feeb
April 16th, 2004, 03:34 PM
I spent a few hours last night making a signature image for an online friend (best quake 3 excessive player out there, or just about). His name used to be Topangea, shortened to Top, which is adequate, given his skills as a player.
Anyway, I've been promising him a logo for over a year now, and he kept insisting on a naked woman as a "T." He kept bugging me for updates every few minutes. It was kind of fun seeing his excitement peak as I went along.
I used some basic tricks to make this, and thought it a good example to pass along as a little "how to" shop. S'why I came here. Sorry for the huge image files. I didn't edit them down after uploading to show him last night. The image size was to be 300x150. I quadrupled the size so the detail would look great at a smaller res. Here we go...
1. Naked Girl (I tried to talk him out of how unoriginal this was) forming "T." I used the dirty marker brush in Painter to do this (lowered opacity, and I just selected that light gray-yellowish background color for the brush).
http://artbq.com/misc/top1.jpg
2. Quick test for layer effects (difference, I think). He liked it, but I moved forward with my original idea after this one.
http://artbq.com/misc/top2.jpg
3. General Layout and roughed-in letter design (yes, it says "Top," not "Tap."
http://artbq.com/misc/top3.jpg
4. I went over the letter sketches with the pen tool in painter (path tool in Photoshop), and (after converting the shapes to layers) simply went to the "Dynamic Plugins" property, found in the layer window (bottom- "plug" icon). And went to "Bevel World," and just used the default bevel.
http://artbq.com/misc/top4.jpg
5. Using "Coarse Spray" in the airbrush menu (making sure I had "Preserve Transparency" turned on), I sprayed middle-value oranges and blues to give the impression of iron, and accentuated this by using the burn tool in areas.
http://artbq.com/misc/top5.jpg
6. Glow Brush! My favorite "cheat" tool (not that any of this is really cheating), set to a red-orange, but near-black on the color triangle (H: 40% S:100% V: 5% / R:29 G:12 B:1 -roughly-)
http://artbq.com/misc/top6.jpg
7. Now over to Photoshop! By double-clicking on the thumbnail image in the layers, you get the layer properties, and I had the following: On the girl: Outer Glow: Opacity 90% Spread 10% Size 21% Range 50% Color RGB 255, 54, 0. Stroke: Size 3 px Color RGB: 255, 0, 0. After creating that layer style I right-clicked on the layer word (not the thumbnail) and Chose "Copy Layer Style" then after selecting the "TOP" letters, I right-clicked and chose "Paste Layer Style." Then I goofed with the spread of the outer glow. Opacity, too, I think. I removed the "Stroke" for the letters.http://artbq.com/misc/top8.jpg
Couple of versions at final size- one sharpened after being sized down... (using bicubic instead of bilinear)
http://artbq.com/misc/top9.jpg
...and one un-sharpened one (the one he liked better, which I definitely agree with):
http://artbq.com/misc/top10.jpg
And here's the tag/avatar/sig he'll use when he wants to give props to me. :D
http://artbq.com/misc/top11.jpg
Let me know if there is anything I might have missed in explanation (I already know of some- I had to fudge the layers between the girl and the "TOP" a bit so they worked well enough together). Hope this has been useful!
Anyway, I've been promising him a logo for over a year now, and he kept insisting on a naked woman as a "T." He kept bugging me for updates every few minutes. It was kind of fun seeing his excitement peak as I went along.
I used some basic tricks to make this, and thought it a good example to pass along as a little "how to" shop. S'why I came here. Sorry for the huge image files. I didn't edit them down after uploading to show him last night. The image size was to be 300x150. I quadrupled the size so the detail would look great at a smaller res. Here we go...
1. Naked Girl (I tried to talk him out of how unoriginal this was) forming "T." I used the dirty marker brush in Painter to do this (lowered opacity, and I just selected that light gray-yellowish background color for the brush).
http://artbq.com/misc/top1.jpg
2. Quick test for layer effects (difference, I think). He liked it, but I moved forward with my original idea after this one.
http://artbq.com/misc/top2.jpg
3. General Layout and roughed-in letter design (yes, it says "Top," not "Tap."
http://artbq.com/misc/top3.jpg
4. I went over the letter sketches with the pen tool in painter (path tool in Photoshop), and (after converting the shapes to layers) simply went to the "Dynamic Plugins" property, found in the layer window (bottom- "plug" icon). And went to "Bevel World," and just used the default bevel.
http://artbq.com/misc/top4.jpg
5. Using "Coarse Spray" in the airbrush menu (making sure I had "Preserve Transparency" turned on), I sprayed middle-value oranges and blues to give the impression of iron, and accentuated this by using the burn tool in areas.
http://artbq.com/misc/top5.jpg
6. Glow Brush! My favorite "cheat" tool (not that any of this is really cheating), set to a red-orange, but near-black on the color triangle (H: 40% S:100% V: 5% / R:29 G:12 B:1 -roughly-)
http://artbq.com/misc/top6.jpg
7. Now over to Photoshop! By double-clicking on the thumbnail image in the layers, you get the layer properties, and I had the following: On the girl: Outer Glow: Opacity 90% Spread 10% Size 21% Range 50% Color RGB 255, 54, 0. Stroke: Size 3 px Color RGB: 255, 0, 0. After creating that layer style I right-clicked on the layer word (not the thumbnail) and Chose "Copy Layer Style" then after selecting the "TOP" letters, I right-clicked and chose "Paste Layer Style." Then I goofed with the spread of the outer glow. Opacity, too, I think. I removed the "Stroke" for the letters.http://artbq.com/misc/top8.jpg
Couple of versions at final size- one sharpened after being sized down... (using bicubic instead of bilinear)
http://artbq.com/misc/top9.jpg
...and one un-sharpened one (the one he liked better, which I definitely agree with):
http://artbq.com/misc/top10.jpg
And here's the tag/avatar/sig he'll use when he wants to give props to me. :D
http://artbq.com/misc/top11.jpg
Let me know if there is anything I might have missed in explanation (I already know of some- I had to fudge the layers between the girl and the "TOP" a bit so they worked well enough together). Hope this has been useful!