October 11, 2010 from guest's blog
This is my first tutorial ever so bear with me! I wanted to thank Abduzeedo for giving me this great opportunity. I am going to show you guys how to do my own submission for the Abduzeedo World Collabs 3 : James White. First let me warned you, that I won't be telling you all the steps but I'll be giving you hints that will help you make your "own" creation.
So I'll show you my techniques of shaping the colors and creating this vibrant light effect. The idea that I wanted to project in this collaboration was to put my "own" style from the original file of James White.
I picked out the PSD file from the given link of Abduzeedo : http://abduzeedo.com/world-collabs-3-james-white I must say that I really loved the colors on the original file of James White, the colors were so warm and futuristic.
My tools of battle are: the one and only Adobe Photoshop CS3, as well a couple cans of Pepsi and most importantly the music! I can't live without music so for this artwork; I must admit that I was just kept playing one song on "repeat" and it was Adrian Lux - Teenage Crime (Axwell & Henrik B Remode). Yes! By the way, this artwork took me about 3 hours to do! Okay, let's do this!
Step 1
First, really take a close look at the layers of the PSD, to see how the designer worked on his file because we all worked on different ways. By the way, James White has a really cool simple way of working along the layers. Everything was really well separated so it was easy to for me to work on it. This collaboration was to put a little bit of me but by also respecting his part of the collaboration.
After taking a closer look to the PSD, I just "desaturated" the whole thing and restart the project with my own colors and effects. Plus, I have resized the "circle" to make more space for the final details of my submission.
Step 2
Merge all the "Shards" layers together and take out the layer visibility for now. Let's start with the background, just make a simple gradient departing from the bottom to top. I've used the color #070c35 (dark blue) to black. I really like to start my work with a dark background so this way I have more fun with the lighting!
Step 3
Now let's make "Shards" layer visible and give it some "outer glow" from the blending options. I've used the color white so it is easier for me to play with it. The white color will be the base of your lighting effect. After duplicate the "Shards" layer and you will have a solid base of the "circle".
Step 4
Now let's get the radial gradient and pick two (2) colors to create the first color layer of the "circle". I've used "foreground to transparent" on the gradient and my two colors were cyan and the dark blue (#070c35). To give more punch to the gradients, just blend the layer to "overlay".
Step 5
Now you just basically repeat the "Step 4" but you change your color cyan to "pink" and voilà! The center of your piece is now done!
Step 6
Now you've setup the "circle" color base, here comes the "Fun Part". This is the part where you can be really creative with the lighting because now everything that will matter , is how the colors will blend in different kind of effects. As long as the base of your artwork is solid, the rest is up to you.
For my part, I added some white blurry shapes of white circles to give some more lighting to the "circle". I also added some lines and shapes and played with the blending options.
Step 7
I add further color shapes around the "circle" and blended them with the lines. After I've created some more shapes and afterwards added some "cloud" stock brushes in the background.
Step 8
Now activate the "Sparks" layer and change the foreground color to cyan. After I duplicate the very same layer and do a rotation of 180 degrees and place it at the bottom of the "circle". Now you have the "Sparks" all around it.
I also added some finishing touches like a stock image of a "Lighting Sparkle". I just played with it, I duplicated it and blended it and created some more sparkles! I also added some particles brushes processing their way along the lines. The artwork looks pretty done but not yet! There's still a few steps away!
Step 9
Now create a rectangle of about 30 pixels and set the background color to a beige color (#ecd193). Duplicate it and place it all around the artwork. My idea behind this beige border was to pay a little tribute to James White. This has been part of this style so I wanted to honor his trademark.
Step 10
Now take the very same layers of the beige rectangle and put an opacity of 40% and rotate them a little just to give an effect of borders overlaying themselves.
Step 11
Now for the piece of resistance, I've decided to put the middle circle layer on and give it some outer glow from the blending options. To finalize my submission, I've put the logo of James White - Signalnoise right in the middle. This last touch is the one that completes my World Collabs 3 submission.
