01:
The mission
I
thought I was working on my sci-fi game Dead Arms. This is why
I have developed various
games to a certain extent. Because I have no clue what the
fuck I'm doing.
Well.... that among other things but anywho, I decided to update
the Dead Arms Logo I had previously made since I did'nt feel
like doing real work ie writing and working on game details.
When re-doing the logo I ran into several problems. Mainly the
new logo I was working on did'nt take kindly to the skull I
had made in the old logo. (I was trying to use good parts of
the old logo and make the new one better and physically bigger
IE dpi for print and media) To your esteemed right, you see
the old skull that just wasnt working in the new logo. So, time
to make a new one.
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02:
Start Shit
To
start off my new skull I 1st sketched up one on a peice of paper
and then scanned it in. Simple lines, no shading or anything.
After scanning it I blocked out the entire base shape of the
skull in a solid dirty beiege color. As you can see below I
put seperate peices of the skull on seperate layers. The head
on one layer, the top and bottom teeth each on thier own and
last but not least the jaw was placed on its own layer.
Using
the dodge (lighten) tool in photoshop I lightly airbrushed in
overall detail shapes. I used a smaller brush to hit the gums
in and give them each highlights. Then I switched to the burn
(darken) tool and added shadows under and around everything
I just highlighted. I left the teeth alone because they would
require special detail and I wanted to focus on the overall
skull 1st.
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03:
Add Detail
Now
that I had a base idea of where all the bumps and lumps of the
skull were going to be I started adding in lighter and sharper
detail on top of my previous made highlights. Smooth surface
areas now show a hint of harder underlying shape and highlights.
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04:
Shadows Aplenty
To
get shit rolling large and in charge I started adding deeper
shadows in. I put them in the usual places to mirror highlights
and add overall depth but also added in some shadows cutting
through highlights to give the skull more of a bumpy lumpy mangled
type feel instead of something overly smooth and chisled. Whats
that withered shit around the bottom lip/gum? Beats me, I just
felt like doing it.
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05:
Details Galore
I
went back over the shadows I had just done and brushed around
them with the burn tool. However this time the tool was set
bigger and lighter and thus made the harder shadows seem like
they were sinking in the skull whereas before they stood out.
Next
I turned my attention to the eyes and using the dodge and burn
tools I base shaped withered eye slits and then highlighted
them several times and then sunk in shadows just as I had done
with the skull. Moved on to the nose doing the same putting
a cartilage crap shape in the back with some highlights on top
keeping it overly dark because I really did'nt want it sticking
out.
I
finally paid attention to the teeth which were looking wierd
since I had'nt worked on them. I ran around the edges with the
burn tool giving them a feeling of depth all round. Jumped in
with the dodge tool and highlighted a single side of them strongly
indicating some light direction or shit. Came back with the
burn tool and put opposing shadows on the right side of every
tooth. Nice and detailed. Along we go.....
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06:
Tasty Contrasty
Done.
Not. Well considering artsy airbrushing shit with the dodge
and burn tool we are done. I work in softer shades caring little
about the contrast of the art because the program I work in
is called PHOTOSHOP for a reason. It excells at manipulating
shit you bring into it. So I popped open the LEVELS window pane
and sharply adjusted the contrast on the art to get rid of my
soft values. BAM.
Now
normally if I was just doing a stand alone skull I would have
added several more layers of detail. But If you look at the
original skull we are trying to replace it has some digital
effects out and about it. So it's time to texture my bitch up.
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07:
Texture-tastic
Well
that looks good. To add fast and dirty detail to some of your
projects you can use photo textures to beef them up. This was
taken off of a technology texture cd I own. Usually I find photo
textures good for logos as it is acceptable to have various
amounts of detail contrasting each other in close proximity.
I dont overly recomend textures or heavy textures for standard
art depicting people and such as the sudden detail in parts
of a scene just stick out against your regular art detail.
For
this in particular I wanted to fade the tiny motherboard detail
into the skull. The one problem is the skull I am working on
is huge and even a uber quality texture could'nt cover it all
up. From here you can choose to stretch the texture over the
skull thus losing the sharp quality of your texture or.....
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08:
Texture-tastic Multiplying
You
can copy and paste the texture, flip it over and mirror it against
the previous texture thus making a perfect mirror image and
covering the skull. In this case I did them side by side and
then copied them up and down. So I used four of the same texture
1st mirrored to the right then I took both and mirrored them
going down. This covered the entire massive skull so I could
carry on and imbed the image into the underlying detail.
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09:
Multiplication Nation
If
you go to the layer the skull is on and multiply the layer you
can see the under image of the skull. From here you can choose
what texture detail to center over which part of the skull.
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10:
Cut Away
Next
I trimmed away the excess texture around the skull. To do this
I clicked on the layer the skull was on and highlighted the
entire skull by command+clicking on the layer (control+clicking
on a windows PC). Next I inverted my selection by hitting command+shift+I.
This selected all area outside and around the skull but not
the skull itself. I then clicked back to the layer the texture
was on and hit delete. This left the texture sitting on the
skull and nowhere else.
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11:
Play With Layers
To
overlay a texture on an image you simply click on the layer
the texture is on and then adjust its overall effect. So below
I'm clicked on layer 17 that has the digital texture on it.
Next I set the layer to multiply which allows objects underneath
to bleed through. You need to experiment with several layers
set to different effects IE multiply, screen, highlight etc.
There really is no tried and true method for this. Its different
for all art and all textures. You can even adjust the opacity
which allows the texture to fade or strengthen on the underlying
art.
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12:
The End.... Almost
After
playing with the textures on multiple layers with multiple effects
and adjusting the color of the texture using color/balance I
finally got the subtle underlying image I was looking for. I
moved the jaw back to where it belonged and here you can see
the faded detail of the texture on the skull a little better.
The
texture was sticking out like a sore thumb in some areas since
in reality its just one image sitting on another with a special
effect. To take care of strong texture spots I subtly erased
them letting the skulls highlights break through thus giving
the feeling that the texture was moving in and out with the
detail of the skull.
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13:
Additional Play
When
moving the jaw back I started playing with it moving it here
and there on the skull for fun. It may sound stupid but something
I've learned about photoshop is if you play around and try a
variety of different things with no clear intention you often
stumble across something that may help your work out in a little
or large way.
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13:
Additional Play Con't
When
I moved the jaw up and behind the skulls head it kind of looked
like an ear of sorts. A ear on a skull? What the fuck ever.
My art motto is: "If it looks good, do it." I duplicated
the jaw, moved it on a layer behind the skull and then placed
it where I thought it would look good. I then used the lasso
tool and highlighted the part of the jaw that was not so ear-like
and deleted it. I then duplicated the ear, flipped it over
and placed an ear on
the other side of the skull.
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14:
Adding Jaw
Although
I had an ear I thought it stuck out a bit on such a hollow skull
thus not looking stellar. I tried duplicating the jaw and placing
it alongside the skull like I had done with the ear. The problem
is the jaw was'nt big enough to form a larger jaw from the ear
to the real jaw. What a dilema. Since I make all my art as big
as all fucking get out I decided I could shrink the skull to
possibly accomodate a freak evil jaw connecting the ear and
real jaw. Since the skull I was working on was around 40-50
inches big and I just needed the skull to be part of a logo
(not stand by itself) I went ahead and shrunk the bastard to
the point where I could use the jaw as an extended evil super
jaw pictured to the right.
Alright,
that made a ton of sense! Moving along....
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15:
Shrinky Dinky
You
can see the original skull and how much I had to shrink it
to make the cooler looking evil skull for the logo. However
as you can see by the clear detail to the right, the small
skulls detail was still plenty huge. Shit lemme check.....
The original skull was in the area of 65x40 inches at 72 dpi
and the smaller skull is half of that which is still plenty
big at around 30x20 72dpi. So when you import the small skull
into a poster at 200dpi or a book at 300 dpi it will fill
out big everytime.
Right:
See the jaw on the large skull and where I used it to form
the much larger jaw going up to the ear on the small skull.
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16:
Implementation
And
tada! After composing the new logo with many elements from the
old I found that the new skull I made could no longer sit like
the old one could at the very top of this tutorial chomping
on the Dead Arms Text. So after playing with the placement of
the skull here and there around the new logo I finally settled
on placing it behind everything and then stuck a bar code on
its forehead just to "evil it up" some more. In the
end you can't even see the extra work on the skull IE the ears
and extended jaw but on toned down alternate versions of the
logo to be used inside faction books you can see alot more of
the skull so it wasnt a total waste after all.
As
for seeing the new or old logo in thier entireties, whenever
Dead Arms comes out is when you get to see the real deal. Until
then suck it up and stick it out.
You
saw nothing! And trust me I cant wait to start
working on nothing because it will be fun!
Note:
Somebody remind me when I release Dead Arms to update this page
with the complete logo. I'll never
remember.
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Final logo will be placed here someday for your viewing pleasure -
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