This is a tutorial on how I created this piece of Illyria in the Angel episode Timebomb. It was requested, and since I did this from the pdf file, I'm not entirely sure of every single thing that I did, but this is still pretty accurate. Also, I tried to be as descriptive as possible but this tutorial does require ATLEAST a basic knowledge of Photoshop.
Okay, I opened a blank 1024x768 canvas and made my first layer THIS TEXTURE by yours truly. I then opened the 4 images I decided to use. Image 1, Image 2, Image 3, Image 4. I then arranged the caps on my canvas in a way I thought was more entertaining to the eye which you can see here.
Then I got rid of the areas that I felt were unneccessary and got rid of most of the hard edges using the eraser and a set of cloud brushes by Jenni Lou that you can download at her site Daydreaming. I decided to leave the straight edge on the bottom of the top left cap because it compliments the way that the floor of the bottom right cap has left a straight edge on the top. Next, I duplicated each cap and went to Filter - Other - High Pass, set it to a level that brought out the edges of the cap, and then set the duplicated cap to soft light. This brings out the edges and sharpens the image without too much pixelation or grain. I should note that a lot of people flatten the image once they've got their main caps/pics laid out, but I prefer to keep them separate so that I can adjust each one individually.
I then altered the colors of the caps, quality, and sharpness of the caps to make them all look nice and match eachother's tones nicely. I first opened Image - Adjustments - Curves, and brought down the darks, up the midtones, and up a little on the whites. It looked like this.
Then, I went to Image - Adjustments - Selective Color. That opens this menu.
I selected Blues from the dropdown menu and brought the Cyan levels up. That made the blue even bluer. I also chose Reds from the dropdown menu and brought the cyan levels up making the reds in the cap bluer. While still on the Reds, I brought the yellow up to give it a more golden feel. In order to achieve the glow effect on her face and the highlights of each cap, I refer back to a tutorial by an artist that I cannot for the life of me remember because it's been so long since I read it. I looked and looked and if anyone reading this or you are the artist, let me know so that I can credit you in this tutorial. Anyway, I selected the highlights in each cap by hitting CTRL + ALT + ~ (which is the squiggly line next to 1 on your keyboard). This highlights only the lightest areas of the image and looks like this.
I then make sure that the undercolor on my color palette is white or something close to it, depending on what color I want my glow to give out. For this piece, I went with white and my palette looked something like this.
I then selected Filter - Distort - Diffuse Glow and brought down the grainess to 0, my glow amount to about 17, and my clear amount to about 16. I'm not sure if this was the exact amount, but you can play around with the options and find something you like. I decided I wanted the piece to be a little more artsy so I went to each cap and applied Paint Daubs by going to Filter - Artistic - Paint Daubs and setting the brush size to 2, and the sharpness to 2 as well. The first texture that I decided to apply was this one by J.j which you can find at her site More Adventurous and set it to overlay and erased a couple areas where I wanted darkness instead of light. Then I made a new layer and pasted the SAME TEXTURE from the bottom layer on top, deleting some of the areas over her face and set it to hard light. I wanted an orangey glow and also wanted the bottom left area to be lighter so I then applied THIS TEXTURE also madeby myself and set it to soft light. Upon looking at it, I decided I wanted it to be a bit harsher, so I applied another TEXTURE that I made over the other two and set it to soft light. I didn't want too much texture on her face, so again, I used a cloud brush set on about 40% to delete texture areas over her face. The wallpaper should look something like this.
Now, I have kept in mind that the colors are WAY too bright, but haven't tried to alter them because I knew that I was going to be adding a gradient as my main color source. I opened a gradient map layer by clicking the little half black and white circle which is the 4th icon on the bottom of my layer palette and selecting gradient map. I then chose this gradient which is part of the Sky Gradient set that you can download at Daydreaming.
I set the gradient map layer to color and set the opacity at 43%. This gives it a nice bluish tone, gets rid of the too bright reds, and retains the gold color I wanted. Your canvas should now look like this.
Now it's time for the text! I chose to do this wallpaper because I was inspired by Amy Acker's dialogue, so the text is the most important part. Sloppy text, ugly fonts, or just plain too much or too little text can ruin an otherwise nicely done piece so it really is just as important if not more important than the rest of the art. I notice that the area in which I would like to place my text is too dark to really be able to read it, so I use the eye dropper tool to select a nice yellow orange from the piece that I really like and using a cloud brush set to 50% I make a few little poofy cloud splotches in the area to lighten it up. It looks like this now, and is ready for text.
My quote is "I possess so much grace," and upon realizing this isn't much text, I decided to include the follwing line "I was the immaculate embodiment of rule." So I again use the eye dropper to select a color from the piece, this time a dark brown I like for the text. I put I POSSESS SO MUCH GRACE in capital letters in the Garamond font set to 38 pt across the texty cloud splotch. I then repeat the phrase in Arial Black at 44 pt a little above the last one and set that text layer to normal at 26% opacity. This isn't nearly enough for me, because I am a text junkie. So I add another text layer, this one saying I was the immaculate embodiment of rule below it in lowercase Futurist font at 16 pt. I like how it looks but I want some more so I duplicated the last text layer and holding shift, I pulled the top of the text box down overtop itself which flips it upside-down. I then set that layer to soft light. I decided I wanted one more line of text above the original I POSSESS SO MUCH GRACE layer, and so I choose the line "more grace than this bag of sticks could ever express." Using the same technique of holding down shift, I grabbed the side of the text box and pulled it left overtop itself which turned the text backwards. It should look like this. Explaning the text is a bit difficult, but if you have a knowledge of photoshop, you should be able to figure it out easily.
FINAL TOUCHES: I use the font Garamond to place my name and the year in the corner and set the layer to overlay. I wanted a border on the piece, so I used the eye dropper select a light tan from the piece. A trend here is that I never use a color outside the piece unless it's for a specific reason, it lessens the risk of tacky color schemes. I then flattened the piece, and made a new layer. I hit select all on this layer and went to Edit - Stroke and set the stroke to 6 pixels. Then I have myself a nice border. I flattened it again and saved it. And there you have it. Final Product.
