.com

Luca is a 20-year-old digital artist from Hungary. In the past few years she has worked for MTV Networks, Ogilvy Group and Universal Music, among others.

SOURCE FILES On the CD is a Word document with links to three SXC files that were used to complete this illustration.


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DRAW THE LETTERS

Select the Pen tool and start redoing the letters. Choose a fun colour and then Ctrl/right-click>Fill Path. Try to have a new layer for every letter, in case you want to change something on the type later. Play with the boldness and size of the letters to give them more character.

Often when creating an illustration, it is best to start with drawing out the initial composition. First we did a quick outline of the shoe with the Pen tool in Photoshop, then printed it and started drawing. Try to figure out an overall inspiring message to get across in the work.

QUICK TIP When adding lighting to your illustration always try to play with blending modes. Choosing the right mode (usually Overlay or Screen) can be the key to a great piece. However, be careful; if you add too many lights, it can turn your artwork into a disaster.

CREATE THE LETTERS

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CHOOSE MORE COLOURS

We want to make it very vivid; to achieve this choose three bright colours. We opt for pink, purple and light blue, but you can select any shades you want. Now keep creating the letters using the pencil sketch as a template; be patient – there are lots!

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ADD HIGHLIGHTS

Merge a few layers to have one word or line per layer, then go to Select>Load Selection and add a new layer. Choose a lighter tone to the word’s colour, select a large soft brush and start painting highlights.

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HANDWRITTEN WORDS

You may choose to create some handwritten-looking words. Using the Pen tool, simply draw the shape of the letters, then select a small brush (5px), plus the Pen tool again, and Ctrl/rightclick>Stroke Path. Experiment with settings to make the letters look as natural as possible.


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WRAP UP THE WORDS

IT’S A SHOE-IN

Let’s start putting together the sneaker now. Use the Pen tool, choose white, redraw the shape of the shoe and then Ctrl/right-click>Fill Path. Next Ctrl/right-click the layer and choose Blending Options, go to Stroke, select a dark grey and set the Size to 8px.

Finally, it’s time to finish the rest of the typography. Draw all the letters with the Pen tool and don’t forget to add some highlights to each word to make them consistent. After you’ve finished the words, read them a few times to make sure you don’t have any typos.

Draw all the letters with the Pen tool and don’t forget to add some highlights to each word to make them consistent. After you’ve finished the words, re-check them for typos

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ALL IN THE DETAILS

We have to add details to the sneaker to make it look more real. Use the Pen tool again to draw the different parts of the shoe; keep every new shape on a new layer. Then Ctrl/right-click on the layer, choose Blending Options and add a grey stroke, paler than the main shoe outline. This will help to distinguish the various areas of the trainer.

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ADD SOME DARKNESS

Choose the parts of the shoe we just made in the previous step and go to Select>Load Selection. Add a new layer, selecting a big soft brush and light grey as the colour. Now start painting the edges of the sneaker elements; you will immediately see that they look more realistic.

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BACKGROUND

Now that we’ve finished the typography and the shoe, the only thing left to do is to put together a background. Select the Gradient tool and choose two colours (white and light grey) set at 100% Opacity. Choose the Radial gradient and apply it to a new layer, which is placed under all of the other layers.



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KEEP ON DRAWING Don’t get scared, we’re not suggesting that you learn to draw like Da Vinci! However, it can be very helpful to plan your illustration on paper, especially if you want to produce a more detailed piece. Draw a sketch, scan it, open it in Photoshop and then start working it up with the Pen tool. This can help a lot, ensuring you don’t get lost amid all the possibilities in Photoshop and you can stay focused on the task at hand. This method can really save the day if you are creating a detailed piece with lots of different objects (flowers, animals and flying lines) or if trying to fit a lot of text into an awkwardly shaped object, etc.

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GET EDGY

It all looks a little flat now; to make the background look more dramatic, let’s work up edges. Add a new layer above the background, select a 2,500px soft brush (dark grey) and then click on the shoe edges. If it doesn’t look right, try using Filters>Blur> Gaussian Blur.

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SPLASH OUT

We will now add some water splashes to the background. First open a splash image (see the links on the disc for the free stock images that we used) and use the Pen tool to cut them out. Do your best to cut edges as neatly as you can. Now drop the splashes into the work, place under the sneaker and duplicate several times to taste.

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MAKE IT SHINE

We have to add some lights to make the water more dynamic. Add a new layer above the splashes, set the layer style to Overlay and then select a soft brush, or any other brushes you use for adding lights. Start applying accents to parts of the water, keeping a light source in mind.

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SEEING STARS

Only do this if you feel you need some more lights. Download a star brush; there are plenty of these available for free online. Add it to your Brushes menu, add a new layer and place some shiny stars. Be careful here though; add too many and the work could end up looking tacky.


Mixed media Seamlessly integrate elements 156 Applying Mixed Media Explore the popularity of mixed media

166 Blending Mixed Media Use brushes for an inspired illustration

172 Paint Textures

Incorporate paint textures effectively

176 Master Polygons

Produce portraits using geometric shapes

182 Graphics and Photos Blend photos with painted elements

188 Type and photos

Integrate bold type and kinetic photos

192 The Pen Tool

Make shapes with your artwork

198 Advanced Selections Develop an energetic composite

204 Zero-Gravity Effects Use blend modes, dodge and burn

176 154 Illustrate with Photoshop Genius Guide

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Mixed media

APPLYING

MIXED MEDIA

IT’S RAW, IT’S REAL AND IT CAN BE ROUGH, BUT MIXED MEDIA ART IS BECOMING INCREASINGLY POPULAR. POZ WATSON INVESTIGATES

Mixed media illustrations are nothing new. In the last few years, however, a wave of artists have brought to them a new level of sophistication as well as a grounding of genuine artistic talent. Whereas they were once thought of as a slightly amateurish mishmash of elements – the epitome of the try-too-hard student or the over-eager photographer – they’ve now become a style that’s a force to be reckoned with, even competing with the ubiquitous slick vector look in its commercial appeal. The inky, arty look has reached new heights as skilful artists from around the world have mastered blending digital and non-digital elements, and mixed media has been reborn. According to Alexander Ovchinnikov – who by day is creative director of the Moscow-based creative agency MILK – this style has been around in its current form for only two or three years. His personal work used to focus on black and white comics, which has segued nicely into what he is now producing. And another adherent of the style, Florian Nicolle – whose 2009 image Goldfish graces this very page – explains that: “I call this technique the ‘Tradigital’ because it mixes traditional art with digital art. It is characterised, in my opinion, by the confrontation between two different worlds – that of the real (paper, brush, ink) and the virtual (soware, graphics tablet), and the gathering of two different eras.”


QUICK TIPS A graphics tablet is highly recommended for this type of technical illustration. Whether you’re painting the exterior of your car or ghosting in its components, the tablet’s pressure sensitivity can’t be beaten. Hit F5 to go into your Brush menu, and turn on Pen Pressure for the Size and Opacity controls. Ink is the key visual signifier in the new mixed media arsenal. Keep it washy and spontaneous if you’re scanning in inked art, or experiment with digital brushes. Texture is an instant signifier that the image has been created on or with real media, even if it hasn’t. Several painting packages will allow you to import and use a texture effectively. Remember to lower the opacity of layers so it doesn’t show through. Found patterns add a nice touch to hybrid illustrations. Use them on layers set to Multiply to darken them and make them more transparent. This will give you a fantastic silkscreen or lithograph look like a traditional print.

001 | Goldfish, 2009 An example of combining digital textures with typography and inking to create a digital/traditional hybrid. © Florian Nicolle.

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Nebula, 2009, Photoshop This Indian ink/Photoshop piece was created by Lotie for the ‘So Natural’ exhibition at le Cube, Issy-les-Moulineaux, France © Lotie

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Butterflies, 2009, mixed media. A combination of pencils, coloured pencils and inks with varying digital techniques produces an organic look. © L Filipe dos Santos

As Raphaël Vicenzi puts it, this style is: “The bridge between the hand-made approach and the benefits of digital tools. I think it’s where the boundaries are blurred that makes it difficult to tell what is computer generated and what is not.” And as Portuguese artist L Filipe dos Santos (aka Corcoise) sees it: “I think I wouldn’t call this a style but a technique, a making-process. I know too many different styles made in this way to call it a ‘style’. Anyway, if I had to come up with a name for it, maybe organic-digital, binary-mess… I truly don’t know, nothing decent comes to mind.” Rather than a style then, this new mixed media approach is more a way of thinking about digital art. It’s just art again, with different tools and methods, sure, but the end result is what matters, rather than the technological way it was produced. For Vicenzi, it is all about being inspired. He lists graffiti artists, street art and collages as things he has drawn from, noting that: “I decided I might as well borrow from all the genres I liked and put them all on the same canvas while adding a more feminine element into it.” For dos Santos, there was a more specific light-bulb moment that led him down the mixed media path. He says: “I was a teenager when I first saw Dave McKean’s work, and it definitely pressed some buttons inside me I didn’t know I had.” For Lotie, however, there never needed to be anything to kick-start her interest in the mixed media world, since she has worked in this style since the beginning of her career. She explains: “I began by drawing only with Indian ink. I scanned these drawings and I did colours in Photoshop. But

QUICK TIP Create your own watercolours, doodles and drips, and keep a large library of them available. If inspiration goes stale, you can make new stock images for yourself. One single drawn element can liven up an entire illustration.



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It is interesting to catch any situation - a scene, a pose of a random passer-by - and transform the image into an artwork gradually I looked for materials, for elements in the photographs of magazines. Soon I made my own photos, to which I added textures and shapes – mixes to be made with my drawings.” It is a similar jumping-off point for Ovchinnikov, who says that: “If I work with photos I always use my own pictures (never from photo banks or libraries).” He goes on to explain that it’s the real world that he wants to take into his illustration work, calling them, “Photos without production, street photos, which I take on Moscow streets or while travelling. It is interesting to me to catch any situation – a scene, a pose of a random passer-by – and then transform the image into an

artwork. It’s a part of my creative experiment.” Erik Schumacher, who works in this mixed media style but also produces straight digital paintings of epic landscapes, does use stock photos for his work, and sees them as being no less creative. For his image ‘Crucifixion;, he searched for: “A face that showed a wicked, inscrutable expression that would catch the viewer’s attention immediately. A er that I enhanced the background of the portrait with some rough linework, and also overpainted the face for an artistic and painted look. Corel Painter comes in useful while experimenting with various brushes and painting styles. In the final steps I added splatter and textures to

INTERVIEW: ERIK SCHUMACHER WEB: www.xkire.de SOFTWARE: Photoshop CS2, Painter X WHAT ARE THE STRENGTHS OF THIS STYLE? I can tell stories with my art, express my feelings. Using stock photos instead of pure digital painting also saves a lot of time Additionally, the techniques are very easy to learn, even for newbie painters, yet the result looks great most of the time.

004 | Sit Down, 2010, Photoshop and Illustrator. Her mix of vectors and photomanipulation has fused in a very unique way © Jana Jelovac

005 | Broken-hearted Heroes, 2010, Photoshop. The variety of styles and mediums on here is what builds to give this piece of personal work strength. © JRaphael Vicenzi

Erik used this image to experiment with new techniques in Painter

WHAT ARE ITS WEAKNESSES? Having recourse to stock images is still important for the creation of this kind of work. The fact that this style is fairly easy to realise proves disadvantageous at the same time. Artists have to be original in subject and concept in order to stand out.


Mixed media

Mixed Media

BRUSHING IT TOGETHER The striped elements were created in Illustrator, and Raphael also turned them into brushes so they could be reused again for future projects.

WILD ANIMALS The zebra came from a source book, and Raphael explains that: “It made me think of savannas, heat and the sun - which gave me ideas for the colours.”

BACK TO BASICS This is a stock image of some old paper that Raphael used to give the whole piece more depth and coherence.

WILD MOTHER

ARTIST: Raphael Vicenzi SOFTWARE: Photoshop YEAR: 2010 This piece, combining female elegance with animal power, was loosely inspired by the book Women Who Run with the Wolves by Clasissa Pinkola Estés. Brussels-based illustrator Raphaël Vicenzi explains: “This is about the wild creative principle animating living things. It’s also about the wild things inside us, either prey or predator.” The image wasn’t carefully planned out before Raphaël began work on it, however. Rather, the end product is the result of “a few external impressions


that directed the image”. He explains: “The title and typography came a erwards, while I just tried to keep the idea of wild animals and a feminine creative force.” His work involves a lot of trial and error “adding layers, removing parts, playing with colours until it has depth”. It’s through this process that Raphaël feels out just what an image is supposed to be and achieve: “Sometimes it doesn’t make sense until one element gives it a meaning I hadn’t thought about.”


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QUICK TIP Images in this style tend to be roughly composed, almost sketchy. Pieces are more atmospheric if not entirely planned out.

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Deer, 2008. Photoshop. With this image, the clarity that mixed media can achieve is clear © Tetsuya Toshima

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Luna, 2010, Photoshop, Illustrator. This required a ballpoint pen, coloured ink, china ink and brush work before it reached digital realms © Florian Nicolle

I try to keep the whole thing close to what I’d achieve if I were not using a computer; I aim to express ideas without using too much technique 008 |

Walking With a Beast, 2009, Photoshop. Alexander says: “I use objects that aren’t meant to be brushes, eg stones” © Alexander Ovchinnikov

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my composition to give the piece a rough and dirty look, with action and a nice amount of detail.” For Vicenzi’s image Despite All This Confusion, he too started with the image of a woman, although this one was drawn. From there, he says: “I slowly built up the textures and layers, playing with masks to define new shapes and changing the colours of the elements. I try to keep the whole thing close to what I would achieve if I were not using a computer, because I aim to express emotions and ideas without using too much technique and eye-candy.” As Alexander Ovchinnikov puts it: “It is very important for me that the computer remains only an instrument for compilation of elements and their editing.” And this embracing of technology – but only as a means to an end – seems to unite those who work in a mixed media style. For Ovchinnikov, this means that all his lines are drawn by hand first, and then edited on the computer. He uses Photoshop brushes a lot,

but reveals: “I always use my own brushes and never the ‘ready’ ones.” Which is perhaps the perfect encapsulation of just what the whole mixed media approach is about. On a more practical note, mixed media finds another strength in versatility, with dos Santos commenting that it offers the artist the possibility of experimenting with various different solutions by using only one image. “That saves time, hard hand-work, and you can come up with something that you would never even dream about.” But perhaps more importantly, the hand-made side of things means it appeals to the real artist within. “It adds a hand-made feel that is dynamic and warmer, which helps to convey emotions more easily,” says Vicenzi. “You are mixing things up. The sum of all the parts will make it more interesting visually since it is not easily defined, because depending on the artist it will borrow more from one style than the other.” For Japanese artist Tetsuya Toshima, the personal touch gives mixed media “the ability to create works full of originality that don’t give a sense of déjà vu to those who look at them”. For Lotie, the mixed media approach allows her to produce something that lies somewhere between “tradition and modernity”. She says: “The traditional drawing gives a traditional and classy dimension, and the digital anchors it in the modernity. The clients generally appreciate this style of drawing in the ‘ancient style’, like engravings, but they also like the global trendy aspect.” The freedom of the mixed media approach – its


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Bathroom, 2008. Photoshop. ‘Floating-in’ colour is a technique from watercolour and inking, but you can use it with digital brushes too. © L Filipe dos Santos

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Foreteller, 2009. Photoshop. This images owes more of its visual look to artisan printing techniques. © Alexander Ovchinnikov

fusion of hand-made passion and digital convenience – means that the artists operating within it are free to concentrate on their art rather than worrying about the latest clever techniques or the hottest piece of kit. Schumacher explains that, for him: “It is a very creative style which gives you the opportunity to create sketchy or even abstract pieces with a special traditional feel to them, although they are entirely digitally made.” And for Nicolle: ”I think this technique has become popular because it opens doors to many new possibilities. There could be a return to the fashion of traditional

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Sis, 2010. Photoshop. “I don’t have a specific way of doing things. I prefer to let subconscious impressions guide me” © Raphaël Vicenzi

design updated with the digital.” And the feeling is the same for all these artists. Working in a flexible way, using whatever elements interest them and ignoring those that don’t, is less a deliberate choice and more like the obvious and natural way that an artist should work. For Lotie, it allows her to work on subjects she’s interested in: “I always liked taking photos of nature. Soon I wanted to incorporate my drawings into these photos, to intertwine the whole. Nature inspired my drawing, and therefore it was natural to incorporate her into my drawings.” And it’s the organic part of the compositions that can make them so special. Nicolle says: “This technique can give a lot of expression and liveliness to a composition, because it retains the richness of traditional painting – colours, gestures, accidents.” Jana Jelovac is another artist who creates work that feels very natural. She says: “Artworks I present are not made to be pretty or ugly. In the process of developing an artwork, I’m not thinking ‘Are people going to like it?” – I just let it go and do everything that goes through my mind in that particular moment. They are all spontaneous and closely related to music.” But of course, there are disadvantages to the mixed media way of working, not least that you have to generate or find a lot of elements before you can begin work – it isn’t just you and your computer against the world. And if you aren’t a photographer this probably does mean using



Genius Guide

INTERVIEW: ALEXANDER OVCHINNIKOV WEB: www.not-for-sale.ru SOFTWARE: Photoshop

012 012 | stock images at least sometimes, which as well as potentially restraining your creative impulses, can also be expensive. It’s also a style that results in very big images, which can be a hindrance, albeit not one that should put an artist off. And while dos Santos points out that its most ‘dangerous’ weakness is the risk of an artist becoming used to some kind of pre-formatted way of working, he also notes that it can happen with any style or technique. In artistic terms, working with mixed media seems to be all about the upside. Jana notes: “This is the first time I’m thinking about my style’s weaknesses, and maybe it could be the bareness that it has, because all my artworks are very personal so that people can see my exposed vulnerability.” And as the slick vector machine has rolled on without really producing anything new, the mixed media look has become more and more popular with clients as well as artists. As Lotie notes, it is perfect for advertising because its tendrils can be wrapped around a product, but it’s used in many other ways too. Nicolle comments that it is “popular because it is alive,” while Toshima reports that clients oen say that “they have never seen this kind of work”. Vicenzi agrees that clients want something striking, but also points out that its unpredictability can be a downside. But if there’s anything that deserves to be unpredictable, then it’s art, so perhaps this isn’t really a downside at all. So what does the future hold for the mixed media artist? Erik Schumacher thinks there will be more and more crossover between styles and techniques and

My Nature, 2008. , Photoshop. “Hand-drawn stuff is essential, but digital tools are also unavoidable because of the wonders they can create” © L Filipe dos Santos

QUICK TIP Hand-drawn elements can sometimes come off too clean, so use Photoshop to combine them with photographic textures and add realistic details. Blending modes like So Light, Overlay or Hard Light oen come in useful.

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What inspired you to work in this style? I’m inspired by Frank Miller and Peter Max’s works, as well as film and musical posters of the Seventies, classic American comics, and films by Tim Burton and Alfred Hitchcock. In classical painting I like Pablo Picasso, Hieronimus Bosch and Egon Schiele. Will this style continue to develop, do you think? I’m certain this graphic design style will continue developing. Nowadays many young digital artists are turning to the use of various ‘live’ textures and elements and their compilations in their works, so this style will grow and develop. Are there any particular artists working in this style that you admire? I like to observe what is happening in all the visual arts – every day there are new artists rising up, changing and improving the existing styles. I cannot name anyone in particular, but there are many of them in the world now.

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F-Spirit, 2008. Photoshop. This image demonstrates the soness that mixing the analog and the digital can achieve. © Tetsuya Toshima


Mixed media

CASE STUDY WITH LOTIE WEB: www.lotie.com SOFTWARE: Photoshop Mixed media guru Lotie has been combining her hand drawings with a variety of digital elements since she graduated and began her career in 2003. She finds that her floaty, dream-like take on the mixed media technique is popular in particular with advertising clients, because it’s the perfect way to encase a product within a particular illustration. As Lotie explains to us: “A photograph or a video of the product in movement, the whole surrounded with drawings, is rather effective.” In the case of a print advert for Raspberry Absolut Vodka that Lotie created in 2006, she traced the image on paper first, and then drew the basics of her illustration around this. Then Lotie scanned the lot into the computer and


added it to the photograph of the bottle. From there, she worked on the colours in Photoshop. For Paris-based Lotie, the beauty of this approach is that it allows her images to be more organic and more real than they would be if they were created purely digitally. She does work for clothing labels such as Triiad and Undiz, as well as for magazines and advertising clients, and she sees no reason for her style to change any time soon. As she points out: “The mixed media look has always existed… since the beginning of the advertising industry. I don’t think that it’s out of date. The style of the drawn environment can change according to the fashions, but I think, not this technique.”


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I think the final result is the most important thing, no matter what process was involved in its making

QUICK TIP Even when you’ve found a style that suits you, it’s good to keep trying new styles and ways of working, even if it’s just in personal projects

sources: “These days it is almost mandatory to draw on other media to finish projects. Among matte painters the use of 3D programs such as 3D Max or landscape generators like Terragen is very popular. In manipulations and paintings, fractals from Apophysis are used frequently.” Erik tells us he’s sure the style is going to

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Car, 2009. ink/Photoshop. © Florian Nicolle

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Unicorn, 2010. Photoshop. Here Alexander has used ink marks in a less traditional way rather than exploiting the classic inky look. © Alexander Ovchinnikov

remain popular, but he also notes that: “The scene has to develop to survive in the long term. The quality of images is steadily improving, and also clients will expect more from artists. People have to come up with new techniques to refresh this style once in a while.” Lotie is one of many illustrators would like to see the mixed media approach produce: “More intricacies between the media, more harmony, more meeting between the reality and imagination.” She adds that mixed media has always been around in some form or another: “The style of the drawn environment can change according to the fashions, but I think, not this technique.” Jana Jelovac doesn’t worry that the style has an expiration date either, because she says that she simply isn’t interested in: “So-called ‘trendy’ graphic design, and for me it really doesn’t matter what is selling on the market. Also, my style is constantly changing, so I think something new and fresh will always come from me.” Ultimately, the current passion for mixed media does seem to be less of a trend and more a return to art basics. As dos Santos sees it, people have got too hyped up by what a computer can do: “Innovative so ware was appearing everywhere, and that was reflected in the pictures made back in the Nineties. But then the fascination with what a machine could do started fading to a more balanced level, and finally the novelty is no longer a novelty. Nowadays I think that the final result, the final illustration, is the most important thing, no matter what process was involved in its making.”


Mixed media

BLENDING MIXED MEDIA

USE PHOTOSHOP BRUSHES, DRAWN ELEMENTS AND OTHER TOOLS TO BUILD AN INSPIRED EDITORIAL ILLUSTRATION

Over the next few steps you’ll learn how to use different techniques to build this inspired digital collage. We’ll mainly be using hand-made textures, the Lasso tool, brushes, gradients and masks. We’ll start with a model portrait, modify it and add different elements such as hand-drawn make-up tools. We’ll also place coloured brushstrokes on top of the model and then remove aspects we don’t need. Once the main features have been created and set in place it’s only

a matter of finishing the illustration with type and then distressing the image slightly. The key here is to experiment and take a hand-made approach to achieve a nice balance. Photoshop enables us to build up colours and effects that would be near impossible to create rapidly with real-world media. Although the process seems linear, the illustration can be made with a few back-and-forth adjustments, as well as experiments, to find the final composition, colours and shapes.

OUR EXPERT RAPHAËL VICENZI

www.mydeadpony.com

Raphaël Vicenzi, aka mydeadpony, is a Belgian illustrator whose creations are often used for magazine editorials. He is represented by Colagene.

SOURCE FILES On the disc you will find textures and brushes used to create this image. You will need your own model image.

THE FOUNDATIONS

IMPORT A PORTRAIT IMAGE INTO YOUR CANVAS

WORK IN PROGRESS

FROM BASIC PORTRAIT TO VIBRANT RESULT

Progress 1: Build the base

START WITH A STOCK PHOTO

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We start by creating a new canvas of 235 x 302mm at 300dpi and drag the model onto the canvas. Next, detour the original image with the Pen tool (P) and desaturate it (Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+U). You can slightly boost up the blacks and whites with the Curves panel.

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TRANSFORM THE FEATURES

Duplicate the image twice, change the layer mode to Multiply for the second copy, select the two bottom layers and merge them. Add a layer mask and fill the Foreground with black on the first layer to hide the image. Use a soft brush set to white (Opacity at around 40 %) to reveal the darker skin beneath.

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ENHANCE COLOURS

Select the top portrait image and create a new layer beneath it. Fill this with a gradient (G) and set it to Soft Light. Add a new layer beneath this, fill it with another gradient but reduce its Opacity to around 85%. Now use the Eraser tool (E) to remove any parts covering the face.


Progress 2: Brush on elements

Progress 3: Add final effects


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ADD IN NEW FEATURES

On a new canvas weÕll create a circle with the Ellipse tool (U+Shift-drag to constrain the circle) without a Stroke. Pick a tone, Ctrl/right-click, select Rasterize then place a texture on top of the circle and create a clipping mask with the texture layer (Cmd/ Ctrl+Opt/Alt+G). Set this layer to Divide, bring down the Opacity to around 50% and merge. Create a copy of this and resize it accordingly. You can also add a circle filled with a pattern in the same way.

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IMPORT YOUR ELEMENTS

Now itÕs time to bring the new elements into the original illustration. Drag them with the Selection tool (V) in the original document and place them behind the portrait layers. Playing with the effects is key to finding balance, so keep adding more features to further refine the distribution and donÕt hesitate to move them around if needed. WeÕll also add a new circle on another layer filled with an off-white colour behind the portrait.

APPLY COLOURED SHAPES

On a new layer weÕll roughly create different-sized blobs by hand using the Lasso tool. You can click on the Add icon to avoid holding Shift while making a few of these. WeÕll use the Gradient tool to fill these with different gradients of our choice. Two more layers can be added in this way (dropping the previous selection each time) with different-sized blobs. These can be placed and resized (Edit>Transform/Scale) accordingly until weÕre happy with the composition.


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CREATE MAKE-UP

On a layer above the portrait weÕll use brushes from the Brush Preset palette (B) made from scanned textures. Apply around the eyes to create some original make-up, then softly erase the parts that arenÕt needed with the Eraser tool at around 40%. Also, paint the lips in red on a new layer and set this to Linear Burn. WeÕll also tone down the left and right side of the lips by softly removing the colour with the Eraser tool set at around 30%.

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LAYER ON MORE MAKE-UP

You can draw even more elements using different brushes on a layer. Create various layers (in this case we need to place them in different areas) then add swirling black lines next to the eye with a small brush. Next weÕll draw two circles for the cheeks and a brushstroke set to Darken placed next to the head. WeÕll also add a few painted strokes (using varying opacity) to bring some blue make-up around the eyes.


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BUILD LAYERS AND ELEMENTS

APPLY STROKES WITH YOUR BRUSHES AND TWEAK THE COMPOSITION

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USE BRUSHSTROKES

On a new layer we’ll add a few coloured brushstrokes to bring more colours to the illustration. Pick different brushes, vary their size via the Brush Preset palette and choose vivid tones from the Color palette. A bit of trial and error is required, so it’s best to play around and see if something worth keeping appears. 001

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QUICK TIP The various elements used for an illustration don’t need to be complicated in themselves, but applying and finding the right place for them within the illustration will help build something more interesting for the final result. Experiment with what works best for you.

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We add in blobs of vivid colour with the Lasso tool and then fill these selections with a gradient.

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Layer on strokes over the eyes to create the make-up and then add a few more hand-made doodles.

003 Paint random brushstrokes with brushes of various sizes to find an interesting look for the illustration.

Apply around the eyes to create some original make-up, then softly erase the parts that aren’t needed with the Eraser tool at around 40%. Paint the lips in red on a new layer and set this to Linear Burn

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BRING IN TEXTURE

Open the scanned watercolour texture then drag and drop it on top of all the layers. Create a layer mask for the texture by clicking the icon at the bottom of the Layers palette and then set this texture layer to Linear Burn. With a brush picked from the Brush Preset palette we can mask selected areas while varying the size and Opacity (between 80% and 30%). We’ll add splatters by selecting another brush and applying blues and oranges.

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INCLUDE MORE ASSETS

We’ll now add other scanned elements into the illustration, such as a wing and plant shape. Select the shape of the wing, create a gradient fill set to Hard Light and then merge these layers. Next select the shape of the plant, place it on top of a black-and-white scanned texture, Ctrl/right-click the layer mask and choose Apply Layer Mask.


Mixed media FINALISE THE IMAGE

REFINE YOUR MEDIA AND COMPLETE THE STYLISED EFFECTS

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PLACE THE MEDIA

Add the new elements then move them around to find places they’ll fit. By rotating, reducing and using different blending modes such as Multiply, Lighten and Luminosity, we can experiment and find effective combinations. You can place these new additions behind existing elements if needed. Always remain flexible and try not to overwhelm the result.

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REUSE AND RECYCLE

On the portrait layer, select the face of the model with the Elliptical Marquee tool, create a copy on a new layer then choose Edit>Transform/Scale to reduce it to around 16%. We can then use an old mirror illustration from a source book and place it on the canvas. We’ll create some lines with a simple black brush from the mirror to the face and then merge these layers. Make a copy of these layers, flip them horizontally and place them accordingly.


INJECT SMALL DETAILS

Create a line with the Line tool, input a Weight of 2 pixels, select a gradient and then rasterise it. We can add a small circle using the Ellipse tool and constrain it with Shift. Choose a red Fill without adding a Stroke in the Ellipse tool palette, then rasterise this layer. Create three circles using the same method and fill them with a grey gradient.

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APPLY MORE ASSETS

Now we’ll open a separate document to bring in new elements. These are drawn directly into Photoshop with different brushes, while observing reference material. We don’t want these to look realistic, so just loosely draw them to maintain a hand-made look. The powder case object can be colourised with pink and blue tones using a simple brush. When you’re done, import these objects back into the original image and position them.


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INCLUDE TYPOGRAPHY

Applying your own handwriting to add typographic elements will continue the unique hand-made aesthetic weÕre developing. Using the same colour as the background, on a new layer placed on top of the coloured strokes, we can write something that suits the piece, in this case ÔMixed MediaÕ. Write the words on a new layer using a simple brush, vary the size to achieve some authentic inconsistencies and set the layer to Screen.

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SLIGHTLY DISTRESS THE IMAGE

Use the Clone Stamp tool (S) with a large brush to distress the image, then add a new layer and select Current & Below under the Sample dropdown menu. Next, Opt/Alt-click to copy sections of the image and then position them where required using the Selection tool (V). Place this layer underneath the coloured brushstrokes and other elements so we can still see them and read the words more clearly.

TEXTURES ItÕs more rewarding to create your own textures from watercolours, acrylic paints or hand-drawn doodles and then use them in your illustration when brought in at a high resolution. A scanned texture can be drastically changed with the help of adjustment layers such as Hue/Saturation or Brightness/Contrast to give them a sharper look and feel. You can also add different textures on top of one another then play with different layer modes and opacities to add depth. Alternatively you can easily turn these scanned textures into Photoshop brushes to reuse in your projects.

The key is to experiment and take a hand-made approach to achieve a nice balance. Photoshop enables us to build up effects that would be near impossible to create rapidly with real-world media

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FINALISE THE ILLUSTRATION

To finish, bring up the Curves panel in the Properties palette and slightly boost the dark and light areas. This may not be necessary if the illustration is already quite vivid. Bring down the Opacity to around 25% so it only slightly enhances the image without overdoing it. We are now ready to save the image at a high resolution. As weÕve kept most of the layers intact we are able to rework the illustration if needed.


Mixed media

USING PAINT TEXTURES

Josh Overton breaks down his popular Stoop to Conquer image to show us how to use paint textures effectively

Digital painting and illustration has come a long way over the last ten years. It keeps becoming more and more accessible to the public through the use of software such as the Adobe Creative Suite and Photoshop CS5 in particular. It has reached the stage, with so many artists out there, that ideas come easily, but it’s down to us to try and push our imaginations to come up with something novel as opposed to recreating styles that already exist. We are all aware that the majority of designs using paint splatters as the main element tend to consist of a person jumping in mid-air and either having paint thrown over them or becoming part of them. This can lead to a lot of portfolios comprising very similar work and – if possible – we need to avoid this. We need to fire up our passion for original design and encourage artists to have the confidence to set trends rather than simply follow them. This tutorial takes a look at just what can be achieved if we move away from traditional human subjects and transform the paint splatter textures into something more tangible and integral to the work.

OUR EXPERT JOSH OVERTON www.overtongraphics.com Josh is a graphic designer based in the UK. He focuses mainly on digital and print illustration and has worked with a number of high-profile clients.

SOURCE FILES Included on this months disc is the Photoshop file of Stoop to Conquer at a smaller resolution. Also supplied are the various paint splatter textures which were used in the tutorial.

ILLUSTRATE WITH BESPOKE TEXTURES

COMBINE AN EAGLE-EYE FOR DETAIL WITH PAINTED MEDIA

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SET UP A PRINT-READY FILE

The first step is to establish the file size we will be working with. Set your document to the International Paper Size A3, at 300dpi. This is ideal because you can print up to A2 posters with this document size at no loss of quality, while saving a few megabytes on your computer.

We need to get back to our passion for design and encourage artists to have the confidence to set trends rather than follow them


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TEXTURED BACKGROUND

Next we find a backdrop. We’re using a textured background (supplied in the main image document: ‘low res Stoop to Conquer.psd’); however any image will do. Remember everything here is only a guide to you creating something special of your own.

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ADJUST THE WINGS’ COLOUR

Now we have our chosen shape, we merge all the paint splatter layers and then desaturate the image using Shift+Cmd/Ctrl+U. Next, we access the Hue/Saturation tool in Image>Adjustments. Here we tick Colorize and then choose a colour for our linked paint splatters using the sliders. Make sure the blending mode is set to Multiply for all wings.

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PAINT SPLATTERS

Using the supplied paint splatter images, we cut around each one, simply using the Magic Wand tool with a Tolerance of about 5-20. For this tutorial we have made all the paint splats look like shapes based loosely on wings.


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ROTATE AND MOVE

Having established our basic structure, we duplicate the layer (Cmd/Ctrl+J) and then rotate and reposition it. Using our colour slider again (Cmd/Ctrl+U), we transform the colour completely. The result should be close to what is shown in the image below. Again make sure that the blending mode is set to Multiply.

PHOTOGRAPHING PAINT It’s not that difficult to photograph your own paint textures, and they come in handy for many kinds of projects. Get your hands on some paint and splash it on white paper (which makes extraction easier when you bring the image to Photoshop). Get creative with as many shapes as you can, then grab your camera. Try to shoot in neutral lighting and avoid shadows of yourself or the camera on your paper surface. Set your camera to its Macro focus mode to pick up the detail at a close range and snap away. It may take a few attempts to get exposure and focus right, but building up a personal stock library can really pay dividends.

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MASH-UP

First make about three or four copies of the eagle layer that we have cut out. Hide all bar one and set the blending mode of this to Overlay. This should all-but look like the final image now. Now reveal another eagle layer (above the Overlay layer) and cut off the dark body of the eagle, leaving only the head and feet looking natural.


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RINSE AND REPEAT

All we do now is repeat the duplications (Cmd/Ctrl+J), the transformations (via Cmd/Ctrl+T) and re-colourisations until we have a nice big wing span as shown in the image. All of a sudden the main structure of our image is really coming together. From this point we could go on to create a range of designs, but this time we will focus on making the bald eagle.

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PREDATOR

For the purposes of this tutorial, we are using a stock image of a bald eagle, but any other bird of your choosing will suffice – and this choice can really affect the overall dynamic. Carefully cut around the stock image using the Magic Wand, Pen and Eraser tools. Work particularly carefully around the head and body, but don’t worry about individual feathers.

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MERGE AND FLIP

At this stage we select all the wing layers by holding down Cmd/Ctrl and clicking on each layer in the Layers tab. Now we duplicate them all, flip them with Edit>Transform>Flip Horizontal and rotate them so that they look as if they could be the tail feathers of the bird.

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HEY PRESTO

The image should look fairly complete, except that the eagle’s body in its natural state doesn’t really fit with the extravagant wings. Now begins the fairly detailed process of getting his body to blend in with his wings. This involves a mash-up of the wings over the black/brown body which we then blend.

Shoot in neutral lighting and avoid shadows of yourself or the camera on your paper


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EAGLE DRUMSTICKS

Feel free to darken the Overlay layer with the Burn tool (use the ‘O’ key). Work around the legs and the neck as in the image for this step so it appears attached to the untouched head and feet. All that’s left to do is to add some of the paint splatters from the wings.

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GREEN BODY WINGS

For this step, we need to duplicate some wing layers and then colour them in a faded green before applying a Multiply blending mode. We can then begin using the Eraser tool in order to get this layer to fit within the eagle’s body shape. Show the eagle layers again to help with this step; we have just hidden the layers temporarily for the sake of the tutorial.

PEN TOOL

On a separate layer, using the Pen tool, click at the base of the first wing, then click and hold at the tip of the wing and bend the line to align with the wing shape. In the Paths tab, we right-click the path and click Stroke Path, then select Brush from the dropdown menu and, lastly, enable Simulate Pressure.

ONE LAST BODY PART

Here we simply repeat the previous step, but this time creating a pink wing layer on the body. Additionally, we have aligned this layer with the legs in order to add some colour to this otherwise fairly bare area. All that’s left for us to do now is show all the layers and apply the finishing touches.

Use a simple brush to add a nice glow effect to each wing to provide some further depth and texture

ADD SOME GLOW

To add another dimension we can use the Pen tool and colour match each wing. Use a simple brush to add a nice glow effect to each wing to provide some further depth and texture. First go to the Brushes panel and choose the default round brush sized around 70px.

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THE EAGLE HAS LANDED

Make sure that the line made is set to Multiply or another blending mode that suits the line. Then repeat the process for each wing, matching the colours for best effect. And there we have it – a manipulated image using paint splatters that doesn’t involve someone jumping through paint. Let your imagination soar, and see what you can create!


Mixed media

MASTER POLYGONS

LEARN HOW TO PRODUCE CREATIVE PORTRAITS USING GEOMETRIC SHAPES AND PHOTOSHOP’S COLOUR ADJUSTMENTS

The popularity of isometric shapes in digital art can be explained in many ways. This blocky style is retro, it’s shiny and there’s a lot of play involved when creating. There are plenty of great examples online to get inspired by – www. polygonheroes.com and the works of our artist Ryan Barber (www.behance.net/rbarber), for example. In this tutorial we’ll show you how to work from a model photo, combining both Photoshop and Illustrator to create exciting shape styles. We’ll begin by using Illustrator’s Pen tool, and show you how to trace a grid of carefully mapped triangles on top of a photo. A more interesting

isometric illustration will have a map of triangles that’s not evenly distributed. Therefore, we will be adding and subtracting anchor points, and using the Direct Selection tool to adjust triangle corners, in order to distribute our shapes. We’ll be using the Eyedropper tool, gradients and swatches too, showing how these are all used to fill and affect colour. After the initial vector drawing is complete we’ll then take our design into Photoshop. Here we’ll explore how to make overall colour changes to our rendered design, using Gradient Overlay, Levels and other color adjustments to achieve a fantastic final image.

BUILD A BLUEPRINT

USE ILLUSTRATOR’S SHAPE AND SELECTION TOOLS TO BUILD A SHAPE GRID

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PREPARATION

The first phase involves tracing a series of triangles on top of a photograph, in Adobe Illustrator. Create a new file at 6.66 inches x 10 inches. Hit File> Place and find a start image. In this case we have used a Dreamstime model (#18986388). Once the file has been placed into Illustrator, lock the image.

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LOCKING YOUR IMAGE

You can lock the image in one of two ways: either lock the layer in the Layers palette or highlight the image and then press Cmd/Ctrl+2. All your work will be laid directly on top of this image. Once you are done with the illustration, you won’t need the base image any longer.

OUR EXPERT RYAN BARBER

www.behance.net/rbarber

Ryan is an illustrator, graphic designer and art director based in Los Angeles. Connecting with his clients and subjects on an emotional level is important to him for producing good work.

WORK IN PROGRESS

FROM ILLUSTRATOR TO PHOTOSHOP

Progress 1: Begin the grid

Progress 2: Colour the shapes

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PEN TOOL COLOUR

Now that your image is locked you are ready to apply the Pen tool, so activate it. Make the Fill colour transparent and set the Stroke colour to something that will be easily visible when laid on top of the image. In this case, a bright magenta will suffice.


Progress 3: Add adjustments


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EXTRA VIDEO TUITION ON THE DISC


Mixed media 04

PEN TOOL WEIGHT

The next step is to set the weight of our Pen tool’s stroke. We don’t need this to be too thick as our marks will only work as guides. In the Stroke palette, set a thickness of 0.02 inches – this will keep the illustration thin enough for us to still be able to see most of the photograph underneath. If your view of the photograph’s details is obstructed then it will be more difficult to map the grid.

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FIRST TRIANGLE

It is now time to start mapping out a series of adjacent triangles on top of the base photo. No other shapes should be used here, and each triangle should roughly cover one solid area of colour. Squint when you’re looking at the start image – this helps you to separate out the areas of colour. Draw the first triangle by clicking at the top of the model’s hair then completing a triangle that covers that section of hair.

SECOND TRIANGLE

Activate the Direct Selection tool by pressing the A key. Our selection tool’s cursor will change in colour from black to white. Click on the top triangle’s uppermost anchor point. Drag that anchor point down and slightly to the right, as you can see in our example. The second triangle will now only share one common side with the first triangle. We’ll keep on repeating this process of copying, pasting and dragging one anchor point at a time until the photograph is covered with triangles.

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COPY AND PASTE

Select the first triangle and then copy it by pressing Cmd/Ctrl+C. Paste it on top of itself by pressing Cmd/Ctrl+F. We want this new triangle to be adjacent to the first triangle. In other words, it will share only one side with it. It’s important to generate new triangles by copying them directly from the ones that have been created before; if we don’t, our grid will have holes and cracks in between the shapes.

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N TRIANGLES

Copy the second triangle with Cmd/Ctrl+C and paste it on top of itself with Cmd/Ctrl+F. Apply the Direct Selection tool to this third triangle’s top anchor point and then drag it down as shown. The third triangle should now only share one side with the second triangle. We’re starting to get the hang of this sort of application.

QUICK TIP The more detailed the grid becomes, the more the viewer will want to look at it. Decide which areas of the image you want them to focus on. These areas should have smaller, more detailed triangles. To create apparent contrast, add some areas that are more basic.



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FILL IN COLOUR

USE ILLUSTRATOR’S TONAL OPTIONS TO CREATE SOLID SHAPES

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WORK WITH ANCHOR POINTS

Most triangles will share one common side with another triangle, but some triangles will only share a portion of another triangle’s side. We’ll use the Add and Subtract Anchor Point tools to make precise edits to the length of one of our triangle’s sides. This will provide much more flexibility in how we lay our grid out. 003

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We copied and pasted our initial triangle on top of itself, creating the second one. This is the triangle we want to edit.

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Select the right corner of the second triangle. Drag it to the left, to shorten the side, then use the Add Anchor Point tool.

SOLID COLOUR

You’ve got your grid – now it’s polygon time. Grab the Eyedropper and sample a dark skin tone from beneath the triangle we plan to colour first (see the next screenshot). Add it to the Swatches palette and the New Swatch window will then appear. If you’re planning to print an illustration then set this to CMYK mode. If you’re using an illustration online then set this to RGB mode instead. Apply the Direct Selection to the triangle and click on the new swatch.

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Select the second triangle. Activate the Subtract Anchor Point tool and click the far-right anchor point to remove it.

GRADIENT SWATCH

Press I to activate the Eyedropper. In the reference image, the red triangle has a light tan colour and fades to a darker brown. Sample the tan area to update the Fill colour in the Toolbar. Drag that Fill colour to the Swatches palette, then repeat for the brown colour. Drag both swatches into your Gradient palette, delete the default black and white swatches, then adjust the gradient slider so the tan and brown colours are at opposite ends of the slider.

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CONTINUE THE GRID

It’s easy to just make all triangles the same size because it speeds up the process. However, resist the temptation. Really focus on varying the sizes and shapes of the triangles. The more we vary the locations of our shapes, the more unique our illustration becomes. The reference images in the screenshot, for example, show two circular shapes; one is much more interesting than the other. So with that in mind, continue mapping out your grid.

Really focus on varying the sizes and shapes of the triangles. The more we vary the locations of our shapes, the more unique our illustration becomes

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APPLYING A GRADIENT

From the upper-left corner of the Gradient palette, drag the Gradient swatch to the Swatches Palette. Click on a triangle and then the new swatch; this applies it to the triangle. To specify the location and direction of the gradient, select the triangle, hit G and click where you want the gradient to begin, then drag the cursor to the end point. Repeat this clickand-drag process in different locations, adjusting the gradient slider, until it represents the photo’s colours.


Mixed media WORKING IN PHOTOSHOP

FIND OUT HOW TO APPLY DETAILED ADJUSTMENT SETTINGS TO CREATE STYLISH EFFECTS

14

ADJACENT COLOUR

As we fill our grid shapes with colours and gradients, we need to ensure we can clearly distinguish all of our triangles. If any start to merge together then the image will begin to appear flat and lack that third dimension. Colour hues, colour values or gradient angles may need to be adjusted. Refer to the base photo for reference and remember; you should always be able to distinguish the edge of every side of every triangle.

15

BEGIN WORK IN PHOTOSHOP

It’s time to add some colour adjustments and lighting effects in Photoshop. Hit Select All then Copy. Now open up Photoshop and create a new document by pressing Cmd/Ctrl+N. Photoshop will automatically set up the file to fit the dimensions of your illustration. Once again, if you want to get this printed then set your workspace to Image>Mode> CMYK. If you want this illustration to be used online, select Image>Mode and the choose the RGB colour mode instead. Apply ‘Paste as ‘Pixels’ and press OK.

QUICK TIP Mapping out all the triangles perfectly in one go is almost impossible. You’ll need to adjust areas so that all the triangles butt up against each other cleanly. Select all shapes and fill them with 100% black. Remember which shapes need adjusting, undo the black fill and then adjust accordingly.

16

BRING HAIR INTO PHOTOSHOP

We’re going to change the model’s hair so it includes vibrant purple tones. In Illustrator, lock the photograph by selecting it and pressing Cmd/Ctrl+2. Select all of the shapes that form the hair, except the buzzed area around her ears. Individually select each triangle with the regular selection tool; hold down Shift and click on each desired triangle, continuing to add to the selection. Once you have the hair, hit Cmd/ Ctrl+C. Switch over to Photoshop and then paste.


17

RENAME LAYERS

Back in Photoshop, we now have two separate layers. The complete illustration should be on the bottom layer and the layer with just the hair should be set at the top of the stack. Change the hair layer’s name from Layer 2 to Hair by double-clicking directly on the layer’s name; a white box will appear around it. Type in Hair and then press the Return key. It’s always good practice to keep all layers intuitively labeled, no matter how few layers a file may contain.

18

LAYER STYLES

Now that we have an editable hair layer, we can make colour changes to it. Double-click just to the right of the Hair layer’s name; the Layer Style dialog will appear. In the left-hand column of options there are a lots of different Layer Styles. Select Gradient Overlay. Photoshop will default the gradient style to black and white, which will be previewed for us. If you don’t see the applied gradient overlay, tick the Preview checkbox under the New Style button.


Genius Guide

19

APPLY COLOR BURN

Set this Gradient Overlay’s blend mode to Color Burn. This blend mode creates an interesting effect by looking at the colour channel information and then darkening the base colour, which it does by increasing the contrast between the base and blend colours. The next thing for us to do is click on the gradient slider to activate the Gradient Editor. Here we will specify which swatches will use.

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20

COLOUR STOPS

The first thing to do is to click on the small black swatch at the bottom-left of the gradient slider. This will activate the colour stop at the bottom-left of the gradient, which you’ll find under the Stops section at the very bottom of the window. Ours is a black stop colour, as seen in the upper of the two windows shown below; click on it to activate the Select Stop Color dialog, which defaults to red.

ADJUST BUZZED HAIR’S COLOUR

The polygons are beginning to pop now as these vibrant gradients work with the defined edges. Next we’ll make the model’s buzzed hair a darker purple. In Illustrator, copy these areas then paste into Photoshop. Now we apply our new Gradient Overlay to this. Set the Gradient Overlay’s blend mode to Color Burn. Set Opacity to 85%, Angle to 140˚, Scale to 115%, and then set the stop colour’s RGB values to R:83, G:0, B:136.

24

ADD LEVELS

To finish, head to the bottom of the Layers palette and click the Create New Fill or Adjustment Layer icon, then select Levels. Holding down the Alt key, click in-between the Ring Levels layer and the Ring layer. Any edits you make in the Adjustments palette will now be applied to the layer below it. Change the first Output Level value to 45, as shown.

21

LONG HAIR BECOMES PURPLE

Click and select an area of purple in the Select Color Stop colour swatch. Notice how the woman’s hair now looks slightly purple. Click OK twice to continue. We don’t want the purple to stand out too much – it will look more realistic to dial the opacity back a little bit. In the Layer Style dialog set Opacity to 70%, Style to Linear, Angle to -100˚, Scale to 75% and check the Align with Layer tickbox.

23

ADJUST THE RING’S COLOUR

We’re going to make the ring a baby blue colour. Go to Illustrator then copy and paste the ring into Photoshop. Set the Gradient Overlay’s blend mode to Overlay, then set Opacity to 100%, Angle to 119˚ and Scale to 150%. In the Gradient Editor, set the left-hand swatch’s RGB values to R:168, G:209, B:255 and the right-hand one to R:58, G:146, B:255.

QUICK TIP Experiment further with blend modes by applying a relatively low contrast photograph on top of your illustration. Press Cmd/Ctrl+U to adjust Hue/Saturation and activate Colorize. In the Layers palette, select the drop-down menu to play with different blend modes. The results are fun and will make your image even more unique.


Mixed media



Genius Guide

BLEND GRAPHICS AND PHOTOS

LEARN HOW TO COMBINE ILLUSTRATIVE, PAINTERLY ELEMENTS WITH AN ENERGETIC PHOTO

OUR EXPERT MIKE HARRISON

In this tutorial we will learn how to combine illustrative elements, such as paint-based textures and traditional linework, with a highly energetic photo, creating a powerful, artful illustration. We don’t need to do any real preparation with this style of image. Just dive straight in because, like working with paint, the creation process needs to flow from start to finish. Inspiration for this kind of work comes initially from the photo itself, namely the high energy that it gives off. This should make us want to start playing around with effects such as paint-based textures and traditional elements, which are a sure-fire combination for success. No wonder it’s a popular treatment for a lot of sports-related illustration. Photoshop is definitely the application of choice for this tutorial due to its flexibility, editing options and the speed with which we can start seeing results. We’ll also be using a number of custom brushes that are essential for working efficiently.

WORK IN PROGRESS

THREE IMPORTANT STAGES OF THE PROCESS

www.destill.net

Mike is a multi-disciplinary freelance art director and designer based in London. He uses an eclectic mix of mediums and styles for global clients.

SOURCE FILES On the disc you will find a background texture and some custom brushes. The start photo used here is from Dreamstime, image number ‘18369570’.

PREPARATION AND ADJUSTMENTS

LET’S GET STARTED WITH THE BASE MODEL

01

CUT OUT THE IMAGE

Open your image in Photoshop and, using the Pen tool, begin cutting around the subject’s body. Hit A for the Path Selection tool and, with your path selected, Ctrl/right-click and choose Create Vector Mask. Now hold down Cmd/Ctrl and click to select the Direct Selection tool, then go in and adjust the anchor points to clean it up.

02

CREATE A NEW DOCUMENT

Create a new document at 235 x 302mm. Fill the background with black, then drag your cut-out stock image onto the canvas. If it’s too large, Ctrl/right-click on the vector mask, select Rasterize Vector Mask, then Ctrl/right-click again and Apply Layer Mask. Scale the image to around 80% and position the subject roughly in the centre.

Step 4: Place adjustment layers

Step 9: The base layer of paint texture

Step 16: It’s all in the details


Mixed media 03

APPLY HIGHLIGHTS, SHADOWS AND ADJUSTMENTS

QUICK TIP

When cutting out an image with the Pen tool don’t worry about being too accurate as you can go in with the Direct Selection tool afterwards to clean up any slight errors. While doing this, swap between white and black backgrounds to get an accurate cutout.

Create two Curves adjustment layers and then clip them to the subject layer with a clipping mask, with one for highlights and one for shadows. Move the slider to the extreme for each then fill the mask with black. Using a white brush at varying sizes, with the flow and opacity set low, brush onto the mask to reveal lighter and darker areas of the subject.

04

INCLUDE MORE LAYER OPTIONS

We still need to add more adjustment layers. Create one each for Brightness/ Contrast, Levels, Color Balance, Hue/ Saturation and another Curves. First increase the contrast, then darken the subject overall with the Curves. Lower the saturation slightly, boost the lights and darks a little with the Levels and add a little more blue, cyan and yellow with the Color Balance option.

06

INSERT A TEXTURE TO THE BACKGROUND

We need a slightly textured background so that all of our elements sit nicely against it. Open up ‘background_texture. jpg’ from the disc, place it underneath all other layers, then scale it up a little so it fills the canvas. It’s currently too light, so go to Layer>New Adjustment Layer>Levels and put in the value 45 for the Black Input level. This will darken it nicely, while keeping it subtle.

07

INITIAL WATERCOLOUR TEXTURE

We’re now going to add the first dose of watercolour texture (we used one from www. unsigneddesign.com/watercolor textures, number 25). Open it up and hit Cmd/Ctrl+L to bring up the Levels adjustment. Boost the white to get rid of any darker paper texture left over from the scan. Now go to Select>Color Range and, using the Eyedropper, select white at 200 Fuzziness. Now double-click the layer to unlock it and hit Delete.


08

ADD A MASK

Apply a white Color Overlay to this layer, bring it into our main document, scale, rotate and position it. From the disc, load ‘WG_ Watercolor_1.abr’ brushes into Photoshop. Apply a layer mask to the watercolour texture we just brought in and fill it with black, then use a number of different white-coloured brushes to bring in parts of the texture around the subject. Using the same brushes, create new layers and apply more white watercolour with masks until you achieve a nice balance.

05

APPLY ILLUSTRATIVE LINEWORK

Now we’ll focus on the illustrative part of the process. We’re using a Wacom Intuos4 tablet for this, but you can use the Pen tool and then add a stroke to the path. Using one of these methods, we want to add linework around the subject’s body with a small hard-edged brush. This will define the figure more and is the first step to a traditional treatment for this illustration. Place this layer above the subject layer.


Genius Guide

INTRODUCE MORE COLOUR

USE COLOUR EFFECTS TO BRING ACTION TO THE IMAGE

09

SELECT WATERCOLOUR OPTIONS

Choose two colours that you like and that go well together. Load up ‘destill_watercolour_brushes. abr’ from the disc and, underneath the white watercolour layers we’ve created, create a new group for some similar elements. Start adding in a variety of differently coloured brushstrokes around the subject. Keep applying to build up detail until you have a nice balance of colour and paint effects. Don’t forget to attach masks to some layers, modifying the appearance of the layer to suit its position on the canvas and relation to the subject’s body.

10

BACKGROUND PAINT SPLATTERS

To make the illustration more dynamic, energised and painterly, we’re going to add a combination of paint splatters. Source some high-res splatter brushes online – there are tons out there and a quick Google search will find you some. On a number of different layers underneath the watercolour we created in the last step, place some splatters, but try and keep them subtle so they don’t distract too much attention away from your figure.

To make the illustration more dynamic, energised and painterly, we’re going to add a combination of paint splatters

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FOREGROUND PAINT SPLATTERS To start blending the subject in with the paint effects we’ve already added, create a new group above the subject layer and again, on a number of different layers, brush in some white splatters. What we’re trying to achieve with these is to position them around the contours of the figure’s body. You can also try and lower the opacity of some of the layers in case the effect is too strong in areas. Repeat until you achieve relatively good coverage.


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PLACE THE WATERCOLOUR EFFECTS

To blend the subject in with the painterly effects further, we need to apply watercolour texture over the top of it. Using a combination of brushes that we used from the set we loaded in Step 9, start adding in paint to fit the contours of your subject. You will need to apply a Warp transformation to some layers by going to Edit>Transform>Warp and moving the anchor points to fit. Continue building up layers until you’ve covered a decent amount of the figure.

13

DRAW SHAPES FOR MOVEMENT

Now that we have a nice base of painterly effects, we can build in more flow and energy by drawing some custom shapes. Create a new document the same size as our main document and fill the background with black. Creating new layers for each, start drawing shapes suitable to your subject’s pose. We’ve used a graphics tablet to draw them, but the Pen tool is also fine. Mix things up by changing their colour and also by having some just as linework with no fill.

FINISH UP THE ILLUSTRATION

ADD MORE FLOW AND DETAIL FOR REAL VIBRANCY

14

INTEGRATE THE SHAPES

Drag in all the layers, grouping or merging them first if you haven’t already, and place them just above the illustrative linework layer we made in Step 5. Position, scale and rotate them to enhance the flow of the image. Duplicate them twice and repeat, but positioning on a different part of the subject. Move around some individual layers with the group for variety.

15

PAINT EFFECTS FOR THE SHAPES The shapes we’ve created all have crisp, clean edges, so to blend parts of them in we’ll add some paint. Create a new layer above our shapes and, using the brushes we loaded in from Step 9, brush onto the layer. Now scale, rotate and warp this layer to position it nicely along one of our filled shapes. Repeat this a few times with different colours and spread it out over the canvas.

QUICK TIP

When working with painterly textures the possibilities are endless and every piece can have a unique look and feel by modifying each layer with a combination of masks, warps and transforms. That way the layers where you’ve used brushes will always look different from one another.



Genius Guide

16

ALTER THE SHAPES

In Step 13 we drew a number of filled shapes, but also some shapes that are just line art. They are nice on their own but, to enhance and bring parts more attention, we will add some thin brushstrokes over them. Repeat the previous step, but instead of applying to the filled shapes, apply to the line art shapes instead. This step is all about boosting the detail in the image.

17

BRING OUT TONES WITH CURVES

The photo in an illustration like this, containing an athlete, can always benefit from colour adjustment and the enhancement of highlights and shadows. This helps give it more impact and drama, similar to a photograph shot in HDR. This can be started by simply adding two Curves layers. Move the graph pointer to the extremes of light and dark for each, then fill the masks in with black. Using a So Round brush with varying sized brush tips and Flow/Opacity, apply to the athlete in the light and dark areas to enhance both. Don’t forget to zoom in to apply this technique to smaller details; it will really help boost the effect.

FINER WATERCOLOUR DETAIL

Now we need to finish the colour effects. Create a new layer and clip it to the model using a clipping mask like we did with the adjustment layers. Now, using brushes of your choice, apply white to the areas of the subject where you judge more is needed. Also group the subject layer and all its adjustment layers and apply a mask to that group. Using a brush with a Flow of around 30%, erase parts of the figure to let colour show from behind.

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FINAL LAYERS

The last step is to apply some adjustment layers. Create a new Brightness/ Contrast adjustment layer above all layers and increase the Brightness by around five and the Contrast by around ten. Depending on your colours here you also may want to add a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer and increase the saturation to boost the vibrancy of the colours. If you’re not happy with your colours, you can create a Selective Color adjustment layer and play around with the sliders until you are.


Mixed media

BLEND TYPE AND PHOTOS

MASTER THE SKILLS TO INTEGRATE BOLD TYPOGRAPHY WITH KINETIC PHOTOGRAPHY

OUR EXPERT JOSIP KELAVA

In this tutorial we shall combine typography and photography to create an engaging and bold illustration. When looking at the dancer in the photograph you will see that the body parts intertwine with the letters that, while hard to decipher, are an intriguing reference to dance movements and choreography. As dancing, like any art, can be interpreted variously by different people, we shall use this as inspiration to create this illustration. We must remember that dance is an expression of movement, therefore we shall create the type to wrap around the dancer, as if it were dancing on its own. One of the ways to create a striking image is to add a juxtaposition of elements. The dancer is meant to be quite sensual while the typography is quite rigid and sharp. This enables the illustration to become more engaging for the viewer. Using Photoshop as our main editor for this demonstration is the best way we can play with colours and frame our typography to best wrap around the dancer. Photoshop offers us a quick and easy way to contour the typography and colour our dancer, through its masking features and editing capabilities.

WORK IN PROGRESS

THE STAGES OF DESIGN

Step 2: Set up the letters


SOURCE FILES On this disc you will find a layered PSD of the typography we used. You will also need to download the start photo from Dreamstime, image number ‘21231119’ if you wish to use the same image as us, or substitute it with one of your own.

MAKE SOMETHING OUT OF NOTHING

LET’S GET STARTED WITH CREATING TYPE

01

UTILISE THREE SIMPLE SHAPES

03

ADD MORE CHARACTERS

We will only use circles, rectangles and triangles to create the letters for this design. Start by creating a new document at 235 x 302mm and invert the page. Press ‘U’ on the keyboard to open up the Shape tool and create the three white shapes. Use the toolbar above to select different shapes, click and hold Shift to help create symmetrical shapes.

Step 9: Play with the Gradient tool

Step 13: Place the text

www.josipkelava.com

Josip is a senior designer at Clemenger BBDO in Melbourne. His style consists of playing with lurid typography and balance, making his work bold, confident and memorable.

The letter A can be left as our triangle shape, however the letter N can be used by cutting the triangle in half and adding a rectangle. To do this, duplicate the triangle first. Press ‘U’ on the keyboard to open up the Shape toolbox then select Rectangle as your shape to begin the editing process.

02

SET UP THE LETTERS

To start with a concept, we came up with three words that relate to the image; ‘danser avec moi’ is French for ‘dance with me’. To create the letter ‘D’ we are going to edit our circle. Duplicate the circle and hit the ‘A’ key to use the Direct Selection tool and click on the left edge of the circle. Hit the Delete button and your circle should look like the letter D.


Genius Guide


Mixed media 04

QUICK TIP

EDIT THE BASIC SHAPES

Keyboard shortcuts save so much time when quickly selecting and editing colours. Pressing Shift+X to quickly swap between Foreground and Background colours saves you more time than clicking the colours with your mouse. Another shortcut is to use the Cmd/Ctrl+Opt/Alt when highlighting over the layer thumbnail to quickly select and deselect images.

Click on the Vector Mask thumbnail in your Layers palette. Draw a rectangle from the left side of the bottom to the tip of the triangle. This will appear to cut the triangle in half. Then press the + key on your keyboard to add a rectangle, completing the letter N. The next few letters will be relatively easy to create. Use the Ellipse tool to make two circles that represent an abstract letter S. Pick the Rectangle tool to create the shapes for the letter E.

05

To create the letter R we first make a smaller circle using the Ellipse tool and then a square using the Rectangle tool. To create an equal-sided square or circle, hold down Shift while you click and drag the mouse to create the shape. Press A to use the Direct Selection tool and click on the top-right corner of the square shape. Hit the Delete button and you should have an acute triangle shape to complete the letter R.

The letter A can be flipped vertically to create the letter V, just like the letter D can be flipped horizontally to create the letter C

06

COMPLETE ALL THE LETTERS

Now that you have formed all the shapes, you can duplicate them to complete the rest of the characters. The letter A can be flipped vertically to create the letter V, just like the letter D can be flipped horizontally to create the letter C. The letter M is made by using the same triangle we used to create the letter N. Simply duplicate and flip one of the triangles horizontally and position as needed. The letter O is created by using the Ellipse tool and the letter I can be borrowed from the stem of our letter N.

07

PLACE THE PHOTOGRAPH

Now we’ll edit the photograph. First open up a new document with the same dimensions as before (235 x 302mm) and insert the dancer image. The image should be about 20% smaller than the document size so we need to fill in the missing pixels. Press W, select the Magic Wand tool and click on the white space around the image. Press Shift+F5 to open up the Fill Command and use Content-Aware as your Fill.


MIX THE SHAPES

08

ADD COLOUR TO THE BACKGROUND

Now we’ll focus on the background. In your Adjustments window select Exposure, slide it to -0.1 and the Gamma Correction to 0.65. Add a new Vibrance adjustment layer then crank Vibrance and Saturation all the way up to the top. Now make your Foreground colour ‘b6c7da’ and your Background colour ‘807d94’. Press Shift+X to swap between the Foreground and Background colours. Add a new layer and hit the ‘G’ key to access the Gradient tool. Make sure you use a Linear Gradient and that the Gradient goes from Foreground to Transparent.


Genius Guide

INTRODUCE COLOUR GRADIENTS

ADD WAVES OF COLOUR TO CHANGE THE MOOD

09

PLAY WITH THE GRADIENT TOOL

Apply the blue gradient from the bottom to the middle of the image and repeat the same for the purple gradient, but from the top to the middle. Set the blending mode to Color and set it to 85% Opacity. Now repeat this same process but with different colours. First add a new layer, this time choosing ‘d1cecb’ as your neutral colour and ‘b5c2c8’ as your metal-blue colour. However, this time make the gradient go from Foreground to Background instead of Transparency. Set this layer to 30% Opacity.

PLAY WITH DIFFERENT TYPOGRAPHY STYLES

There are many fonts to choose from, some better than others. The best thing to do is to experiment with your own typographic style and create your own fonts. Take a look at www.typographyserved.com for inspiration on typographic work to complement your style. But if you’re having trouble creating your own font, one of the best resources for bold typography is on www. hypefortype.com where you will find plenty of exclusive fonts to download. If you’re looking for a cheaper alternative, take a look at www.tendollarfonts.com to find even bolder and unique typeface designs.

10

COMPLETE THE BACKGROUND

Now let’s apply the geometric background to this document by creating a new layer and importing the document. Set the blending mode to Divide and change the Opacity to 80%. Make a duplicate of our original model image and set her to the top of the layers using Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+]. Press ‘W’ to use the Quick Selection tool and set the brush Size to 10. You can quickly change the Size by pressing ‘[‘ and ‘]’.

Photoshop enables you to refine the edge of your mask. Click on the Refine Edge tool to adjust the hair and other tricky selections

11

CUT OUT THE DANCER

With the Quick Selection tool, click from the tip of her fingers and start tracking down the image slowly until it’s completely selected. Click on the Refine Edge tool to adjust tricky selections. Click OK to turn the dancer into a mask. Apply a Black and White adjustment layer and set it to Auto. Make the adjustment layer affect all layers below by holding down the Opt/Alt key and rolling your mouse between it and the masked layer.

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FINISH THE COLOUR

Now apply a Gradient Map adjustment layer of rich black-to-purple (‘2e2b4a’) to white. Using a soft brush, mask out any areas you don’t want coloured purple. Now apply a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer, set with Hue at 205 and the Saturation at 80. This will add some more blue to the image. Finally change the Opacity to 36%. Mask out any areas you don’t want to be coloured, in this example we only coloured the torso blue.

13

PLACE THE TEXT

Group all your elements from the type design document and duplicate the files to the dancer image. Add a vector mask to the group layer and, with an 80% hard brush, start to find interesting intersecting ways the dancer can wrap around the type. Start brushing away the layer mask. This part is open up for experimentation, so add a little more detail by applying a soft shadow to make the dancer pop more from the type.


Mixed media ALTERNATE OPTION



Genius Guide

MASTER THE PEN TOOL USE SIMPLE PHOTOSHOP TOOLS AND TECHNIQUES TO MAKE STUNNING GEOMETRIC SHAPES IN YOUR ARTWORK

Sometimes the most striking designs are the ones that are actually very simple and straightforward to achieve. Minimalism is incredibly popular in the design world right now, with geometric shapes taking precedence in web design, and with fashion artwork hot on its heels. This tutorial will show you how to use basic Photoshop techniques to achieve a simple but beautiful photomanipulation that could easily grace the cover of any glossy magazine. CINEMA 4D will be used to render shapes, which will then be imported into Photoshop. Flower photos were used as a reference for the beige and rose colour palette. Tools are not used extensively; this tutorial

instead encourages you to have fun making an eye-catching but minimalist image. You will need to use basic colouring techniques, the Pen tool and blending modes, then play around with clipping masks, layer styles and filters to finish. Let’s start!

With fashion artwork, even the smallest imperfections must be corrected, as this is what will sell your product

OUR EXPERT TOMASZ KARTASIŃSKI/ WAGNER www.behance.net/krv

Kartasiński is a 24-year-old art director and graphic designer based in Warsaw, Poland. He is a huge fan of minimalism and music, in which he finds a lot of inspiration, and specialises in fashion artwork.

WORKING WITH PHOTOGRAPHY

USE THE PEN TOOL FOR FULL CONTROL

WORK IN PROGRESS

FROM STUDIO IMAGE TO FASHION ARTWORK

SEPARATE THE MODEL

01

Purchase the model photo (ID 30914224) from Dreamstime.com. First, you need to cut out the model from the background. Select the Pen tool in Shape mode and start cutting around her. Leave the head and hair for the next step. After selecting the whole body, copy the layer from the selection.

02

CUT OUT THE HAIR

Cut out the head and hair and duplicate the Blue channel. Select a soft round brush and switch its mode to Overlay. Start colouring the hair black. To colour white spaces, switch the brush mode back to Normal. Go to Select>Load Selection and load the Blue Copy channel. Copy the selection.

03

Progress 1: Original image

REMOVE SKIN DEFECTS

To remove skin imperfections, select them with a round Selection tool and press Shift+Delete, with the Content Aware option switched on. You can also use the Lasso tool for a quick way to remove small defects. With fashion artwork, even the smallest imperfections must be corrected, as this is the thing that’s going to sell your product to consumers.

Progress 2: Adding shapes

Progress 3: Final touches


Mixed media

04

CHOOSE THE RIGHT COLOURS

ItÕs always a good idea to have a reference colour palette. In this case, photos of flowers were used. With the Eyedropper tool, select a couple of colours from the reference images to build the palette. Understated rose and beige colours were chosen to give the model a sense of pure, natural beauty. Now, create a new layer using Cmd/ Ctrl+Shift+N and make a couple of spots with the picked colours using the Brush tool, then leave this layer. You will need it later on. QUICK TIP Your reference colour palette is your best friend. It helps you to keep the mood of your artwork perfect and is one of the essentials to a successful image. It can be simple, based on just three or four colours, or larger, with many other shades for the background, skin or environment. It all depends on what you want to achieve.

06

ADJUST THE SHAPE

To achieve a good shape for the dress, you need to re-position the anchor points and delete some of them. To do so, choose the Direct Selection tool from your toolbar or hit the A key on your keyboard. You need to make the dress as simple as possible, so delete the points that are close to each other. Leave just one point and go to another group. Long, sharp lines will look much better than short ones. In a while, you will reposition all of the points to fit your renders.


05

SHAPE OF THE DRESS

Using the Pen tool (P) with the Shape option selected, start drawing the main shape of the dress. It should be sharp edged. You can adjust the anchor points with the Direct Selection tool by holding down the Opt/Alt key while drawing with the Pen tool. When complete, once again leave this layer. You will be placing pre-rendered shapes into it later. You can always go back and adjust the main shape, depending on the final shape of the dress you want to make.

07

APPLY COLOUR

Now go back to your colour palette. You need to pick the main colour for the dress and one that will overlay the whole artwork and background. Set a new layer above your dress shape and simply fill it with your chosen colour, setting the blending mode to Overlay. Pick another less saturated colour and place it on a new layer in the background. For great results, copy this layer (Cmd/Ctrl+J) and place it above all the other layers, setting the blending mode to Color Burn.

08

PLAY WITH BLENDING MODES

You can experiment with different blending modes, as sometimes other modes will give you better effects. You can always choose another colour for the background or for the overlaying layer if need be. The key is to stick to the palette and make the whole artwork as smooth as possible in terms of colour. ThatÕs why your palette layer is so important: it helps you to keep the right mood within your artwork. If you are happy with the colouring, you should stick with it until the final colour correction.


Genius Guide

GIVE YOUR IMAGE AN EDGY LOOK

MIX PRE-RENDERED IMAGES WITH THE MODEL

09

FINDING THE BEST SHAPE

A flat shape isn’t enough, so you need to use pre-rendered images made in CINEMA 4D. The most important thing is to set together parts of the renders to fake the dress material. It must look as realistic as possible. Take your time and think about how you can connect separate elements. This is the part where you can improvise and experiment. It is a good idea is to search for some reference photos of clothes and see how they lie on the models. Any research you can do will benefit you.

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10

CUTTING SHAPES

You need separate elements that will fit perfectly into your artwork. You can open prerendered images and start cutting those shapes. With the Pen tool (P) and Path option selected, start cutting interesting pieces. After selecting the shape, simply Ctrl/right-click>Make Selection, set Feather Radius to 0 and hit OK. With this selection, hit Cmd/ Ctrl+J to create a layer via the selection. After that, press Cmd/Ctrl+D to deselect. Go back to the main image layer and separate another piece.

REPOSITIONING

When you have made your dress composition, you need to reposition your base shape. Select the dress shape layer, hit A for the Direct Selection tool and move the points to fit your render shapes. There is no need to follow them directly, but you need to stick with the lines. After the moving part is done, you can start adding some colour. First of all, make a clipping mask from all the render layers to your dress shape layer so that you can start adding some colour.

11

MAKING THE COMPOSITION

When you have all of the shapes that you need, you can start making the composition. Start placing shapes over the dress shape and scale or rotate the elements. You can also Distort or Warp them to fit the fabric form. Remember to keep all of the lines straight and try not to bend individual elements too hard. It is okay for pieces to overlap. The shading will be done in the next steps. Feel free to transform elements as you like, but maintain a realistic look.

13

COLOURING

Let’s head back to colour you chose at the beginning for the dress. Move it above all the clipped layers to the dress layer. Set the blending mode to Overlay to give the colour effect a good look. You can also play with others shades of your base colour, but in this situation shapes are already a little bit shaded, so a single colour should do the job.

Feel free to transform the elements as you like, but try and maintain a realistic look


Mixed media TAKE CARE OF THE DETAILS

PULL OUT SOME FANCY SHADING AND LIGHTS

14

ADD DEPTH

Now you will need to pull out the model’s right hand from underneath the dress to add some depth to your image. All you need to do is cut the hand out from the original image using the Pen tool. You will then need to make a selection with a 0.5 pixel Feather Radius and then hit Cmd/Ctrl+J to copy the selection to a new layer. The next few steps of the tutorial will show you how to add shadows to the dress and the model to make the whole image look more realistic.

16

MORE SHADOWS

You will now need to add more shadows on the model’s body to help create extra depth and more of a sense of realism. To be precise, make a new layer with the clipping mask to the body layer. With a soft round brush set at 100% Opacity and 1300 pixels, start shading in areas of the legs, hands and neck that are beneath the dress. Set the layer Opacity to 60%. Now you can use the Eraser tool (E) to adjust the shadows and fit them correctly to the body shape.


15

SHADE THE HAND

Create a new layer beneath your hand layer and select a round brush set at 50% Hardness. Draw shadow onto the bottom-right side of the hand. Shadows on the original image will help you to decide the direction of your own shading. After that, set layer Opacity to 40% and set the blending mode to Overlay. Make another new layer, draw smaller shadows and set Opacity to 60% on the first layer. Then make shadows on the darkest places and set their Opacity to 100%.

17

EVEN MORE SHADOWS

Now it’s time to focus on the dress. You need to add some more depth to a couple of the fragments and cast shadows. Use the Polygonal Lasso tool to draw a shape and fill it with a black colour. On a new layer over the rendered shapes, fill the selection with black and go to Filter>Blur> Gaussian Blur and set it to 5. You have to make it look realistic as possible, so shadow will be smaller nearer the connection of the shapes and will disappear at the ends.

CREATING 3D SHAPES In this tutorial, you need to use pre-rendered shapes made in CINEMA 4D. These are simple cubes sliced with the Knife tool and then modified point-by-point to achieve interesting shapes. There are many more techniques you can use to make these. You can find web-based shape generators or just start playing with Photoshop. With the Pen tool, you can draw shapes and fill them with gradients to obtain similar effects.

18

ADD FLARES

This simple technique adds a more exciting look to the dress edges. Simply create a new layer, and with a white soft brush draw one spot. Then, using a brush half that size, draw another spot in the middle of first one. After that, hit Cmd/Ctrl+T to transform this layer, and just scale in vertically to make it look like an optical flare. Set the blending mode to Overlay and rotate it to fit the edges. Copy this layer (Cmd/Ctrl+J) and add it to the other edge, changing the size of your flare.

Mixed media

ADVANCED SELECTIONS

OUR EXPERT MIKE CAMPAU

www.seventhstreetstudio.com

Mike is currently the creative director and lead digital artist at SeventhStreet, a small, collaborative design studio that’s located in Birmingham, Michigan.

EXPERT PHOTOSHOP ARTIST MIKE CAMPAU BREAKS DOWN HIS POPULAR SNOW JUNGLE ARTWORK TO SHOW US HOW IT’S DONE The inspiration and motivation for Snow Jungle came about after finishing another piece called Urban Jungle for Advanced Photoshop’s iStockphoto Create a Cover contest (issue 65). Over the next five pages, we are going to show you how to re-create the style for yourself. In this tutorial we will assume you already have a degree of Photoshop knowledge and we will be bypassing some of the standard functions, such as how to create layer masks and use Curves and Hue/Saturation. What we will be focusing on is

SOURCE FILES On the CD you will find some of Mike’s own resources to help you with this tutorial. A lot of iStockphoto images are also used, and we have provided most of these for you on the disc, plus links to a couple more that you will need to purchase or find alternatives for.

how to create a dynamic scene that integrates colour type, multiple stock photos and some hand-painted elements. You will not need any colour knowledge, as the colour type will be provided for you. We will also be covering some basic masking techniques, how to use Calculations to isolate objects, how to incorporate hand-painted textures into your scene and, finally, how to add finishing touches to your piece to help tie the whole composition together.

DEVELOP ENERGETIC COMPOSITES

Create a dynamic scene that integrates colour type, multiple stock photos and handpainted elements

USE STOCK PHOTOS IN CONJUNCTION WITH MIXED MEDIA

01

START WITH YOUR HERO

To kick off, we need to isolate our hero image. Open the image of the snowboarder (iStockphoto’s ‘Snowboarder In The Air’). Next open the Calculations dialog (Image>Calculations). For Source 1 select the Red channel and click the Invert checkbox. For Source 2 select the Blue channel, and for the blending mode choose Add with these settings: Opacity 100%, Offset -110 and Scale 1, with the Result as New Channel. Calculations are used on a number of occasions in this tutorial to isolate objects, so make sure you have a full understanding of this tool.

02

TWEAK THE NEW CHANNEL

Now go into your Channels window, select the new channel and open up the Levels dialog (Image>Adjustments>Levels). Slide the shadow and highlight points closer together so that you start to get a black-and-white silhouette. Don’t crush the numbers too close, as you might start to lose some of the important edge details. For this image, we will use 129 for the black point and 211 for the white point.



Genius Guide


Mixed media 03

CLEAN UP YOUR CHANNEL

Use your Brush tool set to Overlay and start to black out desired areas. Some areas may need a couple of passes. Do the same thing for white areas with a white brush. When done, make a selection from your new channel and create a layer mask for your snowboarder.

05

04

SNOWBOARDER COLOUR

Our snowboarder is a little too bright and has some neon greens that won’t fit into our colour scheme, so use a Curves adjustment layer to bring down the midtones, and Hue/Saturation to slide the green-yellow colour into our orange colour palette. Once you are happy with the colour and tone, merge your layers and apply the layer mask.

SET UP YOUR LAYOUT

Now the snowboarder’s ready, let’s work up the background. Create a new image, 3,500 x 5,000px with a white background. Create a new layer. Use your Gradient tool set to black-to-transparent and create a gradient from the bottom and top ending in the top third of the canvas; set the Opacity to 30%. This boosts the feeling of depth and will help when building the background. Now drag your snowboarder onto this file and set him above the gradient.

QUICK TIP Clipping groups are a great way to work on objects that have been isolated with transparency. Simply hold down the Opt/Alt key while clicking on the line between two layers. This enables the bottom layer to lock in the transparency of the layers above.

06

BACKGROUND SCENE

Now we need to build our base background scene. Open up the clouds (‘Showing the way’ from iStockphoto) and two mountain images (we’re using ‘Mountain’ and ‘The Alps Mountains’). Drag all three images onto your new file. Scale the images so they reach edge to edge and give each one a new layer mask. Using a large soft brush start to blend the hard edges out and combine the three elements into one scene. We don’t have to worry about being overly precise with our mask because most of this will be blended or covered with other elements.

07

3D TYPE

With our background roughed in and our hero in place, it’s time to build the type. This could be done straight out of a 3D program, but for our example, we’ll use PS to achieve the same effect. Open the supplied type file (‘SnowJungle_3dtype.psd’) and make a selection with your Square Marquee tool just below the typeface. Use the Transform and Warp tools to add drama and Liquify to tweak any areas that don’t quite line up.


08

TYPE ICE TEXTURE

Now for applying the ice texture. Open the image of ice – iStockphoto’s ‘Semless frost (ice)’ – and drag it onto the type file. Use Free Transform on it to closely match the shape of the type. Now make a clipping group using your type layer and set it to Overlay. You will need to duplicate the layer a couple of times to get the effect we are looking for. Mask out any areas that get too dark or too light.


Genius Guide

09

FINISH THE TYPE

Apply a Curves adjustment layer to brighten the type overall and then another to brighten just the top of the text, masking out shadowy areas on the bottom. Since this is a bright snow scene, it really needs to shine so use Hue/Saturation to desaturate it overall. The final 3D type (‘3dtype_finished.psd’) is on the CD for reference.

10

SCENE

PLACE YOUR 3D TYPE INTO THE

Now drag your type image into your scene file. Position it so that it is behind the snowboarder and centre the text over his head. The type is a little dark for our winter scene, so we will add a white-to-transparent gradient layer going from the bottom to the top. This will help us blend it into the scene as we begin to add more elements.

12

11

ADD MORE ELEMENTS

Our scene is looking a little sparse, so we need to add more elements to help our snowboarder feel at home. Open up the image of the chairlift (iStockphoto’s ‘Ski lift up a mountain’), ski lodge (‘Mountain Home’) and pine trees (the two ‘Winter Scenics’ images). Using Calculations and layer masks (as we did in Step 1) begin to isolate the chairlift, trees and lodge. Once you have them isolated, drag them onto your scene file behind the 3D type layer and position them appropriately.

FOREGROUND SNOW

We want to add some interest into the bottom of the scene, and right now the snow is too dark and has some distracting lines. So let’s open the stock photo of the snow pile (‘snow on the mountain #1’ from iStockphoto). Drag it into your scene and place it at the base of the composition. Create a layer mask and blend it into the existing snow.

13

BUILD THE HALFPIPE

Now it’s time to build the halfpipe that the snowboarder is riding. Open the supplied stock (iStockphoto’s ‘Empty Half-pipe’). We want this element to be floating in our scene, so we will have to cut out the curved portion and re-create the edges to give it depth. Start by using your Pen tool to draw a path around the shape of the halfpipe. Once complete, make a selection from your path, then copy and paste it into a new layer.


Mixed media 14

BEND THE PIPE

On the new layer you created from the halfpipe shape, use Transform and Warp to make the shape more symmetrical. We are going to be duplicating and flipping the layer to add the right side, so try to keep that in mind when working on the shape. Once transformed, use your Square Marquee tool to select the right-hand side and delete it. Duplicate the layer, horizontally flip it and line up the centre points so that they overlap slightly.

15

ADD SHAPE TO THE PIPE

Now that we have our halfpipe taking shape, go in with the Clone Stamp tool and clean up any areas where the two halves clashed. Next open up the ‘snow on the mountain #1’ stock again and use our previous Calculations technique to isolate the snow from the sky. Now drag the snow image onto the halfpipe file and rotate 180 degrees so that the snow bumps are at the bottom of the halfpipe shape. Duplicate this layer and Transform it to fit around the base of the halfpipe.

16

FINISH THE HALFPIPE

Merge halfpipe layers and, with a layer mask, start to blend the bottom snow mounds for a nice transition. Merge all visible layers. To match up colours, use Hue/Saturation to desaturate the halfpipe, then Curves to add back a cool tone. Now for the final piece of the pipe.

17

ADD SOME SHADOWS

Drag your final halfpipe piece (‘halfpipe.psd’) into your scene file and position it below the snowboarder, but in front of your 3D type and background elements. To create the illusion that the halfpipe is floating we need to add a Drop Shadow under the halfpipe. Create a new layer, and use your Circular Marquee tool to select an area just below the halfpipe. Now Feather the selection by 100 pixels. Use your Eyedropper tool to select a dark shadow portion from any part of the existing snow and fill your selection with this colour. Now deselect and use Motion Blur set to 0 degrees and 200 pixels to help blend the shadow and give it a more natural feel. To finish the shadow, set the layer to Multiply.

18

ADD SOME SNOW SPRAY

The image needs some activity, so we are going to add some snow spray. Open up the spray image (‘Wave crashing against rock’ from iStockphoto). To isolate just the water spray, duplicate the Blue channel and apply Levels with the black point at 60 and white point at 126. Next make a selection from your new channel then copy and paste the spray into your scene file. Set this layer to Screen and start to have fun. Add it to areas to frame focal points.



Genius Guide

19

BLEND PAINTED ELEMENTS

Open up paint stock (‘Watercolored Background’, ‘Painted watercolor mess’ and ‘Painted watercolor background’, plus ‘Paints_texture.jpg’). We need to isolate these elements, so for each case duplicate the Blue channel and apply Levels to crush the white and black points. In this case we don’t want to make it pure black and white, as we want to retain the brushstrokes. Once you have a nice alpha, make a selection and import brushstrokes into your scene.

QUICK TIP To use an object as your transparency mask when working, simply hold down Opt/Alt and then click between the two layers in order to constrain the active area of the top layer to the base layer.

20

BLEND YOUR PAINT

21

Now we have our brushstrokes in our scene, change their layer properties to Color, Multiply, Color Burn or Overlay. Experiment with which combination of these works best for the various areas of the scene. Typically, Overlay doesn’t work very well with a bright white area, so use Multiply or Color Burn in this case, and use the Overlay and Color in areas that have tone. Start to duplicate the various brushstrokes into different layers and then combine them to create even more unique painted areas.

SOME ICE

To jazz up the halfpipe, we can add some icicles (iStockphoto’s ‘Icicles Gauss distribution’). Duplicate the Blue channel and use Levels to crush the black and white points. Place icicles into the scene and, just as we did in Step 15, duplicate and Transform the ice to follow the shape of the halfpipe and blend with layer masks.

22

TIE ELEMENTS TOGETHER

It’s always a good idea to apply an overall effect in work composed from multiple photos. In this case, we Copy then merge the entire image into a new layer (Cmd/Ctrl+Opt/ Alt+Shift+E) and duplicate that layer. On the first copy merged layer, go into Filter>Other>High Pass and set the pixels to 2.1. Now change the blending mode to Linear Light at 50% Opacity. Do the same thing to the duplicated layer, but this time use 178.5 for the High Pass value and set Opacity to 10%.

23

FINAL CORRECTIONS

The colour seems too vibrant for a winter scene, so using a Hue/Saturation layer on top of everything, desaturate the whole image by -50. Create a new layer, set blending to Soft Light and brush in some blue around the edges. Now use Curves layers with masks to brighten some of the snow and type and darken the snowboarder.


Mixed media



Genius Guide

ZERO GRAVITY EFFECTS CREATE THIS FUN IMAGE BY USING DIFFERENT BLEND MODES, DODGE AND BURN AND MORE

OUR EXPERT Geir akselsen http://supafly.no Geir Akselsen works as a photographer and web designer for an advertising agency in Norway. He started his career as a web designer, but has recently switched to mainly photography work.

SOURCE FILES

We have supplied all the images and elements used in the tutorial. The layered Photoshop files are also provided for reference as you follow the tutorial.

This image was inspired after watching a documentary about space. To make an image like this all you need is a simple camera (or some stock images) along with basic Photoshop skills, here using CS6. In this tutorial you will learn how to use HDR images with dodging and burning to achieve a stylised effect on your image. We will show you how to use different Blend Mode techniques, basic skin retouching and explain working with your layers in a non-destructive way. This means you can always fall back on each step and change your settings if you want to make adjustments. Some people prefer an image with a lot of punch in the colours and some take a subtle approach, it’s up to you how you want to apply them in this tutorial. The great thing about working with Smart Objects and adjustment layers is that you are always in control. There are a lot of different programs on the market that can give your images an instantly stylised look, but we prefer using Photoshop since it provides a controlled working environment when editing images. You can also achieve some very impressive results in Photoshop by using basic but effective techniques.


Mixed media 01

ADJUST THE IMAGE

Open the image of the girl and hit Cmd/Ctrl+J to duplicate the layer. Change the Blend Mode of the duplicated layer to Vivid Light. Press Cmd/Ctrl+I to invert the layer. Go to your Filter menu, choose Blur>Surface Blur, set Radius and Threshold to 63, click OK. Press Shift+Opt/Alt+Cmd/Ctrl+E to get a new layer and delete the previous layer you applied the blur effect to. Change the Blend Mode to Overlay.

04

RETOUCH THE SKIN

Duplicate the Background layer and set its Blend Mode to Vivid Light. Press Cmd/Ctrl+I to invert the layer and convert it to a Smart Object. Choose Filter>Other>High Pass, pick a Radius of 10, click OK. Go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur, choose a Radius of 2. Add a black layer mask to the Smart Object, choose a white brush and paint on the layer mask.

07

02

MANIPULATE THE SKIN

In the top menu go to Layer>New>New Layer and in the dialog box name it ‘Soft’. Apply Soft Light blending mode, adjust the Fill to 50% grey and click OK. Choose the Dodge tool with a brush Size of around 35 and Midtones and Exposure set to 15%. Now we’ll dodge around her eyes to make the dark areas lighter. If you want to apply the Burn tool, hold down the Opt/Alt key to darken areas.

05

OBSERVE YOUR CHANGES

The final steps are now finished. To see the transformation, hold the Opt/Alt key while pressing the little eye on the Background layer. This enables you to see the changes. Save the Photoshop file in case you want to go back and edit. After saving the file, export the final image of the girl as a JPEG for use in the main image. Now we can move to the easier and less time-consuming parts of the project.

PLACE THE GIRL IN THE BACKGROUND

Import the little girl to the bathroom background. Go to File>Place and double-click on the JPEG file of the girl you made earlier, then hit Enter. This will open as a Smart Object, so we need to Ctrl/right-click on the Girl layer and choose Rasterize Layer to make it editable. We now need to choose the Rectangular Marquee tool to quickly cut away all the excess areas of the imported image.


08

03

DODGE AND BURN THE CLOTHES

Again add a new layer, but this time name it ‘Hard’, set it to Overlay with a Fill of 50% grey and click OK. Choose the Dodge tool, set Midtones and Exposure to 15%. Press and hold the Opt/Alt key to darken the shadier areas a little bit. This makes the wrinkles in her clothes stand out and shine a little bit more. Change the brush Size as you see fit when making these alterations, so you can flexibly react to how the image is taking shape.

06

INSERT THE BACKGROUND

Open the bathroom background image, then go to Image>Adjustments>HDR Toning. Put the following values in the Settings window: Method Local Adaption, Radius: 80px, Strength: 3.72, Gamma: 1, Exposure: -0.32, Detail: +208%, Shadow: +26, Highlight: +5, Vibrance: +39 and Saturation: +50. If you want to use different settings, feel free to play around with the numbers to suit your personal taste.

CUT UP THE IMAGE

Zoom in to about 300%, choose the Polygonal Lasso tool and set a 1px Feather. Vary the Feather amount as you see fit, on some areas we’ll use 2 or 3px. Cut in small increments, so if you accidently cut in an area you don’t want to, you can press the backspace button and Photoshop will revert to your last move. When you come to the hair, increase the Feather to 5px.


Genius Guide

09

ADJUST THE BACKGROUND

After we finish cutting out the girl we can adjust the Background colour a little. Click on your Background layer, go to Layer>New Adjustment Layer>Hue/Saturation and click OK. In the Settings window we use the following: Hue: +11, Saturation: -3 and Lightness: +5. Now adjust the colour of the girl a little by going to Image>Adjustments> Curves>Blue Channel, set Output to 120, Input to 125 and click OK.

11

10

Now letÕs import the rest of the elements. Just like Steps 7 and 8, go to File>Place and double-click on the JPEG file you wish to import then hit Enter. Choose the Rasterize layer to make it editable. Adjust the element down in size a little to make it fit with the image and remember to maintain the aspect ratio while doing this. For the last element, you can add the water thatÕs been provided as its own PSD file.

ALTER THE COLOUR

If you want to apply the Burn tool while dodging, just press and hold down the Opt/Alt key to darken areas of the image

Now that you have all the elements added and carefully put in place, you can play around a little with the colour on each of them. We added some more contrast to the objects and further blue in the Curves layer to all the metal surfaces and the water. On some of the items you can see the string we used to hold them up for the photography shoot. This is easily remedied with some application of the Clone Stamp tool. Have fun choosing which items you want to be floating where.

12

MAKE FINISHING TOUCHES

Press the Hue/Saturation layer, add a new adjustment layer above it, then choose Brightness and Contrast (-8 Brightness, -23 Contrast). Now weÕll add a new adjustment layer in Selective Color above all the other layers. Choose Neutrals: Cyan: 0 Magenta: 0, Yellow: -11 and Black: -2. Now save the image as a JPEG. Open the file and choose HDR Toning, Local Adaption, Radius: 1 px, Strength: 3.40, Gamma: 1.00, Exposure: 0, Detail: +300, Shadow: 0%, Highlight: 0%, Vibrance: +53 and Saturation: +20.

ADD MORE ELEMENTS

13

THE FINAL STEP

Now the image is more crisp after applying an overall HDR Toning adjustment. Use your Clone Stamp tool to remove the halo around the drawer handles, with brush Size at around 45 and Flow at 75%. Add an adjustment layer in Selective Color and choose Neutrals: Cyan: 0, Magenta: 0, Yellow: 8 and Black: +10. Save the final image and youÕve finished with the last step. There are so many different possibilities you can choose when messing with colour, so feel free to experiment.

QUICK TIP When using the Dodge and Burn tool we recommend you use a 50% grey layer. This will give you much more control over your tweaks. You can always fall back and edit parts by applying grey to the areas you wish to change in the Dodge and Burn layer.


tri Spe al ci of al fe r

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