In this tutorial, we’ll over over how I made the Druid picture here.
With 12 steps, we’ll go over removing the background, adding more realistic hair, color correction, adding textures, shadows and hightlights, all to make a simple figurine pop out and come to life!
Be sure to check out the other tutorials here at MentalMirage, our new interview with Vitaly Alexius, inspiration posts, and much more!
Step 1:
This is our startup image (originally found here). It’s important to find a figurine with a certain amount of detail in it, or the effect will just not be as good (or alternatively, you have to put in a lot more effort to make anything out of it).
Duplicate your layer and erase the grey background. Then hide the original layer (Note: I didn’t do this, but I’m asking you to, to save you later troubles with masking out hair).
Step 2:
Take/make a small brush filled with only a few pixel spread around (you can download my custom brush for this here, it’s very simple). Use the Smudge tool to pull the beard in the directions it’s flowing. It’s is important to start within the bear and pull outwards. Also don’t have your Smudge brush set on to hard a setting or it won’t have the desired effect.
Step 3:
Zoom into to the eyes, make a selection around them (I simply used the Polygon Lasso tool), and copy them to a new layer. Go into “Edit -> Free Transform” and make the eyes roughly twice the size, but be sure they are still positioned over the original eyes (might take a bit of tweaking). Then with a mix of Levels (for contrast, CTR+L) and Color Balance (CTR+B) make them have a very strong yellowish/reddish color. Go into “Filter -> Blur -> Gaussian Blur” and give them a small amount of blur, so the edges completely disappear. Set this layer to “Overlay” and copy it, making the second layer also to “Overlay”.
Step 4:
Go and get a metal texture somewhere on the net, there’s tons of free ones. Then make sure it’s very contrasted with Levels. Position this metal texture over all the metal’ish areas on the picture, and then put the layer to “Overlay” with 45% opacity.
Step 5:
Use a soft black brush, and gently start painting in shadows. This is purely up to your own creativity to make it right, so it might take a few tries on your first go with it. The thing your trying to do isn’t make NEW shadows, but more to make the current ones better. So to start off, just gently make the areas that already have shadows, have stronger shadows, creating depth.
Step 6:
Then do the exact same with a white brush, painting over the highlighted areas.
Step 7:
Select All (CTR+A) and go into “Edit -> Copy Merged” (CTR+SHIFT+C) and make a new layer. Go into Color Balance (CTR+B) and give the layer a slightly green tint, and then put it on 75% opacity. Copy that layer, put it on Overlay with 22% opacity.
Step 8:
Make a new layer filled with white, then go into “Filters -> Render -> Lightning Effects” and try to get the effect below. Then set this layer to “Multiply”.
Step 9:
Select All (CTR+A) and go into “Edit -> Copy Merged” (CTR+SHIFT+C) and make a new layer. Then softly erase everything that isn’t the beard/hair. Then go into “Filter -> Blur -> Gaussian Blur” and give it a small amount of blur. Then set the layer to “Overlay”.
Step 10:
Then go and find a nice picture of a forest. If it’s not green enough, go into Color Balance and bring forth the green and yellow colors. Go put the layer behind your original, making it pop up behind him. Then go into “Filter -> Blur -> Gaussian Blur” and give it a small amount of blur. Then duplicate the layer, and set the second layer to “Overlay”
Step 11:
Make a soft black transition at the bottom. You can either do this with a BIG soft brush, or with the Gradient Tool. Whatever is easiest for you.
Step 12:
Add whatever text you like! Personally I found that the font “Polla” had a forest/druid’ish feel to it.
I hope you enjoyed this tutorial! If you did, please post a comment, or even better, post your result! Either here in the comments section, or over at the MentalMirage Flickr group!
Be sure to check back often for more tutorials, interviews, inspiration posts and more!
Support a starving artist and buy some prints!
January 31st, 2009 at 1:06 am
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what I have to do please
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That was good! It really does not look like a figurine anymore! Thanks for sharing this tutorial! Keep up the good work!
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