derp derp

[alexander.livejournal.com]

MAKE YOUR BASE

HERE IS MY IMAGE.

I usually do two things with my images!
and

The smart sharpen thing lets you control your sharpening to an anal degree. And the levels works by dragging little arrows at the bottom of the graph-looking thing right and left. I also redraw if anything needs to be redrawn, and THEN I resize to 100x100. You can readjust your levels if you need to, but usually it looks pretty nice.

Now! I make a new layer over the lineart and I take a color that is generally going to be what I'm coloring (blue for the hair, skintone for the face, red for the eye and inside of the mouth etc). Over on your layers tab you can make your layers do different things! I click on 'color' and then adjust the opacity of the layer until the colors are pretty faint.

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PAUSE FOR ACTIONS. If you haven't made actions... well. I love actions. I mainly make them for each character I make icons of!



Here is my action palette thing. An action is basically a recording of a certain order of things you tell photoshop to do. So, say you want to 'resize, sharpen, adjust bright/contrast, color blue'. Click on the little Square with a square in it button (next to the trashcan) and then start doing the steps you want. When you're done, hit the square 'stop' button. Whenever you need an action, select it from your list and hit the triangle button. I usually do one for making numbers of layers and such, because I hate making new layers XD.

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I usually blow my icons up to 600 or 700 % because I need it to be HUGE TO WORK.



And see that green arrow? That's my AJ PRETENDS SHE CAN DO LIGHT. Which is just so I kind of remember what I am doing. This arrow does NOTHING USEFUL I just like to pretend I can do things.

That icon has 10 layers set underneath the lineart, with the lineart set as 'multiply' (over on that layer selection where you used 'color' for the lineart up there).


Now, first thing I do is hair!

BASE COLOR

The layers, DARK 1, DARK 2 and LIGHT 1 are all clipping masks. They are a layer over a layer you've colored on. So, I have colored the hair base color, and when I put a layer over it and then set this layer to clipping mask -- say, DARK 1, it doesn't matter where I color on that layer, the color will only show up OVER where I colored the base color.

DARK 1

DARK 2

LIGHT 1 (set this to hard light)

I am a pretty incompetent shader, I will say this now. I usually just sort of doodle about on the icon and am like :D;; haha it looks a little better now and move on! But it seems to work for me.

I use blur on each layer and then I use "sharpen more" on each blurred layer.



And then I tweak opacity until the hair looks okay.

and then I lighten the base hair layer!


The skin is kind of the same.

There is a base layer. And then I take a darker color and make a rounded pretend shade. Yeah, I can't shade, shhh. Then I blur this layer and add a lighter layer over that.



Blur and opacity tweaking again!



ABOVE the skin layer color your eye whites and your teeth. Since we tinted the mouth before, we don't have to tint it red, but you can color that too if you FEEL THE URGE!1.



With the eyes I like to do two layers. I do a DARK LAYER and fill in the whole thing and then touch it up with a LIGHT LAYER. Sometimes the eye doesn't pop enough! And then I do a blob of color over the lineart and set that to 'color dodge' if I want to make it pop a bit more.




... How do I shade clothes? If you answer "the same as hair and skin" you're right! Usually with lights and darks.



You can also do patterning (I color the base and then make a clipping mask and fill that layer with the pattern and then adjust the opacity until the pattern looks the way I want.)


DO THE BACKGROUND HOW YOU WISH. I'M DUMB so I just do color fills b):

HERE YOU GO! ... make sure to erase the spots you want white. ... and get rid of your light arrow.


You could stop here, that is perfectly reasonable! Or you can do the next few steps:

FLATTEN YOUR IMAGE select all, and then copy, and then paste! So you have two of the same image in the same icon.



Set the top layer to 'soft light' (sometimes I use 'overlay' but soft light usually works) and use a very weak blur over it.



I usually take the opacity of this blurred layer down to about 60% (eyeball it!) and then I flatten the image again and bump the saturation about 10 points. (because my icons always fade when I upload them for some reason ): but use your own judgment!)


Annnnnnnnd :D