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Case Study "Out Of Space" by Mosk
We love personal projects, we love case studies & we love Mosk. Just right to the start of the weekend, we spread enough love for everyone. Enjoy this incredible case study For more information about Mosk please visit his website www.mosk.pl and make sure to add him on Facebook Out Of Space Details Case Study Final Image
Case Study "Year Zero" by Pawel Nolbert
The "Year Zero" piece from Pawel Nolbert was part as Ars Thanea's submission to the same-titled book for the design festival OFFF 2011. The specialty about it is the Type which was made out of plaster by Pawel himself. Year Zero by Pawel Nolbert Details Case Study The typography was created from a plaster poured into a letter forms cut out of paper, then foiled not to get too much water from the liquid plaster. After about two days, it was removed from the forms, then sculpted to create cracks, holes (except for bubble holes) and to diversify the surface a little bit. After that, the type was photographed, then retouched and composed together with the rest of the elements in Photoshop. Some particles were additionally created in 3dsMax. - Pawel Nolbert Where to find Pawel Nolbert on the web Behance Facebook Twitter
Case Study: TWC4 by Dobak Zsolt
Dobak Zsolt was one of the winners of last august "The World Collabs" competition at Abduzeedo. Today he will share with us his PSD file so we can check his steps and techniques. Enjoy! Where to find Dobak Zsolt http://cargocollective.com/dobakzsolt http://hicky2.deviantart.com/ Starting Image by Joao Oliveira Case Study Ddownload the .PSD file
Case Study "Sippin that Juice" by Parker Gibson
As a saturday morning special we present you a case study of a graffiti inspired typography done by KDU & IN member Parker Gibson. Find more of his work at http://www.helloparkergibson.com/ This is a short creative process for a piece I created for the latest release at Intrinsic Nature. I started with a sketch, and then using my tablet I was able to paint this in, and create some visual effects I found appealing, as well as the use of some texture and other design elements. Final Image Case Study After scanning in my drawing, I outlined it using a thick brush stroke, and the pen tool. At this point I began exploring colors. More progress has been made, with some details, and change in the approach of filling in the background and the words. Final Image Find more of his work at http://www.helloparkergibson.com/
Mirage Case Study by Peter Jaworowski
Peter Jaworowski needs no introduction, we have featured his work here plenty of times and the quality never goes down as he keeps impressing us. This case study is another amazing piece by Peter and the cool part about it is that Mirage is a personal work piece from him, and you get to see step by step how it was done. Enjoy! For more from Peter Jaworowski visit his behance gallery, check out his design studio Ars Thanea or simply follow him at twitter Mirage Personal Project - This is the first personal piece that I've done in a while...and it feels good! Close Ups Case Study
Case Study: Mux Mool Poster
Today I'm going to show a case study of a personal illustration I did recently. Having the will to experiment some new techniques, I found out that I should try more to include my drawings on my artworks, as artists like Sara Blake, Ian Macarthur, Gabz and others already do. Mixing manual and digital medias can be really handy, since at the same time that you got a unique trace on the original drawing, you can also erase the errors you did on the computer and enhance the details. Also, I thought about a tip that James White once said, about making a fan poster of a artist that you like. So I decided to do a series about it and the one I'm gonna show you is the second one poster, a tribute to the electronic musician Mux Mool, non commercial purposes, of course. So in this case study I will show you my creative process, from the first sketch all the way until the end. Sketching Ok, I must admit, my project sketches are horrible, I use it just to get a preview of what I'm going to do, but isn't that what a Sketch is all about? Don't worry guys, I put some subtitles so you could understand it better hehe. My initial concept was to make a joke with the name of the music, "No black crayon", using a carachter with many crayons on his hands, but I suddenly though that it would be more rad with I drew a more remarkable carachter and so I came out with this eyed old and dry tree. I also thought to use a Black Metal inspired typography for the name. Outlines I know this may sound obvious, but even if I'm doing a drawing in Photoshop, I always begin with the outlines and shapes and after I do the fill and shading. I'm just saying this because some people tend to think you should do the three steps at once. What may happen is that one will lost the proportion of things, so you better do first the outline before making the fill. Shading - iris Isn't that hard to make and iris, you just got to know how to fill it with dash in a circular direction, also add some reflects. Shading - body Achieving this type of wood texture it's about practicing and observation, later I will enhance the wrinkles on PS to give some depth. Adding color I've always found always better to add color on photoshop, but this is about my way to do things, of course, everyone has it preferences, I like because you can commit mistakes and experiment a lot of things. After I finished the drawing, I scanned it with 1200 dpi, it's a good resolution to get a lot of details and print it in a large scale, but you still can get great results using only 300 dpi scanned pics. Back to the coloring process, I basically make a layer above the drawing layer, I use some soft brushes to make the gradients and blends and use Multiply to apply it to the drawing. Outline Again, first i did the outline of this typography, I really wanted to give a strong lookto it, so I got inspired in some Black Metal Band logos. Dot Sading Dot shading isn't a new technique, but it's quite awesome and I must admit I'm quite addict to it lately. Basically, you make the shades and create depth by the distance of the dots, yep, this takes some good time to achive, the video bellow exemplifies this step. Dot Shading from Marcos Torres on Vimeo. Adding color Outline Dot Shading Adding color and gradients Final Result Well, there were some few experimentations till the final result, but the focus of this case study was about the drawing process, If don't got a good drawing, Photoshop won't save you probably. Some may say I should have used the white background instead of the black, but the idea was to make impossible to have a black crayon in there, If there was one, you wouldn't see it heheh just kidding. Hope you enjoyed and learned some quick tips.
Over Unity Case Study
In this case study you can see step-by-step how Chris Haines created the cover design for Cover Unity - Collide the Space EP. The artwork is a mix of 3D elements with photoshop touch ups, you can see it on videos and the steps in image. Check it out! For more from Chris Haines, visit NEON DREAMS It was a long process to finish this artwork, however it was well worth the effort. Hopefully the imagery matches the epic 8 minute plus songs on the record. Video Study Step By Step
Case Study: NINE by Perttu Murto
The wallpaper of the week is an artwork created by Perttu Murto for the UUtheory NINE contest. We really like the design and asked Perttu if he could send us a case study showing the process of creating it. He was super kind and send us a 10 step making of in which we can understand a bit more about how it was done. This artwork is originally made for UUtheory NINE contest, but it's also part of the desktopography 2010 exhibition. I wanted to create something mystic and scifi. I got this idea to make a big iron nine with apocalypse scenery. I worked this with the 3D artists Sami Kuronen, who made the 3d model of the 9. Step 1 Step 2 Step 3 Step 4 Step 5 Step 6 Step 7 Step 8 Step 9 Conclusion More Info about this artwork. Concept, illustration & post-production: Perttu Murto http://www.perttumurto.comhttp://twitter www.twitter.com/perttumurto3d model: Sami Kuronen http://www.samikuronen.com
Xmas Tree Typography in Photoshop
Christmas is already past and we are going to the end of another year. For this holidays season I created a simple card in which I designed a Christmas tree using the word XMAS, the idea was make some typographic experiment with that. After sketching and playing with Illustrator I ended up in Photoshop to finish the composition that was used for the card. So in this case study/tutorial I will show you my creative process on that, from the very beginning all the way until the end. Step 1 When I was thinking about creating a Christmas card I didn't know exactly what I wanted to do, then I got this idea of creating a little Christmas tree using the word XMAS. I got this idea while I was running. Then once I got back home I went straight to my desk and got my sketch book to see how that would look like in real life. My drawing skills are quite terrible, but at least I can have an idea of how things will look like. So I started off with a simple cone, then played with the word "xmas" to see how the characters would look like. In the end I played with some shades as you can see in the image below. Before we move to the next step I would like to reinforce the idea of the importance of sketching before going straight to the computer. You don't need to know how to draw perfectly well, the whole point of sketching is putting ideas on paper pretty quickly, you will never find another way as quick and that gives you more freedom as pencil and paper. Step 2 - Illustrator With the sketches, I took a photo of it and import it in Illustrator. After that using the Pen Tool (P) I started creating the basic lines of the XMAS tree. For the curved parts I used the Ellipse Tool (L) and then just delete some segments of it. You can have an idea of how the process went in the image below. Another very important detail is the space between the characters lie the X M A S. Without that the word would be unreadable. Step 3 After the vectorization part I started playing with colors and some 3D effects. However none of them caught my attention that much. Step 4 With the basic object done I started playing with some compositions. The first one was done in Illustrator and I just added an old paper texture over it with the texts and other elements. My first idea was exactly that, create a sort of vintage style card, however I wasn't still satisfied with the result. Step 5 As I wasn't pretty happy with the results in Illustrator I decided that it was time to go to the always reliable and savior Photoshop. So I copied the basic XMAS tree from in Illustrator and pasted in Photoshop. Step 6 To create the effect I wanted I imported a photo of a christmas wreath from Shutterstock. You can find the one I used at http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-63153112/stock-photo-christmas-wreath-o… Step 7 Once I had the christmas wreath with no background I duplicated it several times until I got a bunch of them covering all the area of the XMAS tree. Step 8 Here I grouped all the wreaths in one folder then I created a marquee selection of the XMAS tree vector from Illustrator. Step 9 Then I applied a mask in the wreaths folder so they would be visible only in the area of the XMAS tree. But as you can see in the image below, the result is not that realistic. The edges are too uniform and perfect, but to fix that problem is super simple. Step 10 - Creating a Brush Select some areas of the christmas wreath and copy then, after that duplicate and rotate until you get a uniform object with the edges with the leaves. Merge the layers into a new one and go to Image>Adjustments>Desaturate. Now that you get the object in greyscale, go to Image>Adjustment>Levels. Increate the black input so it gets very dark, also increase the white input to increase the contrast. Once you have the object in a very nice black and white tone, create a squared selection with the Rectangle Marquee Selection Tool (M) holding SHIFT. After that go to Edit>Define Brush Preset. Step 11 With the brush created in the step below, I started painting on the edges of the mask with white in order to make them more realistic. After that I duplicated the group and merged it into a layer so I could apply some layer styles. Step 12 With the layer selected go to Layer>Layer Style>Drop Shadow. Use Multiply for the Blend Mode with black for the color, 90% for the Opacity, 90º for the Angle. For the Distance use 15 pixels, the Spread use 0? and the SIze 30 pixels. Step 13 After that I used Inner Shadow to give some depth and create a sort of 3D effect. For the values I use Soft Light for the Blend Mode, 100% Opacity, -90º for the Angle, 25 pixels for the Distance, 0% for the Choke, and 20 pixels for the Size. Step 14 The last layer style was Inner Glow. I used Overlay for the Blend Mode, light grey for the color, Edge for the Source and 70 pixels for the SIze. Step 15 Here is the result I got after all these steps. It was already a much better result, however I wanted to add some cheesy Christmas decorations :) Step 16 The first thing I did before adding the decorations was to reduce the saturation. Step 17 Here I added some red christmas balls. I got them from a photo from Shutterstock. You can get it at http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-67508086/stock-photo-girl-with-christma… As you can see I used the same red ball several times, however I used different rotations. But they looked too fake in there because they looked like they were simply put on the wreath. Step 18 To fix the red ball problem and make them look as they were more integrated with the tree I duplicated the tree and cleaned the layer styles. Moved this new copy so it was in front of the other layers and then I went to Layer>Layer Mask>Hide All. After that with the Brush Tool (B) and the brush I created in the step 10 I started painting on the layer mask with black hiding some parts of the balls. Step 19 Here I added some cheesy light effects, as the tradition of my family's Christmas Tree, the lights are alway present, and lots of them. I used a photo of a light burst then simply duplicated it several times. LIke I did with the red balls, I changed the angle and the size of some lights. Step 20 For each light I applied a different Hue and Saturation, so I was able to create some red, green, blue, pink and yellow lights. Step 21 Select all layers and duplicate them, after that merge all the duplicated layers into a new one and go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur. Use 15 pixels for the Radius. After that duplicate this layer once. Step 22 For the 2 blurry layers use 50% opacity, however the Blend Modes will be different. For the one on top use Screen and the one beneath use Overlay. Conclusion The last thing I did was adding the text and the Abduzeedo logo. The font I used was Helvetica Neue Ultra Light. I also added an old paper texture on top of everything using Multiply for the Blend Mode at 20% opacity. So the whole idea of this case study/tutorial was show you how I went from a simple idea all the way till the final result. I hope that might help you on your future projects and also motivates you to try to sketch more before jumping to the computer. Click on the image for full preview
High-Rise B-Movie Poster Case Study by Falcon White Design
Inspired by such great artists like Drew Struzan I wanted to do a different kind of a promo photo that looks more like a kind of a lobby card with a mixture of painted touch and filthy film grain look. Step 1 First I needed some hilarious photos in front of a green screen to make the extraction in Photoshop easier. Step 2 After browsing through millions of photos I chose those body parts I would like to put together because the perfect image is mostly hard to find. So I did this “digital Frankenstein-ing” with layer masks. The models were mixed with different stock photo material, like falcons or owls. Why? ‘Cause Dinosaurs are extinct. ;) Step 3 With the combination of adjustment layers and the rectangle tool feat. Asphalt and wall textures I build a rooftop. Because I don’t have a helicopter anymore I had to buy an adequate stock photo. ;-) Step 4 Running dudes in front of a white layer doesn’t kick ass at all. So it’s better to place another stock photo – this time a high-rise skyline – in the background. With some self-made vanishing point lines it should fit right. I also build a quick helipad, to make it clearer that the helicopter already dropped the three amigos on the top of that building. Step 5 To make it look more Rock’n’Roll and not like a cheap montage, I played around with some adjustment layers like color balance or gradient maps. Step 6 I added a few shadows and a smooth vignette. For the contrast I gave everything a little bit more brightness. Step 7 The old-school method of dodge and burn helped me a lot giving everything a constant look. I matched the colors of the helicopter optically and a couple of adjustment layers later… I couldn’t believe it, but my image looked like this. ;-) Step 8 Finally brought it to an end with the finishing move “old movie projector lines” followed by some noise and a smooth blur to create the look of a sleazy, 70s B-movie scene. I hope you enjoyed this case study for abduzeedo.com. About the Author Hi, design lovers all over the web. My name is Ralf Krause and I am a freelance designer from Germany. Most of my artworks are “Straight outta the 80s” inspired and loaded with colors. To see them all, go to HYPERLINK "http://www.behance.net/eyeofthedesigner" www.behance.net/eyeofthedesigner or - even better - check out the wonderful print/web/motion works on HYPERLINK "http://www.falconwhite.com" www.falconwhite.com If you’re also twitter addicted you can stay in contact via twitter.com/falconsarego Cheerio!
Sonudos Case Study by Jennifer Cirpici
The image of this Study Case I'm about to explain is made for the client Soundos. She's a comedian in The Netherlands. I worked on it at work for 2 days, around 13 hours. It was a fun project and the client was very happy with it when it was done. And when the client is happy, I can consider it done. First version Here is the first version. Nothing special about it yet; basically I've rendered her and searched for a nice background to put her in. It was important that the whole image was capable for her site (www.soundos.nl) and that the perspective was right. The first idea was that she was boxing in a ring and that she knocked out someone... I couldn't find any good stocks for that though. Later I came with the idea of street fighting and a depressing ghetto area. Adding lighting Because the light comes from behind her, parts of her body and clothes need to have a lot of lighting and other parts need to be dark. I also added reflection in the rain water, although that still isn't 100% perfect, the rest will come later when we take care of the details. Welcome to Sin City! I made everything black and white and took care of more lighting. To create more depth I pasted a dumpster and blurred it a bit. Also on the top of the dumpster I took care of the lighting and shadow. Nothing has to be perfect, so I did the dumpster in a way that you cannot read ''Trash'' fully yet, or maybe you wouldn't read it at all and you would notice it the next time. It's always good to leave your work as it is and to look at it the next day. You'll notice mistakes or get new ideas then! So I decided to add the rain the next day of work. Adding rain! We came to the part I love the most! I created my own rain brush and brushed rain. I also painted rain on top her head, clothes, the background and the dumpsters. It's starting to be nice! But we're far from the end result yet (to give you an idea how far we are: we're now at layer 136 and the end is 389). Blood and lots of details! Sometimes black and white and just 1 colour works and sometimes it looks really ugly. In this case it works fantastic; it gives the whole image the extra touch it needed. To make the image a bit scarier, I only gave the blood colour. I created blood splashes on her arm, her clothes, her shoe (like she also kicked him), on the ground and on the body of the man she knocked out. Details are very important to finish an artwork. You really should take the time for it.Small details like 1 blood line on her arm or lighting on the blood on the ground, splashes of water under her chin, ripples on the rain water etc. really makes your work stand out. Don't be lazy and just take like 8 hours or more for the details. Look back at it at the end of the day and notice the difference! I also played with Noise and did it on soft light to create this old movie effect. About the Author Jennifer Cirpici is a 20 year old full time designer from Amersfoort, The Netherlands. When she is not hanging out with her friends and going to the cinema, shopping for sneakers, clothes or make up she makes Photomanipulations combined with Digital Painting for a wide variety of clients and herself. Art is and always will be a big part of her life.
Mentaway Logo Design Case Study
A few weeks ago my brother Eduardo Sasso showed me an idea he had for a web service that would be perfect for those who travel a lot or simply want to keep track of their adventures when they are away from their places. I loved the concept and I joined him along side with Gisele Muller and Fabiano Meneghetti to make that app become real. The name was already chosen, Mentaway. Talking to my brother and Gisele, the creators of the whole idea, they gave me some insights on how they see the service, the goals and philosophy behind it. My role would be come up with the design. The first thing I did was list some keywords: Traveling Map Route Compass Direction Away Pinpoint I started looking for compass, map and direction images. I collected quite a few images and got some ideas already in my mind. First concept: Lettering and Arrow. The first concept I explored was using an arrow in the lettering. Similar to the Fedex concept but using the A and the Y. After sketching I went to the computer and tried to come up with something based on those ideas. It turned out that it wasn’t a very solid concept, it was hard to apply it in the lettering especially because the A and Y would have to be aligned in a way in order to make the arrow visible. Plus I thought it didn’t have personality and uniqueness. The Mentaway logo had to be something with a symbol in my point of view. Second concept: Compass and direction sign Time for the plan b, I checked the images I had selected and decided to explore the compass element. I also liked the idea of those direction signs, it is pretty much what the service is all about. Then back to some more sketching.... I know I sucked at that. I wanted to use the compass but not exactly the same representation, so I created a 3 point compass only. After that I noticed that playing with negative spaces I could make that symbol looks like a direction sign as well. So here is what the symbol is all about. With the symbol pretty much done it was time to choose the typeface and colors. In my point of view a good logo is that one that can be very recognizable in either color or back and white. Below you can see the logo in black over white background and vice-versa. For the colors the goal was to make it super friendly and also a bit colorful, like when you travel and you get a map of the subway or train they always have the different colors for the routes. With that in mind we chose 3 colors for the 3 main directions, Blue, Yellow and Red, but less saturated hues. The typeface is always something that always takes a lot of time looking for and testing. Below you can see some of the fonts I tested. The final concept. I am still working on the logo, especially adjusting the proportion and sizes, the best way to do that is by optical adjustments using a grid. But as we needed to release the splash as soon as possible I completed the final concept with two variations, vertical and horizontal. For more information about Mentaway visit http://mentaway.com
Case Study: Nike Apparel
In this case study will go over step by step how the masters from Ars Thanea (Peter Jaworowski and Karol Kolodzinski) created this amazing photo illustration for Nike, to be part of Nike's 2010 t-shirt collection. This just opened my mind to so many ideas, hope the same will happen to you, check it out! Take It To The Max & Zero Gravity Agency: Ars Thanea Digital Artists: Peter Jaworowski, Karol Kolodzinski 3D Artist: Pawel Wilkos The Process Details Final Result
Mecanicow - Case Study by Marcos Torres
I'm pleased to announce that I was one of the artists selected for Cow Parade 2010 Porto Alegre, Brazil. My initial concept was to make a customized cow with gears like a engine, but it would take a lot of time and money. Since I didn't have that, I decided to try to apply a style of geometric/tribal illustration, that I have already created. After hours of work I was really happy with the result I got. So in this case study I will show you quite a few pictures of the whole process. I'd like to thank everyone whow supported me on this project. The photos were taken by Alexandre Raupp (http//:www.flickr.com/alexandreraupp) The process The final result About the Author Hey buddies! I'm Marcos Torres, a 19 year old art director/freelancer from Brazil, I'm here to bring some new interesting stuff to you. You can see my portfolio at http://flickr.com/marcostorres. Any request or jobs opportunities contact me via email to marcostorres90@gmail.com, also follow me on twitter http://twitter.com/marcos333 to get in touch with cool design news.
Case Study – Bleach by Sharon Milne aka ChewedKandi
Hey, my name is Sharon Milne and I go by the moniker ChewedKandi. I have a passion for vector art and have been creating digital art portraits and illustrations for the past decade. I’m self taught in the programs I use and especially love teaching others the benefits and wonders of Adobe Illustrator. All the vector work I produce is 100% vector with no raster effects. I now write tutorials and articles for sites such as VectorTuts+ and produce a variety of pieces for commercial and private clients. I can be found on Twitter, Facebook and deviantART, as well as my portfolio on ChewedKandi.net. I wanted to create a vector portrait with some of the facial features exaggerated, specifically the eyes. I had previously created a vector portrait in this style so I wanted to see if I could pull it off again. This time around, I wanted to make the focus the eyes. I picked out a stock image by Dagwanoenyent-Stock, one which I had previously seen and it had stuck in my mind. My tools of the trade are: Adobe Photoshop CS4, Adobe Illustrator CS5, A5 Wacom Bamboo... as well as a large glass of Dr Pepper Zero and the odd cat jumping up on my desk to try and play with my stylus! Step 1 By using the lasso tool to select areas and enlarge and shrink them, duplicating and flipping areas, I got a rough idea of what I wanted the piece to look similar to. My reference images post Photoshop aren’t the most polished of images, but they do what is needed. I get a rough idea of the dimensions of the face and a rough idea of the shadow/light cast on the face. I use the smudge tool to smooth out some of the areas to make the curves of the face seem more natural. Then I go into using colour balance and brightness/contrast to modify the colours slight. Step 2 Now my reference image is ready for Illustrator. Using the reference image I begin with doing some base layers which split the face and the neck/chest in two layer folders. I begin adding low opacity layers to build up on the shading. I use the reference image for each shape to make sure I’m following the curves of the face and lighting. Throughout this step I’m using only 2 colours, the base and the shading colour, no gradients or meshes are used at this point. Step 3 Thankfully due to completing many portraits, I’m able to not need to refer to the reference image now until later on. I begin adding lighter coloured shapes to give the skin shading more depth and to highlight features such as the nose, top lip and brow bones. I’ve now used my 3rd colour and still not using gradients or meshes. Step 4 Now I begin to add transparent radial gradients. I still use the same 3 colours I’ve previously used but changing the blending modes. Due to the neck area and face area being in separate layer folders, the shading is easier to do on the neck to give clear definition to the face/jaw line. I use light transparent gradients to highlight areas on the face, again using the same colours previously used; just changing the blending mode. Step 5 As the skin has a variety of tones and I don’t wish for the portrait to be too porcelain in appearance, I begin add blends within clipping masks to give blush to the cheeks, greys to the corner of the eye socket and more highlights on the chest area. Step 6 As I’m feeling the skin is almost complete, I begin to work on the lips more in detail. Using transparent gradients on a variety of blending modes, width profile brushes and many circles, I add shine and a dash of colour to the lips. In general when I’m shading skin, I see the lips as part of the skin and make the basic contrast while rendering the skin. This is so the lips don’t look as if they are floating on top of the skin. Step 7 I add further colour and some highlighting lines to give the lips a bit more of a shine and gloss appearance as well as a slight light reflection on the tip of the nose. This gives the nose a bit more definition. Step 8 I now refer back to the reference image to get the basic shapes of the eyes and basic details. I lower the opacities of the majority of the shapes so I can get a good idea of the colour effect I want to go for. I don’t copy and paste the eyes as I don’t wish for them to look perfectly identical, however whatever I do to one eye, I do to the other so the effects are balanced. Step 9 I now add transparent radial gradients, brush strokes and dots to add detail to the eyes. I use a variety of blending modes and opacities to give an interesting contrast effect. The strokes within the eyes are of a variety of colours and thanks to the lower opacities and gradients behind, they give a great effect. Step 10 Further transparent radial gradients and a variety of solid colour low opacity shapes to give further depth and detail to the eyes. I use many radial white gradients around the eyes to give a subtle highlight effect. This method was also added around and on the lips to give a highlight/sparkle to them. This also softens any harsh lines. Step 11 Now adding eyelashes to frame the eyes using the same width profile brushes with a variety of weights and colour. Step 12 I want to give a frame to the portrait using plain white hair so I try out a very basic style of hair. I don’t want the hair to be too detailed that it takes away from the eyes. So I use a white stroke rectangle to first frame the vector then build on it with strands of hair. I also add further colour to the lips to give them a little more attention. Step 13 I try adding the eyebrows, however once added it makes the hair look too simple and I feel I need to change the hair. Upon showing it to a friend he confirms this and it’s back to the drawing board! Step 14 After playing around with some sketches of framing hair and adding a few more gradients to give more depth in the skin, I add basic shapes to give a larger frame. With the hair in this style I feel it draws the viewer into the face and onto the eyes... which as I say I want as the focal point! Step 15 I add further details to the hair to make the base layer shape of the hair less chunky and add a beauty spot near the mouth. A lot of my portraits include moles and beauty spots as they have hidden meaning where ever they are situated. Although from time to time in my non-conceptual pieces I place them purely to highlight an area of the portrait. In this case, I want to balance the eyes and lips slightly so I place it on the top lip area. This completes my vector piece.
Old to Young Case Study in Photoshop by Cassio Braga
Reading the comments about the Photoshop Battle and I noticed the a lot of people were interested in knowing and seeing the images that were created during the event. Because of that I decided to recreate one of the images I did in my first battle, which was my favorite. This time however I had more time to pay attention to some details, in the event we had only 30 minutes to come up with an idea and make it come true. So as I mentioned before this image, I will present in this case study, was created in my first duel and the subject was water. I really like the result because besides the visual strength it has a simple idea that makes us wonder and think about life and aging. Video of the Photoshop Battle Abduzeedo - Battle of Photoshop from Alexandre Guterres on Vimeo. For the whole composition I used 6 other images as you can see in the case study that follows now. Step 1 The first image I selected was a photo of a little girl that we have taken last year in the end of a photo session back in the studio where I work, StudioMe. I chose this image because I really like the expression on her face, she is only 7 years old but was very comfortable in front of the camera. Right after this I placed the girl’s photo in my composition I selected a photo of an old lady that was taken again in another photo session at StudioMe. Step 2 Incredibly the two images matched pretty well one I put one over the other, so all I have to do was to create a good transition between the two faces right below the nose line. This transition was done simply by putting the image of the girl in a layer beneath the old lady layer in which I added a layer mask and hid the layer. Then with a very soft brush I started to make some areas visible, but very smoothly and natural. In order to make the transition very realistic I made some adjustments using the Liquify filter to move the nose a little bit down on the face of the girl. After that I did a color adjustment to make the hue of the skin of both photos match. To do that I used some Adjustment Layers such as Curves and Vibrance. Step 3 The next step I started to create the mood for the composition, sort of like how I would like to perceive the idea behind the composition. To do that I created a selection to separate the top from the bottom part. For the top part I created this sort of vignette effect to driver the user attention to the face, like the focal point. For the bottom part, I just did some color adjustments to make sure that the girl really looked as if she was underwater. Step 4 To make the scene more realistic, specially the underwater part, it was necessary to add some light effects. So in this part of the process I looked for an image to create the caustics effect. In optics, a caustic or caustic network is the envelope of light rays reflected or refracted by a curved surface or object, or the projection of that envelope of rays on another surface. The caustic is a curve or surface to which each of the light rays is tangent, defining a boundary of an envelope of rays as a curve of concentrated light. Therefore in the image to the right, the caustics can be the patches of light or their bright edges. These shapes often have cusp singularities. To add some depth I applied a blur to the caustic effect and I also added some blurry air bubbles. Still I thought the image needed even more depth. So I added a layer and applied a render clouds and after that used the Gaussian Blur to make it super blurry, enough to give the idea that the background wasn’t empty. Now for the underwater part I created a sort of inverted the illumination. To do that I used a Curves Adjustment Layer in which I pulled all the channels up increasing the brightness of the image. I also Inverted the mask to hide this adjustment and then with a very soft brush I started make the layer visible, that way the transition would be much more smooth. Step 5 The bubbles in the water made the difference in terms of realism. This part took me more time because I had to do some testing. To make the effect as realistic as possible the bubbles needed to reflect the rest of the image, but a little bit darker. However I didn’t like the result of none of the images I was testing, only after quite a lot of time I found the image I was looking for, with some subtle air bubbles. Even though the image might not be the most coherent in terms of photography and with the composition, in my humble opinion they were the ones that created the best effect. Those little bubbles really give this ideas that they are making the aging process turning the old lady into a child. Technically speaking, the bubble layers were a layer with a very light background with the bubbles, so I simply inverted it and change the Blend Mode to Screen. In case you don’t know, the Scree mode hides all black pixels of the layer. Still in this step I selected the lenses of the glasses of the old lady layer and then applied a blueish gradient as if it was reflecting the water. The gradient layer was created on top of the old lady layer and then I applied the Soft Light Blend Mode. Step 6 Here the process was almost done, just some fine tunes and little tweaks. I added some bright spots on the water surface, change the color of the old lady eyes to a more blueish tone and applied a Smart Sharpen only in the top part, that way the two parts would match a little better. The last thing I did here was to apply a Photo Filter Adjustment Layer with blue with 10% of Transparency on top all the other layers. That way all layers would sort of get better blended together. Step 7 The whole process to create this image took me like 10 hours, however a good amount of this time was just testing different images trying to find the best ones. I hope you like this case study and that it may help you. Feedback is always appreciated, so feel free to share your opinion with comments and tweets. About the Author Cassio Braga is an art director and digital artist from Candelária, RS, but currently based in Porto Alegre. He is graduated in advertising from ESPM and have already worked for some big Porto Alegre agencies such as Escala and DCS. Currently working at StudioMe.
Case Study: Isolation Abstract Illustration
In this case study Ali Al-Zahrani show the entire process of how he creates his abstract works from beginning to the end. It's really amazing to see how people create their work and this process it's totally different from what I have seen before. Check it out! For more from Ali Al-Zahrani visit www.time24.me