Okay let's begin shall we... But before we start, I want to point out that I'm a lazy sort, in the sense when I make things, I want it done. ASAP :) So much of the time, you'll probably realise that my work is 'destructive' which means when I've done something to a layer, it's pretty irreversible. BUT there is hope for the one's who like to play it safe, you can simply use your own methods to back layers up, use adjustment layers etc etc etc etc. After all, it's going to be YOUR work, not mine :)Okay AND ONE MORE THING... nah, not really, we'll actually start now... I think...yeah. In today's class, you will be learning to make this.
To make this, a key element is finding good high quality source pictures. Can't stress this enough :D The more complex, the better. So images such as engines, complex machinery, clockwork are all great. The more shapes and textures, the easier you will find this. For this tutorial I will be using... SXC - Two cylinder by siulesoj
SXC -Indy Car Engine by LeoSynapse
As you can see, the above engine shots have a lot of shapes, pieces, and both have a nice chrome appearance. Lots of potential! SXC - Grig by clebest
This amazing shot of a grasshopper is sharp, clear, and isn't harshly lit - a perfect source picture.These will be sources! No need for more, unless you find you have an itch to add something else.
Okay sweet, we have our sources. Now what? WELLLLLLLLLL..............First, I want to crop out my grasshopper. I'm doing this as it allows me to edit the colours of the grasshopper, and change the background. Do whatever way which suits you. I personally enjoy the 'quick selection tool' In PS versions CS3 and upwards. Refine that edge! It does wonders.
As you can see in the picture, what I've done is roughly cut out the grasshopper and wood, then desaturated the grasshopper. All on a new layer. The purpose of desaturation, is to allow it to look metallic. By making the subject greyscale, it 1. When adding pieces over the subject, and you miss a spot, it is a lot less obvious. 2. You can even leave some parts of the greyscale subject visible, and adjust the contrast/highlights/shadows to make it look metallic. An easy substitute for manipulating really annoying small details. For example...
In my steampunk fly image, the legs and spines are all the original fly, but are refined using sharpening and 'dodging' (increasing highlights with the dodge tool) to look metallic.
Next what I've done is drawn a red outline on a new layer. I've followed the grasshoppers natural exoskeleton and divided it up into little sections. This greatly helps to show what needs to be worked on specifically. Every section is basically a shape. You can do much more shapes, but the aim is to keep it as organic as possible. Get creative! Just keep the grasshopper recognisable. I often use this as a guide, and peak at it now and then to make sure i'm on track. You don't have to keep it visible all the time, as it can get pretty annoying ;)Here is a screenshot of my layers so far.
Next step, we need to identify which pieces are the furtherest away. In this case, it's the rear leg in the distance. It is wise to start from the background, and work your way forwards, as it's just easier to judge what should go where. What we are going to do, is to organise how our layers will look like. We will have many parts by the end of this, so the use of folders helps keeps things organised. I created a main folder called 'Robotics'. This folder will hold all our robotic pieces. A sub folder was also created, INSIDE the 'Robotics' folder called 'Back Leg'. This folder will hold all our pieces of the back leg. I also put the 'Lines' layer above everything, and lowered the opacity to 40%. This lets us see the objects underneath and the guidelines at the same time.
Next we are going to go to our source pic and select a piece that we think will fit the back leg. I used a long-ish chrome piece for the first layer of the back leg, smoothed the edges, than pasted it into the 'Back Leg' folder where I positioned it using the warp tool. I also used the erasure tool to get rid of unwanted edges.
I did the exact same for another piece. Then rinse and repeat. I can't really tell you which pieces will fit exactly, but it's experimentation. Some will fit better than others. Remember that you can use the liquify filter to warp pieces also. Don't be afraid to muck around! Chances are it will look like crap now, but the more you add, the better it gets :).
The next bit I did, was the abdomen. For the majority of this, I used a single piece of chrome which was copied and pasted, giving an overlapping tile. Pretty simple! It gives an 'armour-ish' feel to it.
I then got come exhaust tubes and copied and pasted them randomly to avoid that repeated look under the 'armour'.
Get the idea? Basically position random objects around the place to get that 'flow'.EXPERIMENT, can't stress enough. Remember to look at the picture as a whole. Think of it as a diamond in the rough :)Layers so far...
I am not going to go through each piece, step by step, otherwise we'd be having another 10000000 unnecessary tutorial pages, so i'll summarize my groups of the majority of the 'hopper at this point in time.*NOTE This was all made by using the techniques used in the previous steps. Used a lot of the warp tool and free transforming to fit.*Another Note! Remember liquifying and warping does distort the pixels, and often blurs fine details, so don't over do it. NO COLOUR CORRECTIONS, SHARPENING, etc. Has been done to at this stage :)
Okay kinda coming together now huh! Glad you've survived this far...It's not finished yet though!...read on...The style I enjoy doing, is not *fully* photorealistic, but kind painterly, so the shadowing in this step is not going to be accurate, but more for visual appeal.First create a new layer, UNDER your grouped folder for the corresponding part. For example I wanted shadowing for my group 'Back Leg Close' so I put a new layer underneath that, to allow me to draw UNDER the layer. I then selected a soft edged brush, selected black for my colour, and set the LAYER opacity to 82 % (This value can vary depending how soft or hard you want shadows. You can also shadow any way you are used to, like using blending layers etc. All personal, but this is my method I'd thought I'd share :) I just paint them in. I use a tablet, but this is certainly mousable.
This use of this just gives more depth. Continue this throughout the image, putting shadows anywhere you feel suits. Shadows are useful for giving interest to the image also.(I made the background white for the moment, so I can see if I accidentally go out the 'hoppers outline)Here is the finished shadowing stage. I also added a new layer on top of everything, for random shadows that didn't fit a layer of group properly.
Big difference huh. Good practice in airbrushing too, and making textures.Experiment with different opacities of shadows, and try using the smudge tool to get nice fade outs
That blank background is hurting my eyes, time for something a bit more interesting. By looking at the sources I've used, the reflections are mainly of a street and road. So I found an image of a street, with some trees, to give an impression that the hopper is in a city garden or something like that haha. I then blurred the life out of it, to make the 'hopper the main focus of the image. The blurred background has muted colours also, so that it's not distracting. Unfortunately I didn't save the image that I used... but you can sort of make out what it looked like.
Now there are a few things standing out which are a bit odd. There are odd reds on the piping at the end of the 'hopper, there is a green tint of the original grasshopper on the wood, and there is still a lack of interest colour wise, composition wise and is just in need of general touch-ups.First, I am going to merge all the layers of the grasshopper. Do you remember at the start of the tutorial, all contents of the robotic parts were put into a folder? That main folder, with everything robotic grasshopper related needs to be merged. BUT then all that work will be merged and not editable! OH NO, WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE! Nah, simply right click, duplicate the group, click the eye and make the original folder invisible, and merge the copied folder into a single layer by right clicking the folder and hitting 'merge layers'. Now we should have a completely robotic animal that can be placed anywhere! The moon, obama's head or on another grasshopper if you're feeling freaky ;) That's just creepy, get your mind out the gutter.Here are my layers after all this.
A good thing to do, is to duplicate that merged robotic grasshopper layer whenever you add changes, just so you have a previous copy. (I do this as it's efficient for me) YOU however, maybe different and would like to make alterations to the original multiple layers in the folder before it was merged. Anything goes. Here are some minor changes I added...
Nearly there! I know, I know sooooooooooo much reading.Usually I'd do some more fine tuning, such as using the dodge and burn tools, selective sharping, but this image turned out okay, and didn't really seem like it needed any drastic changes. To give a bit of life, I decided to use the 'colour balance' adjustment. I merged all the layers using 'command shift alt 'E'' (I'm on a mac, so i'm not sure of the keyboard shortcut for windows that does this, it basically gives a fully merged layer on top of the rest of your layers without merging any of them) and upped the blue midtone, to give that 'spacey' look.I really love the colour balance adjustment, especially for finishing images. I like to use it over the entire merged image, as it does a good job at unifying the colours especially when you adjust the 'highlights', 'midtones' and 'shadows' separately. It's a very great, easy to use tool.
FINALLY, I created a new layer, named it highlights, then added various glowy highlights with a soft round brush. Giving a bit of sparkle I suppose. I also did a slight sharpen using the sharpen filter, and created a new layer, set it to 'overlay' and painted a yellowish-green glow on the eye. And that's it! Finished! After all that rambling, we finally have something to show for it! What'd you know. Thanks for putting up with me, hopefully this has been some use to you! Now go forth and robofy every single organism on the planet.
(Bigger version here!) - Click!