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Fir and Pine Brushes

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Photoshop CS6 Features

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Adobe Colour Vampire

Building upon our excellent save for web random colour draining tool, Adobe Photoshop Vampire is the next level of unwanted colour saturation. Confuse foolish clients with slightly off colour imagery.

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Adobe PSD to HTML

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Adobe Recycle

With so many frequent and awesome upgrades of adobe products, your bound to have a horde of unwanted highly illegal to use adobe software lying around. With our free to use recycling service send us your unwanted old copies of Photoshop and we will happily re-brand them as Adobe CS5 or elements or something.

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We accept any version of Photoshop since version 7 as they are all the same anyway (hehe)

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Adobe Random Effects

Never suffer designers block again. Simply import a PSD in adobe random effects, press the randomise button and adobe random effects will randomly apply any one of the hundreds of rarely used filters to your document. If your unhappy with the results keep pressing the button over and over again until it looks sort of all right for a Friday afternoon.

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Adobe Bridge EXTREME

To make Adobe Bridge even more useful than it ALREADY is we’ve decided to take its functionality to the next level. Now whenever you do anything at all in any adobe program Adobe Bridge will pop-up for a few seconds to say hello. Saving a document? Adobe bridge will pop-up. Changing your brush? Bridge will pop up, quitting Photoshop? Bridge will definitely pop up.

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My First Photoshop

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Iphoshop

Want to design on the train but don’t want to get your fancy pants laptop out? Well there’s an app for that.

I Photoshop (IPHOSHOP for short) has most of the great features you’ve come to expect from Photoshop (including Adobe Photoshop vampire) with full touch screen functionality. utilizing the entire i phone screen and capable of handling 4 whole layers IPHOSHOP is the essential app for the designer on the move.

Features:

4 layers

A couple of brushes

Adobe vampires

App cost: $600

By the way this is not an official Adobe press release. If you haven’t already worked this out for yourself

But like any other professional works, the commissioner was very picky and precise since real money was on the line, not just on the commission fee side, but on sales return as well.

Okay, so let us begin then.

Step 1

So the work process began with providing them a couple of thumbnails. The precise description they gave me was ‘Anime girl and mechs’ so I was given a basic concept to work with. For most part I tried avoiding Five Star Stories or Gundam Wing styled mechs in favor of more realistic, down to earth mechs. What I gave them is 4 distinctive mech style in different views. They wanted me to have 2 thumbnails for each one, with hatch open and hatch closed.

Step 2

In the end the number 2 won out in their secret meeting of death and agony (dunno lol) and they had forwarded their intention to me. The guys at IFX made sure that I keep them updated with the progress as this whole cover project was a very sensitive process.

As soon as I was given a go I began painting in details in black and white to make sure of the overall design – before I moved onto full color. Personally, this is my greatest regret working on this piece. It proved to be fatal as it forced me unnecessary amount of extra work painting both in black and white and then color, as opposed to straight to color techniques which is much faster.

Step 3

At this point it was clear I could not paint the mech accurately without having a full view of the mech. I then had the canvas size increased and added rest of the body – which looks quite awful at this time. At the moment I’m still unsure of which direction to take this mech to. This whole concept brewed gradually over time as I added more piece in and painting further in detail.

Step 4

And here I extended the canvas beyond the top hatch so that could be included as well. The upper body now looks noticeably more structured, but I’m still feeling a little uncomfortable with the general design.

Step 5

So I play around with the design for a while and finally settled with this. Before settling in, I tried couple different things with how weapons are laid out and what the weapons will be for. The basic concept I came up for it was an all-purpose mech that’s able to carry anti-personal, anti-tank missions.

Step 6

Here I add in some perspective guidelines for later use with backgrounds and proper mech placement. It may be easy to mistake it as a one-point perspective, but it’s really a two-point perspective. There’s a trick I learned from Andrew Hou on how to accurately do this, but I’ll save that for another time.

Step 7

The background is added roughly just to get the basic idea. You notice that I’m already going with the whole garage/warehouse concept for the background.

Step 8

The hatch perspective is corrected and the design tweaked. I really wanted to draw the hatch as if it will actually fit.

Step 9

Just adding more details here… I also change the perspective on mech’s feet so it’ll be more in line with the perspective guidelines I laid down.

Step 10

More details, but here I’m really trying to think how the mech will move and function, adding all those joints and sockets while giving spaces so the parts can bend and extend. Proper implementation of functionality to your art may not be the most ‘artsy’ thing, but it does add realism.

Step 11

Flip image trick again, but then I do this after drawing the hatch closed… The girl is actually safe under that closed hatch layer. Don’t you worry.

At this point I send what I have to IFX guys for periodic check-up and they tell me to drop the hatch in favor of just the girl. I immediately delete the hatch layer following their message.

Step 12

Now I feel that I have laid out most of important stuff and I feel confident enough to move on to coloring. I first use a layer with ‘color’ option to subtly give color to various parts – mostly blue.

I have a bad habit of throwing blue on everything I’m not sure how to color. Don’t do that.

Step 13

The image is flipped back to continue painting normally.

Step 14

Here I’m indicating cast shadows and cockpit glows. I don’t remember my precise thoughts back then, but I must have decided to go with this particular color concept quite early on.

Step 15

The cockpit receives some detail works. I also improve the color of the girl probably with combination of color layer and overlay layer. (That’s how I always do it when something is off color)

Step 16

And a touch of normal layer on top, and painted to bring out the mech. Common newbie mistake is that they don’t really detail something that’s inside the shadow, but you gotta think of the reflected light casting to the shadowy area.

Step 17

At this very moment I was like, ‘Fuck it. The perspective sucks and my life sucks.’ and then erased the entire background. Something just didn’t seem right and I really wanted it to look and feel right. If you can’t get the perspective right the first time, you can always redraw the damn thing until it does.

Step 18

And my solution to it was to pop a layer on top, use shift key to draw straight lines, and erasing parts where the mech intersected. The result was pretty clean perspective indicators which happened to be very accurate (well, it wasn’t really an accident, but anyways).

Step 19

A thing about my painting style is that, quite frankly it’s schizophrenic. I’m all over the place and it really slows down my process overall. Anyways, more detailing.

Step 20

Here I have laid out pretty much everything that’s gonna go in the background, plus most of their colors. I’ll probably do coloring tutorial some day.

Step 21

Bit more details… and indicators for 2 chars I’m gonna put in and then remove…

Step 22

More details, shades, and shadows. I’m running out of things to say.

Step 23

Larger car, step ladder, florescent lights on the ceiling, and darker shades overall to bring out the cockpit.

Step 24

Larger car, step ladder, florescent lights on the ceiling, and darker shades overall to bring out the cockpit.

Step 25

For now I remove the laptop wire connected to the mech, for the same reason I put electrical cords on ‘City of Discontent’ at the last part. I’ll just skip on things that are obvious to spot from now and concentrate important changes/directions.

Step 26

Overall detail improvements here again. It’s starting to look pretty polished.

Step 27

Some improvements on the fueling car, junks by the toolbox and the whole left wall. Those parts from here on is left pretty much untouched.

Step 28

Here I test out how I’m going to do the ceiling, but it’s a big pile of failure. I’m gonna be throwing that upside down fairly soon. Same goes for the bullets.

Step 29

Biggest change in a while: I finally decide to do something about the girl who’s been looking pretty dull over the course of the process. Interestingly enough I thought the gloss on her was one thing she needed the most.

Step 30

Obviously it was too much so I tone down the gloss.

Step 31

And fixed her damn leg for the same reason I fixed the hatch steps above. I can’t and shouldn’t have her sitting sideways when the mech is almost facing forward.

Step 32

And I darken the scene overall, while reaaaaaally bringing out the girl via overlay layer. I recognize that it is a mistake almost immediately.

Step 33

And revert back to more subtle brightness. You can also notice that I’m getting really conscious of the hatch light as an actual light source (as opposed to arbitrary glow) and use that source to cast shadow on the mech itself.

Step 34

Here I use overlay layer to do all sorts of wonderful things again. This ends up making the girl white instead of beige.

Step 35

You can’t see it but I’m merging all the layers I made every few minutes or so. I’m basically doing all this in few layers or none. I merge them here too – including the overlay I just created above – so I can paint the details over it.

Step 36

More details and improved depths.

Step 37

More details plus some light reflections are indicated as grayish bleed on the mech’s ass.

Step 38

I’m pretty cautious when introducing new elements while painting. I carefully test out the camo on the mech on a separate layer just to see if it will work; and it does.

Step 39

But then it’s not the time for full camo yet. The mech still needs polishing before additional details can be implemented – just like how the wood must be sanded before it can be varnished.

Also I scale down the girl’s head. I thought it was big at the time but I kind of regret it now.

Step 40

More details.

Step 41

And more. When you can’t seem to be able to produce very detailed art, first increase your image size to something like 5000×6000 pixels or so – and really zoom in while working.

This piece however went up to something like 8k and 10k.

Step 42

Much like what I’ve done with the chain bullets on the shoulder, I just used the same one bullet, copy & pasted them to really cut down on repetitive process.

Step 43

Just a bit more detail until I can start my camo…

Step 44

Now the ceiling is gone. In this place I’ll be just painting in some textures and add florescent lights.

Step 45

I was probably approaching my critical mass moment where I just collapse and give up the whole thing. At least I’m nearing one very soon down the line. There were so much to go but so little time.

Step 46

Camo camo.

Step 47

So this is basically how I painted my camo. A separate layer on top, and just painted all normal like, but in one stroke per area – using black and white. After that I just reduced the opacity and it just looked damn good like that.

Step 48

The ceiling light is added with a slight indication of cover in shape of a grid. I just made one grid graphic (in flat view) and used the transform tool to manipulate it in perspective. Works great in certain situations.

Step 49

Just like that.

Step 50

Veeerrry minor detail improvements. See if you can notice it.

Step 51

Same deal.

Step 52

Alright so this is where those guys meet their agonizing end. I pretty much broke up at this point and went in to ‘FUCK IT’ mode. It was like 11am in the morning and I hadn’t slept for nearly 50 hours and I needed to sleep. When it’s like that, those extra guys are just a burden, not a character.

Step 53

I quickly move through places where it lacked details and try my best to wrap it up. The deadline is approaching.

Step 54

And then I realize- FUCK I DIDN’T ADD THE CONTROL MECHANISM.

Yeah. I had planned for it a VR display controller since I could not find a reasonable way to add traditional joystick / buttons, but I left it for later since it would be difficult to add in something floating and semi-transparent in mid-painting. So I just add in something really simple to just pretend something is there.

Step 55

And then some of them didn’t work out too well so I remove some of them to avoid excessive crowding.

Step 56

A VR keyboard is quickly added just so she can pretend she’s got some buttons she can mash…

All of a sudden I realize the piece is finished (well, not really but anyways), so the next phase I go into is this violent orgasm where I just let out sigh for at least an hour (while uploading the file so I can send it to my commissioner). When you’ve exhausted yourself to meet a deadline, the feeling of relief is so great it’s almost as if your soul is escaping from your body.

Luckily the tutorial (for ifx) of this piece wasn’t due the same day the cover was so naturally I went to sleep after sending over the file. That probably was the sweetest, most delicious sleep I’ve had in a while. As a professional, however, I don’t recommend you to exhaust yourself in this way EVER. Even if it means delaying the deadline, it’s better that you take time and go over your work thoroughly. That way you get to sleep, you get to eat, you get to be healthy and your work looks better.

Step 57

After finishing and sending the piece, there were parts I immediately realized I could have improved or made mistakes with. The mini-gun barrel is not bound at the end, the mech’s feet needs WAY more detail and etc. But anyways, the guys at IFX loved it and the response was generally extremely positive. This work to this date is my most faved piece on DA.

Working on something that is beyond 10th hour mark is just extremely boring and I don’t think I’ll be capable of pulling off something like this for a long while – at least until I’m feeling crazy again.

I started of by sketching my character whom I’ve named ‘Father Time’. I have given Father Time a few watches and clocks for effect and a walking stick to add a sense of age and frailty.

Sketch out your character

Once you have your character sketch in Photoshop give it a tidy up with the rubber tool.

Tidy up your line drawing

Adding vectors with the Pen Tool (P) is ultra simple and easy to do. Take your time defining the edges of your character. Make sure you group all edges inside one folder (I named mine lines), to keep things neat and organised inside your PSD. While you create your vector outlines you may find it helpful to give your layers an opacity of 50% or so to enable you to follow your outlined sketch behind. Once finished just put them all back to 100%.

Start creating your vector outlines

Your characters edges will not all be the same thickness. Staggering the thickness of your outlines gives your character a less mechanical style and a more hand drawn look.

Spend time getting your lines perfect

Once you are happy with your outlines you are ready to start giving your character its base colour. Remember to create all your base colour layers in a named group within your PSD below your edges/lines group.

Finished outlined character

I use the Pen Tool again to create my coloured layers below the lines folder.

Adding base colours

Finished base colours

Once you have all of your base colours in place it’s time to start adding the definition and shading to your character. Decide now where your light source is coming from. Above, behind, left, right, maybe below? Once you have decided, start creating your shadows and highlights in a separate group above your base colours group but below the lines group.

Choose your light source angle

You may want to add textures to your character – if so, follow these quick steps.

- Open your texture in Photoshop and go to ‘Edit’ – ‘Define Pattern’ – Here you can name your pattern.

- Select which layer you want the pattern to appear on and open its Layer style. Select your newly created pattern in ‘Pattern Overley’ – Choose the scale of the pattern here also.

- If you wish the pattern to be slightly darker, lighter or even to have a slightly different colour, I apply ‘Colour Overlay’ in ‘Layer Style’ – select your colour then take its opacity down to unveil the pattern underneath.

Adding a jean texture

Once you have your shadows in place take a little time to decide if your character needs more defining or colouring. I found at this stage that little Father Time needed more shadows on his face and his coat as they were far to plain a colour.

Needs slightly more depth

Father Time - Tick Tock

I hope this Tutorial has given you some inspiration to create your own characters in Photoshop. If you find yourself enjoying yourself far too much try your character in several different poses and situations.

Different poses

Step 1

First off you grab a few photos of really ugly mates and maybe one of yourself (me far right). Then place them where you like and start cutting them out. I thought I would just use images from the torso up in this post to save me a little time and to concentrate on the facial detail. If you can get your mates in Zombies poses the more it will help the authenticity of the image.

Choose your Zombies

Step 2

Find yourself a texture for the skin I wanted a dry peeling skin affect so I used a dry clay texture. Overlay the texture on each zombies skin and cut it out by lowering the opacity of the texture layer.

Choose a good texture and cut it out

Lower opacity to see what affect it has on your zombies faces

Step 3

Once you have the cut out the texture to fit the faces lower its opacity so that you can only just see it above your zombies skin. Try out a few textures until your happy with one. The one I used was great as it not only made the skin look dry and cracked it also looked sore and rotting. Perfect for zombies You can highlight parts of the texture making it look more like cracked skin. Either by using the burn tool lightly or darkening parts with the paintbrush.

Have fun testing different textures and see the awesome effects

Step 4

Right now to tidy up cut around your zombies take your time and make sure you have made the right choice with the zombies. No point in going to all the effort when you don’t really think your zombie is just not zombie enough. Here’s a few tips on how to place and select the right zombies.

1. Make sure your Zombies aren’t too over the top. I’m a traditional zombie guy I like the old style walking dead zombie slow and hungry – Check out Dawn of the Dead

2. They are zombies, there dead i.e zombies they don’t really smile or pull funny faces (so lets dump the funny looking one).

3. Layer your zombies, have a couple in the foreground and one in the background, play around with perspective until you are happy.

Make sure you have chosen the right zombies for your image! And get cutting

Step 5

To help you choose your perspective sometimes choosing your background can help. A background can give you depth to your image. It will set the scene and give your image the right mood if you choose the right one. Once again take your time use Flickr there are endless amounts of scenarios you can create.

Time to select a background

Step 6

Now to start adding the effects. I use a Wacom to add shading to my image you will find it helps with curves and blurring. Create a new layer for each bit you add too your post. This will stop you from making any mistakes on your actual zombie layer itself.

Use your Wacom to sketch on some rough shadow under the eyes and define the zombies faces i.e cheek bones and chins. Use the blur tool to blue the shadow this will fade it into the faces and make it look more realistic.

Right now it's time to start adding the gory bits

Step 7

As you can see in the last step I started to add some wounds to the zombies. As I have a Wacom I can spend lots of time illustrating wounds making them realistic but it takes a looong time. If you haven’t the time and want pretty much the same outcome search google or Flickr for fake wounds or real ones if you have a very strong belly there is plenty of imagery out there for you to play with. I also started to play with the zombies eyes a little here blanking them all out white gives the effect of death. They say the eyes are the windows to the soul but these guys have no souls so they don’t really need lovely looking eyes do they.

Make sure your zombies look rotten!

Take your time making the wounds look real

Use warp on your wounds to get them in the right perspective with enough tweaking and touching up it will look awesome. I used the paintbrush to make slight lines around the wound to make it look risen which then makes the it look as if there are lumps of flesh missing from the zombies face.

Step 8

Blood effects can be very cool

Adding blood to your image is easy to do. I simply created another layer on top of my zombie and started colouring different shades of blood where I though appropriate. Once your blood is sketched in simply use the blur tool with full opacity to blur your blood to the shirt and face.

I didn’t find any blood tutorials particularly helpful they all pretty much just embossed a vector layer to make it stand out and wet looking. I wanted the blood to be dry and soaked in apposed to wet and risen.

Right I think it's time for more blood!

Step 9

Burn some eyeballs!

Drawing in blood will take time sketch it in then blur it. Once you have a base coat of blood add a darker layer above it to add depth and age to the blood.

You can also start using the burn tool at this point burn. Use it under your zombies eyes and shaded places to create a darker harder feel to your zombies. Adding red around some of the edges like the nostrils will give a sore, worn effect.

Blood is good

Step 10

Hmmmm Tasty!

I found this dog bit mark on Devient Art so I tweaked it and moved it around to make it look more like a humans bite mark. I sketched a little red around each hole to make the cuts look sore and bloody.

I have also started to add shading to the far left zombie. You add another layer above the face layer and shade in where you want the shadow to be then use blur to heavily meld it into the face. (You can see the technique used more clearly in the next step)

All Zombies must have been bitten at some point! OM NOM NOM

Step 11

As you can see I also added a t-shirt graphic on the far right zombie I felt there was too much white space. I thought a zombie graphic would be very fitting. Remeber it takes time to get your zombies looking right keep adding plenty of shadow making them look as gaunt and as hungry as possible.

More blood and shadows

Step 12

I used the same technique for the highlights here as I used for the shadows. A good thing to do is add more than you actually need then slowly fade it away. As long as you have it on a separate layer as your zombie pictures it will not effect the skin and you can just keep adding highlights and shadows.

Zombie highlights

Step 13

I found myself repeatedly looking at the big gap in between the the zombie on the far right and the centre one. So I asked someone at work to pose for me and took lots of pictures of their hand. Best thing to do is test out loads of hand shapes. Different angles and shapes of hands can signify different things like anger or desperation. You could even have your zombie holding something like another hand?!

Empty space

Step 14

Dirty naughty hand!

The problem I had with this hand was that it was a slightly different colour to the zombie whom it belonged to. So I had to spend plenty of time adding new layers and putting plenty of fake blood to give it the look that it had been used for grasping eating and fighting.

Step 15

Right we are nearly there now. At this point take a good look around your post. Can any part of it be darkened, does the lighting look right, do my zombies have enough blood on them? (Seriously you can never have too much blood) Once your happy with all of your effects then have a little tidy up of edges. The burn tool makes a useful edge tool I find burning some of the edges will make them sharper and darker giving a much better effect.

The End is Nigh!!!!!!

Step 16

There you have it our finished Undead! They do not make a pretty picture but that’s what makes them dead good. If you are a huge zombie fan I would love to see some of your artwork so post your links up within the comments to show off your Zombie mates!

UGGGAAAAA UGGRRRRR

Happy Halloween Everyone!!!!

So once a week I try and find a really compelling tutorial to try out myself and see what I can learn from it. It is a perfect way to keep yourself on your toes with Photoshop. Here is a small roundup of sites I tend to browse weekly for inspiring tutorials.

PSDTUTS

PSHERO

PSDLearning

Tutorial9

Good Tutorials

Abduzeedo

PSD Fan

MickM

Adobe Tutorials

Deviant Art

Deviant Art may not be the most obvious of choices for Photoshop tutorial sites but I have found some of the most inspirational tutorials, designers and artists through Devient Art. You will not find a site more frequently updated by designers from all around the world than DA. I have also posted an example tutorial by a user below.

Example Tutorial