20. | Tutorials 3 + 4 + 5
Requested by lover_of_narnia
For this icon, we're going to start out with this screencap, which I believe is from Screencapped. It's a lovely cap and I love the sense of movement in it. This was for a Lord of the Rings battle a few months ago and the theme was soft. The first thing we're going to do is crop it.
This is an unusual crop since Arwen is pushed to the right rather than in the center. There really is no rhyme or reason for this - I usually just resize my canvas and then move the image around until I'm happy with it. Once I had this, I duplicated it twice, set the bottom layer on screen (100%) and the top layer on soft light (100%) to give it some brightness and contrast.
This is a good start. But I wanted it to be purple and have a sort of soft, plush feel, like Arwen's cloak. I added a color fill layer in #E1B8F9 between the soft light and screen layers and set it to soft light to get this:
This color is really pretty, but the image has lost a lot of contrast and I'd like it to be a little darker purple. I added another color fill layer, this time in #1D012E to give the image the color and contrast I wanted.
This is much better, but it's still missing something. So I added this texture by mm3butterfly, flipped it 180 degrees, and set it on screen.
Now just resize from 200x200 to 100x100 and voila!
For this one, I started with this promo still from Merlin's Keep. The first thing I did was crop it down and center it since the theme was capes and cloaks and I wanted Gwaine's cape to the the major focal point in this icon.
Next, I duplicated it twice and did what I always do - set the bottom layer to screen (100%) to brighten and the top layer to soft light (100%) for contrast. I proceeded to erase the snow on both of those layers because it made it too bright and it was kind of eye-hurting (understatement). I did use a soft brush (set around 45-65 point, I think), so I did end up erasing a bit of Gwaine here and there and I did end up missing bits around him, but that isn't going to be an issue.
At this point, I decided that the background was distracting but Gwaine's hair made it impossible for me to cut him out of the background without wanting to flip a table. So I settled for painting over the snow - I did this in two layers with my brush on a 45 point with the opacity at 40%. I adjusted it a little from time to time, but mostly stayed the same. I missed a few pieces here and there, but that's alright, since it adds a bit of interest in the final product. One layer was placed above the screen layer and the other was placed below it. Doing it this way instead of just cutting him out did also add a bit of glowy affect around Gwaine's face for an added bonus for later.
The next thing I did was pump up the saturation of the image so I could make the cloak a brighter red. Since I use Photoshop Elements 7, I ended up using a hue/saturation adjustment mask and moving the saturation to +62 and painting over Gwaine's face on the mask with my paintbrush set on black to remove the ugly oversaturation on his face.
I wasn't entirely happy with the way the icon looked here, so I added a black color fill layer and used that same black brush (set to 100%) to erase some of the mask over Gwaine's body.
The last thing I did was add this texture by mm3butterfly and turned it black and white, then set it on screen. It is one of my favorite textures and I use it in a lot of my work, both in its normal form and in black and white. All that is left at this point is to resize to 100x100.
This icon is a pretty simple icon, even by my standards. It was made from this screencap (This is the much smaller version that I resized while cropping - the original is from Screencapped and I don't feel like going to find it right now.) and cropped down to 200x200.
Next, I did duplicated it twice and set the bottom one to screen (100%) and the top one to soft light (100%), as always.
Since the general prep is done and it looks alright, I added a color fill layer in #16294A set on screen to color it.
It looks a little flat to me, so I added a foreground to transparent gradient in #45ADA8 set to screen at 0 degrees to create a lighting effect.
Now the icon looks a tiny bit too bright and it could use a touch of contrast. I duplicated the soft light layer and lowered the opacity to 54%. Then just a matter of resizing and it's done.
Just a reminder - these tutorials are not meant so that anyone can reproduce my work exactly. They are for instructional purposes only.