Using an FX Layer Stack for Faux-Infrared Imaging

In my last post I introduced the FX Layer Stack and the basics of how to implement it. Now I’d like to show you another way to use it. To review in a nutshell: you’ll have a group that contains, from bottom to top, a solid black fill layer, one or more blank layers for art, and a gradient map starting on black. The group is set to Screen blending mode.

The most obvious use of the FX Layer Stack is to illuminate objects. The flexibility of the effect allows you to create a compelling light source as well as reflections and rim lighting. You can use also it to create color fluctuations that would otherwise be tedious to do by hand. Right now we’re going to use it to make a faux thermal image.

I’ve actually developed two gradients for this purpose: one is a basic “thermal imager” variation built on a Roy G. Biv spectrum; the second is a FLIR (Forward Looking Infrared) version that I got by sampling colors from real FLIR images online. I’m going to use the FLIR gradient for this image.

As I told you before, the gradient used for mapping needs to start on pure black (#000000) for the group to work right. But after that you can go on to any color combinations you can think of. Here, the FLIR gradient used for mapping has eight stops on it that I sampled from real thermal images from the web. I highly recommend sampling and building your own gradients as this will give you a lot of insight into how these colors all work together.

For this exercise, I made a simple composition…just a quick 3D render in Daz Studio with a little post work in Photoshop. I intentionally wanted the subject to be mostly obscured by shadow so that the FLIR image could reveal more detail. Although this image alone would make a swell illustration, it’s going to really come alive in the FLIR version.

Now we go through a few steps to process the image….

ONE: Desaturate the image. In this particular piece, the background needs to remain “cooler” than the subject. That translates to darker values so that it picks up the cool colors–blue and violet–from the gradient map. Concurrently, all the warm areas need lightening up so that they pick up the warmer colors. The parts of the figure in shadow also wouldn’t be so stark on the thermal image so those had to be balanced out too. In this stage I also concentrate on things like the gun she’s holding, to make it seem hot as if it had just been fired. That’s a nifty detail you wouldn’t be able to convey so well in the standard version of the image.

TWO: Make appropriate adjustments. Don’t make the mistake of just stuffing the greyscale image into the middle of the FX stack and calling it good. It rarely looks just right from the get go. For this image I used a Levels adjustment to bring out some contrast. I then ran it through Topaz Labs’ Topaz Adjust filter on the “Sketch” setting. I went in and did a good solid hour of work with the Dodge and Burn tools, and the Brush tool, to massage things by hand into what I wanted. Finally, I took regular paint brushes, both hard and soft, and used 50% grey to surgically fix spots I wanted to look a certain way. The point is that the gradient map will do the major work of coloring, but that doesn’t mean you’re off the hook. You’re going to need to get in there and mold the result to make a compelling image.

On the upside, though, since the base image is converted to grayscale, it’s very straightforward to work on. Toggling the gradient map on and off allows you to see the piece in its greyscale values and make better determinations about what needs to be darker and what needs to be lightened up. Sometimes colors can fool you.

Side note: a lot of digital artists recommend using greyscale to create compositions. Some artists compose almost entirely in greyscale to get the values right before they color anything. Some toggle an adjustment layer that desaturates their whole piece to check values while they work. Revered concept art teacher Feng Zhu composes almost entirely in greyscale, and he teaches that getting the values to all work together has to be in place before considering color.

Using the FX stack method for these effects is also more detailed and easy to control. This effect could be done by just placing the gradient map at the top of the art without using the group on Screen mode, like I recommend. However I tried it both ways on this very image and there IS a difference. Having only a map at the top looks ok, but *just* ok; it doesn’t respond to editing as well. Using the FX Layer stack like I’ve shown you gives you better color depth and much better control over the whole effect.

To finish off the image I gave it a slight gaussian blur. If you look at real FLIR images you can see that the camera’s not intended to be high definition; it’s just meant to translate energy into color. Blurring my image actually makes a more convincing fake. Finally, I put some HUD elements in the stack and a dark vignette to make it look like we’re really looking through an imaging apparatus.

Just for giggles, here’s the image using the other thermal gradient map.

This one uses eight stops like the FLIR version, and employs a reversed Roy G. Biv spectrum. The result looks pretty cool too, and this is more of the traditional “thermal” imaging we’re used to seeing. Either version would be suitable for whatever illustrative needs one may have.

Hopefully this will get you thinking of other things you can do with the FX Layer Stack. If you come up with something cool, I would love to see it!

CHEERS!

The Power of a Gradient Mapped FX Stack

One of the tools I frequently use in both my professional and personal work is a group of layers that I call the FX Stack. I use this all of the time, sometimes with several instances in a single piece.

I initially learned the technique from Mike “Daarken” Lim’s book, Elysium. When I read about it I had a total *facepalm* moment. I instantly thought of all the things I could do with it and couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of it already. It’s elegant and powerful.

Keep in mind that this will really only work in RGB mode. I work in Adobe RGB 1998 profile all of the time regardless of the intended final use of the piece. A lot of the things I do won’t even work in CMYK mode anyways and you can always convert the flattened art to CMYK or sRGB if you need to at the end.

The FX Stack works like this:

1. Create a new group. Name this “FX Stack.” Change the blending mode of the entire group toScreen.

2. Inside this group create a black fill layer (#000000).

3. On top of this create a blank layer. You’ll paint in this layer shortly.

4. On top of that create a gradient map layer. The gradient should go from black to a color that is appropriate for the effect you’re creating. It must start on pure black (#000000), but you can end on whatever you want. This step is where you control the intensity of the effect. You’re creating the full color spectrum of the effect in question. Thus, if you want it super intense, go to nearly white on the end of the scale, or dial it back with just a reasonably bright color. You can put a full range of analogous colors here as well, e.g. black to red to orange to yellow to white for a richly detailed flame, for example. I recommend at the very least three stops, including the black one.

Right now, you should have a group set to Screen mode with three layers inside of it, and if you’ve done it right up to this point you’ll see NOTHING different on the canvas. Here’s where the fun begins.

In that empty, middle layer, start painting with only pure white. The gradient map will color it. If you’re using a tablet with pressure sensitivity then this effect becomes ridiculously responsive to your work as the colors change with the pressure. Try out different brushes. You can paint like normal, erase like normal, and even use “stamp” and pattern brushes and the gradient map will assign hues to the different parts. It’s pretty radical.

Cloud brushes do amazing things with this trick. So do scatter brushes.

You can even add more blank layers in the middle of the stack to preserve the editability of individual effect components. Say you’re creating a lens flare and you love it, but then you want some bokeh effect too. Put the bokeh on another blank layer in the middle of the stack and then you can work it without affecting the flare you loved.

Creating a magical orb that’s also pouring off incandescent green smoke? Put the orb and the smoke on separate layers so you can control and edit at whim. Each of these is also of course still responsive to masks and filters, and both respond to the gradient map. It’s wicked!

A green-based FX stack contains ALL of the magic elements here. A second, orange-based stack holds the embers rising about her.

Remember that the gradient map on the top of the stack does all the heavy lifting as far as colors go. All you’re doing is painting in the middle layer with white. By allowing your pressure-sensitive tablet to do the job (or by using grays) different tonal values from the gradient are represented.

By double-clicking on the Gradient Map layer’s thumbnail you can edit the gradient until you’re happy with it. Sometimes this only involves shifting color stops around, or replacing stops with different hues to find what you like. The power of this is also evident if you need to change the overall colors completely. If you started in blue and later you think that violet or green would be more effective, all you have to do is change the gradient map and the entire element is instantly recolored to your specs.

To maximize work flow, I’ve done a couple of things I recommend to you. First, I created an action that will build the three-layer group instantly. Second, I prebuilt a dozen or so gradients that cover most of the bases. These range from warm to cool and can be used for just about everything. So now, one click loads the whole group, a subsequent double click so I can select my gradient, hit “ok,” and then I paint. Fast and easy.

At most I might make some minimal tweaks, but most of the time they work right immediately.

One thing I particularly love about this technique is that it has flawless transparency. No weird halos or abnormal distortions. It reacts naturally with the colors underneath the stack, even with multiple stacks using different gradient maps. Everybody plays nicely together!

Additionally, the control of color is unparalleled, in my opinion. I’ve tried making flames and flashes and things with layer styles and color-burn layers and these have always been difficult to manage. Sometimes they look good after a lot of brow-beating, and sometimes they look kind of unconvincing. With this, it’s so bloody responsive right away I can concentrate on making art rather than trying to bully pixels around.

ALL of the particle, smoke, and flame effects on my Chaos Poster were done in an FX Layer Stack, by painting with only WHITE inside the stack.

Keep in mind also that a single gradient can be used for multiple things. A blue one can be used for a Jedi lightsaber, a ship’s thruster, the moon, Tron-style tech, subtle underwater effects, lightning, a cell phone’s glowing screen, or neon. Orange and yellow could be used for fire, explosions, jet engines, sunrises, nebulas, city lights, lighted signs, reflections, candles, or lamps. Red could be used for Sith lightsabers, volcanoes, warning lights, car tail lights, beacons, demon eyes, sunsets, HUD screens….and really this all almost interchangeable amongst the colors. This is also just a basic run-down; once you start putting more analogous colors into the gradient you’ll see how rich and vibrant it can become. This is what kicks it way above fiddling with layers styles and way more flexible.

Orange and yellow based stacks are used on the black hole’s accretion disc and the surrounding stars; the ship’s engine is a blue-based stack; the ship’s running lights use a red-based stack. Very intuitive control over intensity is possible.

Desaturating an image (CTRL+Shift+U) and moving it into the stack will place it under the gradient map’s influence. This is great for existing images or graphics, including logos and type.

The more you play around with this the more you’ll find ways to use it and manipulate it. In my mind it destroys layer styles by being so open to tweaking and so responsive to working the art. Give it a try and see what you can do with it! Next post I’ll show you even more things you can do with this approach. Until then, have fun!

Skills Learned from Drawing (and Balancing it All, with Tutorial)

If you go through forums and ebooks for freelancers and designers there’s always someone who’s asking if they need to be able to draw to be a good designer. The response is always essentially “no, but it helps.” Being someone who’s been drawing his whole life I see this principle clearly. The things I understand and execute as an artist I think make my designs better. Of course this depends on where a design project is at on the spectrum. A flat logotype won’t require the same amount of “artistic” acumen that a gig poster may, and even a gig poster won’t need as much as a portrait.

Knowing how to draw doesn’t necessarily always mean being a great figure artist. While that is a powerful skill to have, just having a deeper understanding of how to make two dimensional shapes appear three dimensional without automating the process is, in my opinion, an even more crucial ability to have. One should understand how light and shadow work on objects, and on the surroundings. One should learn how to draw or paint shadows and reflections, and study how these change depending on the surfaces in question.

There are a lot of features included in graphics apps that will supposedly do much of this work. From layer styles in Photoshop to lighting a 3D model it’s possible to create decently convincing pieces from clicks and dialogue boxes. I still advocate, though, that having that deeper understanding from drawing will allow the designer+illustrator the ability to visualize what he or she wants, to view the results critically, and to devise an approach to create what they want rather than what they were given by the software. It is through this process that one can create something better, I believe.

Right now the “long shadow” look is trendy for icons and typography. Any Jack-ass can slap a drop shadow from a built-in feature of their graphics app, but in many cases that’s not going to push it past mediocrity. Good designers will go create the shadows and the supporting elements by hand.

Here’s an example from my own work, a graphic to show prospective clients what they will be getting if they hire me to do a digital pet portrait. This is featured on every listing in that particular Etsy shop, and I send it out to people outside of Etsy who are deciding.

As is usual with my workflow for these kinds of projects I build the layout and basic shapes in Adobe Illustrator. I believe it’s important to nail down a good design before worrying about the sweet effects. Therefore, I preplan all the supporting text and add-ons when I build. All the basic colors of the graphic were designed here as well. I don’t jump over to Photoshop until I’m satisfied with this phase.

In Photoshop I start with a flat color layer of the same hexidecimal value (#f7f7ec) as my plan in Illustrator. My style tends to have a dreamlike quality to it and thus I’m always one for subtle color shifts all over the space. I search my design resources folder and choose a blurred background gradient from digitalspace.com. I place it and resize it to fill the canvas, and set it to Hard Light blending mode and 33% opacity. On top of this, I stack another copy of it, completely desaturated and set to Multiply and 10%. This did two things: brought out some richer color variation and desaturated the space a bit. I don’t need it competing with the main graphic.

I love the lilac hue hinted in the corner, and the range of other hues represented here. The values in the blurred background also imply a light source in the upper left corner. That’s perfectly aligned with what I’ve envisioned so the whole thing’s off to a good start.

Now, can I copy and paste the shapes in from Illustrator as pixels. These are isolated pieces I can work with and the colors paste with them. On top of each of the outer shapes in turn, I marquee them with the Magic Wand and put a black-to-transparent gradient on each one. The angle is 135° to match the implied lighting from the background. I set the blending mode on each gradient to Overlay, and this gives me a kind of lit up effect on each shape. However, each color reacts differently, so the orange and the blue shapes get 50% opacity on the gradient while the tan one gets 40% and the brown gets 32%.

Even though I want a long shadow underneath the graphic, not every shadow in the whole thing will be long. This is where a good grasp of lighting is crucial to make a convincing overall image. Over time I’ve learned that one or two really sweet effects in an image need a supporting cast. Most people will notice mainly the long shadow, but there are other little things that help sell it. Here, I marquee the white shape in the center and, using a soft brush at about 20% opacity I paint some little shadows under the overlapping points from the color shapes. Again, an idea of how lighting works comes into play because not every point will get the same treatment. Each one has to be taken on its own merit and you’ve got to consider the light direction, intensity, and the height of the overlap illusion you’re trying for.

Now for that long drop shadow. I marqueed the entire  table by SHIFT+CTRL+clicking on each shape’s thumbnail in the layers pallet. The resulting selection was filled with black on a new layer underneath the table. This new shape was sent through the Motion Blur filter at the 135° angle and at the maximum distance of 999 pixels.

The result is a pretty cool long shadow on the lower right side, but it extends both directions and that creates a problem. Easy fix, though. Just take a moderately-soft eraser and remove everything that extends towards the light. Finally the whole shadow layer is set to 80% opacity.

Here you can see the shape gradients, the long drop shadow, and the subtle shadows underneath the center-facing points. See how all these little bits along with the background are already creating a convincing image?

Already this is looking pretty cool.

Next, I add the icons and text. The JPEG icons were just some stock icons I had that I added a bokeh background into along with my Black Dog mascot. The ZIP box icon is from the same set. The PDF icon is from Adobe’s site.

All of the text is copied and pasted from Illustrator. There’s no need to try and recreate it with Photoshop’s text tool. I’ve already done the work, especially with the curved text on the shapes. The text and the icons were given a drop shadow consistent with the lighting scheme I’ve already established. Granted, these are layer styles, but remember this effect is a supporting cast member. Layer styles are great for adding nuance but should never, in my humble opinion, be the main event.

The ZIP box just didn’t look right with the drop shadow, so I made a judgment call and bent reality a bit. I ended up airbrushing (soft round brush set to 50%) black under it, and set the layer to 30% opacity. Just needed contrast and depth is all.

The final bump to the title text is a Violet-to-Orange gradient set to Soft Light and 25% opacity.

I’m really into adding some drama. In this case it’s a bit of a flare effect in the corner. You’ve got to do this tastefully. Don’t get me wrong: I love lens flares. But lens flare abuse really aggravates me and I’ve seen flares used as a band aid to compensate for a lack of skill in a lot of otherwise nice pieces. You’ve got to take the big picture in mind and adhere to the mood, to the feeling, and not get a hard-on over flares for the sake of flares. Yin & Yang, baby.

The flare here was easy-peasy. Just fill a new layer with black, and use a soft brush to paint a warm shape in the corner. Start with a pale yellow in the center and orange and crimson on the edges. Don’t get too crazy with the saturation; this needs to be a subtle effect, so keep the colors at about 50% saturation. My best buddy as far as colors go is the HSB pallet. I get a lot of use out of that and the tweaks on the sliders are far more intuitive for me than the RGB or CMYK pallets.

Now set that layer to Screen blending mode and 66% opacity. BAM. A nice little bump to the overall image.

Another one of my favorite techniques is to add fresnel effects. This is so bloody subtle most of the time you wouldn’t even see it unless you watched me toggle the layers on and off. I take a soft round brush with white, set to 20% opacity (and since I just tap with my Wacom tablet it’s probably closer to 5% to 15%) and I pick two or three things to add it to. In this case, the upper left corners of about three icons (most noticeable on the PDF icon).

I do this fresnel bit ALL OF THE TIME to just about every piece I do, whether it’s a design, photo retouching, or fine art. Definitely one of my favorite techniques and it’s an important part of the “supporting cast.”

ONE LAST THING: to bring up the value of the whole image I finish it off with an action I made called “Dreamlight.” It creates a solid fill layer of a pale blue-grey (#c0c8d1) and sets it to Overlay and 13%. Once again, a subtle addition, but it adds just a bit of lift to the entire thing.

And there you have it:

In all honesty I could have stopped at the Illustrator phase. If I wanted a flat style, which is also trendy right now, or just wanted something minimal and functional I totally could have pulled it off in just Illustrator. My other artistic urges always take over though and I want there to be a more evocative quality to it. Even though it’s just an informative little graphic I want it to create a feeling, to be an artifact from that world in my head.

Nonetheless, there has to be a balance. For example, I chose to make the flare effect by hand using a relatively low-tech solution, whereas generating an actual lens flare with a filter or plugin would’ve been overkill. The effect needed to be more about the feeling rather than “Hoo! Hah! Lens Flare!” (If you read that in a Johnny Bravo voice, you’re totally with me). Notice also that I drew from a deep bag of tricks, but each one has to be applied effectively. You can’t be heavy handed or throw every trick you can think of at it. In the end this graphic still needs to impart information. I just think it should be beautiful too.

Hopefully I’ve given you some good ideas to add to YOUR arsenal, as well as helped you reconsider the value of basic drawing skills (if you don’t possess them). Comment and let me know what you think, or weigh in on my opinions. Dialogue is always welcome!

Designing & Producing a Flier Card

A couple of weeks ago I promised to show a little bit more of the design process for my Black Dog Custom Pet Portraits project. One of the things I’ve created is a postcard/flier to distribute to local pet shops, rescues, adoption agencies, and art shows. Here I’ll go over the whole creation process; I hope it’ll be useful and informative.

First thing’s first: layout. I always do my layout work with just a pencil and paper first, hashing out a series of sloppy little thumbnails to try things out. I knew I wanted the front to be a striking, eye-catching image, while the back had pertinent info and examples of the work almost like a miniature, portable portfolio. Then with two or three of my favorites in mind I build it in Adobe Illustrator. Illustrator is my first digital phase for just about everything except full paintings (and even then some pieces might be built there first). Here it’s easy build a work space with the proper specs including trim margin and trim variance, along with being able to adjust line height, letter spacing, and manipulate text boxes. The typography is important to making a good design. It’s got to have the necessary info, but be succinct, readable, and stylish. Illustrator makes it easy to tweak all of these things. Illustrator also makes it simple to overlay grids so I can check my vertical rhythm.

The main typeface is Unlovable from Letterhead Fonts (a badass resource, and their fonts are worth every penny). After converting to outlines I used Bézier curves and shapes to connect some of the flourishes.

The supporting typefaces are Birch Std., Great Vibes, and League Gothic. This combination was also used on my Etsy shop’s graphics and in the PDF files that clients get before and after a project, so there will be increased visual consistency. It’s branding, essentially.

With both the front and back layouts done satisfactorily, I jump over to Photoshop and finish it off. In Illustrator I had two artboards side by side to design in, whereas with Photoshop I have to have two .psd files. Basic text is copied and pasted with spacing and line height adjusted to match what I’d done in Illustrator. Other pieces such as the “Black Dog” logotype and shapes were copied and pasted in as pixel layers. The four main shapes on the back layout were used as clipping masks for the portrait examples I pasted in.

Whereas Illustrator is the powerhouse for design layout, Photoshop does all the heavy lifting with texture and color. This is where the magic happens. It’s worth mentioning though that Photoshop’s magic relies on a solid design. No amount of ‘Shop trickery will make a shoddy design nice to look at. If the projects sucks, you gotta go all the way back to Illustrator, or even farther, to pull it out. Having said that though, my Photoshop phase still involves a hefty amount of tweaking as I work. It never looks exactly like it did in Illustrator when I’m done.

For the front image, using the mascot I’d chosen previously—a black French bulldog with a bowler hat—was a natural choice, but I wanted this version to be more painterly rather than the flat, almost comic book style of the other one. As with the first version of the mascot, I used a real client’s dog, Quincy, as a reference. Using the techniques I’ve learned from doing pet portraits it wasn’t really too difficult for me to turn a white photographic model into a painted black dog. I placed references from Google all around the canvas of black dogs in different light, a dude with the bowler I wanted, and, of course, the original Quincy.

I didn’t need to do a full portrait, I only needed the head and shoulders fully rendered. I won’t go into detail on the portrait process—I may do that at some point down the road and there’s not really room here—but suffice it to say that having done dozens of portraits already by this point it only took two sittings to get him done.

The mascot was the last piece I needed. The flattened image was pasted into the front of the flyer card and arranged harmoniously. A little gradient on the text, a once over of both files with a day off to chew on them, and then I call ’em done.

Side note: I always take a day off from a project, deadlines allowing, before gong to print. That space to decompress really gives you fresh eyes and you either know it’s ready or you see the flaws. I highly recommend it.

After last-minute tweaks, the final files were flattened, converted to CMYK, and sent off for printing. The results were exactly as I’d hoped and I’ve gotten good feedback on them so far. I carry some with me nearly all of the time in my car and in my messenger bag.

It’s been helpful to have two different ways to present my services depending on my potential client: authors, bands, event coordinators and such get my Moulin Diesel business card, whereas folks I meet through dog training, rescue events, and via pets of all sorts see Black Dog. It’s two different crowds I cater to, and I don’t want to turn one or the other away.

There are some more examples of the work I’ve done for my Pet Portraits on my BeHance portfolio. There’s lots of other swell stuff there too. 😉

Also, the coupon code HEYHEYMOMMA15 takes 15% off anything in both my Moulin Diesel shop and my Black Dog shop until June 15, 2014.

And finally, please comment on stuff you read here and share some examples of your own work, either illustrative or design. I’d love to go see it!

Branding the Black Dog Shoppe

In this post I’m going to talk a bit about the process of setting up graphics for a new business venture, as well as a short tutorial on making my new little mascot, Quincy:

Recently I wrote a post about a side project of mine, pet portraits. Lately it’s been blossoming into a pretty reliable income stream, and so I’ve taken it up to the next level from word-of-mouth to an Etsy shop just for it.

I wanted to set the portrait service apart from my usual work at moulindiesel.com, so I still have my website and original Etsy shop for Moulin Diesel where I sell prints of my artwork. The new Etsy shop needed a new vibe to carry it, being that there are going to be many instances where I present my services to people exclusively as one or the other; i.e. my professional haunt clients and sci-fi authors get Moulin Diesel whereas pet stores, shelters, and pet parents get the other thing.

Building that “other thing” has been the challenge. I thought I’d outline the process to hopefully give others in similar situations some guidance, as well as open myself up for comments and critique from readers.

The first step was organization. Basically I treated it like a client project and did my usual first steps: I wrote myself a client brief. I outlined the goals, some moods, and approaches I’d been considering. I didn’t have to worry about budget constraints, but I did have to look at it in terms of fitting the work in between client projects. Sleep is for the weak—that’s all I’m gonna say.

The problem was that this was all a little hit and miss and I couldn’t get zeroed in. So I went back to the beginning: the shop name. That would steer the whole thing.

Etsy only gives you twenty characters to work with. I filled up nearly a whole notebook page of idea after idea. I’m not even gonna lie I was listening to Led Zeppelin when the idea came: Black Dog! Edgy enough to have my personality, flexible enough to tweak the presentation to be as accessible as possible.

Once I had a shop name and thereby a direction, things started to move much more quickly. I decided to make the mascot a black French bulldog with a bowler hat. Something whimsical, something provocative, something me!

I needed a reference. I wasn’t going to use a random image off the internet, and I sure wasn’t going to crib a pro photographer’s photo. Ultimately I went back to one of my previous clients and asked them very nicely for both permission to use their French bulldog’s likeness and for some additional photos as references.

I wanted an illustrative mascot, probably just the head. I also had to make a fully rendered portrait to brand some postcards I was going to distribute. The quandary was that my model, Quincy, was a white Frenchie, and I needed a black one. I would have to alter that.

I went through the photos she sent me and chose one with what I felt was a cute, inquisitive expression. I liked that he was looking off to the side.

I placed the one I wanted into a 16″x20″ canvas. For my work flow it’s important to work big. Luckily my client sent me her original photo file which was big to begin with. Even if it hadn’t been a big file, I would’ve still enlarged the heck out of it because image quality wasn’t really my concern; all I needed was a map to follow.

I found a pic of a bowler hat online that seemed to match the angle of Quincy’s head. Pretty easy Photoshop work to composite the two. These two are grouped, locked, and the overall opacity dropped to 85%.

Now, it’s time to outline the piece. I’m using a Wacom Intuous tablet with Photoshop CS5. The brush I used was a hard edged brush with these settings:

• hardness 100%
• opacity 100%
• spacing 1%,
• size jitter, control: pen pressure,
• min. diameter 0%,

This is one of my standard brushes in my brush set. I can just pick it in the brush palette without having to tweak the settings every time.

Using straight black on a new layer, I outlined the image. I started with a nice, thick outline, then hatching to indicate shading. The trick is to draw mainly from the elbow, and not so much from the wrist or finger joints. I tend to use the Rotate tool a lot too, just like flipping a drawing around on the table when I was a kid. Hatching tends to look the best (for me) when it’s done with downstrokes, so the rotate tool is one I use a lot. Tip: double clicking on the Rotate tool’s icon resets the canvas to upright.

My eraser is set to the same brush as the one I draw with, so I can shave off wiggley spots, sharpen the ends of strokes, and even “reverse-hatch” in the larger, dark areas.

When this is finished (and saved) I fire up Illustrator and paste the inked drawing into a new art board. A little rotation counter-clockwise so he’s looking more horizontally and we’re ready. Because I worked so big to begin with, Illustrator’s Auto-Trace makes almost zero changes. Setting the trace at “Comic book art” makes a perfect vector version in a snap. Bitchin’.

Now, I expand it. Using the Magic Wand tool to select the white areas I can delete only them leaving just the black lines by themselves.The only thing I added at this point is I cleaned up the silhouette at the top of the hat with a Bézier curve. It was a little shaky and Illustrator’s pen tool made it nice and smooth. I just covered it with a clean, black shape and then used the Shape Builder tool (shift+M) to merge it with the traced/expanded vector art.

Now I lock that lineart layer, and create a new layer set underneath it. Using the Blob Brush (shift+B) I lay down some colors. I keep the color palette to about four colors: One mid tone and one shadow tone for the face, one mid tone and one highlight tone for the hat. I played around with some gradients on all the color layers (you can see this most notably in the hat’s big highlight).

There we go: a vector dog mascot that I can use in nearly all of my future branding projects with Black Dog Pet Portraits. I can paste the vector art into other vector-based projects, and it’ll paste just as well into Photoshop too since it’s a fairly large, high-res graphic.

In the next post I’ll show you some of the other things I’ve done for the shoppe that hopefully you’ll find interesting. In the meantime, don’t forget to visit my Etsy shops, both Moulin Diesel and Black Dog and use the coupon code HEYHEYMOMMA15 to get 15% off of anything in either store until June 15, 2014!

CHEERS!

A Dieselpunk Elephant (and a short tutorial)

I wanted to share with you one of my recently completed personal pieces:

This the third in my surreal, dieselpunk-themed animal paintings.

Here’s a list of my Photoshop process, from back to fore:

1. The mesh background is a seamless background from Ron Deviney’s “Cyborg Parts” set.
2. A few grunge brushes over the mesh gave it a less uniform look and some distressing. Layer was 58% opacity set to “soft light” blending.
3. That’s underneath the roots/tendril plate I made by drawing a tree with a hard brush, then copying and rotating three times to make the symmetrical, kind of rorschach test shape. This was given a layer style with bevel/emboss, color overlay and pattern overlay. Underneath this was a copy of the layer, filled with black, gaussian blur applied and moved down to simulate a shadow. 80% opacity on this.
4. The middle ground is a geometric figure I made in Illustrator CS5, given a similar treatment to the “tree” plate. Layers below and above used bits from the “Cyborg Parts” set and the combination of layer style shadows, hand-airbrushed shadows, and surgical editing with dodge and burn gave it depth and volume.
5. The elephant was painted by hand using greyscale photo references. Building it with the tried and true “mass before detail,” it gradually coalesced into a reasonably convincing elephant. The wrinkles around the eyes were a lot of fun to do! Since I painted in grayscale, I colored my elephant with a gradient map when it was finished.
6. The gas mask was hand painted as well. I looked at a few references of gas masks, but since nothing like it exists in real life I had to wing it. This makes for some interesting problem solving. For example, what do you do about the tusks? I had to invent the rubber gasket around them, imagining holes in the mask provided for exactly that purpose. There had to be a wider glass to accommodate the face and beady little eyes. And of course, the canister hose that doubles as a repository for the trunk had to start wide and taper down. I’m pleased with how it turned out overall.
7. The canister on the mask was actually modeled in Google Sketchup and imported into Photoshop were I painted over it, distressed it, and merged it with the hose. I wanted to get the perspective just right to convey depth in the picture and doing it in 3D made it a cinch. Google Sketchup is free, BTW.
8. The elephant and mask were marqueed together to make a black fill layer underneath. Again, gaussian blurred, 60% opacity, and moved downwards to create a shadow over everything else.
9. A separate layer of “shadow fixes” exists where the airbrush was used to mold shadows over shapes to make it more convincing.
10. The rest is post production stuff and here’s the run-down:
    1. specular blooms (the cousins of lens flares–much more subtle) done with an airbrush at 50%.
    2. levels adjustment.
    3. A “desatch” layer — a full black fill, set to “hue” blending, and 10% opacity. This is really subtle, but it knocks back some of the more saturated areas to pull the piece together more. You could do this with a hue/saturation adjustment layer, but I prefer this method.
    4. A layer that is a hybrid of a texture from GoMedia’s “Etched into Dark” set, and a multi-hued, super saturated, radial gradient. This layer is set to color burn at 10%. Again, very subtle, but the added texture and seemingly random splashes of color that ghost the image is just one of my favorite things. I love that!
    5. A lens flare at the top of the glass, created with Red Giant’s Knoll Light Factory plugin (which is a badass plugin).
    6. And finally, a gradient map with the “yellow, orange, violet, blue” gradient, set to color dodge and 10% opacity. More off-the-wall coloration ghosting the final image. That’s kind of one of my things.

So there you have it. It’s a dark piece, but that’s what I wanted. Something industrial and noir.

This is available as a print in my Etsy shop.

You can also see the other two pieces so far in this Dieselpunk series on my website’s portfolio, or on my Behance page.

I hope this was informative and interesting to you! If you make something using some of the ideas or links I’ve provided, let me know. I’d really love to see it!