Samwise the Brave tutorial
[ Mood: 
accomplished ]
Hello this is my first icon tutorial ever. The first half of this tutorial is very basic, but then when I get into the text part it gets complicated.
We will be going from
to 
First we start out with the base.
Duplicate the base 5 times and set the 5 new layers to screen. This is what I chose to do, but if you like the brightness of your icon then only do it once or not at all. My base was dark so I made it a lot lighter. If you want to you can merge all the screened layers together, but make sure you dont merge the base because we need it still.
Next duplicate the base again and set it to soft light. Make sure you put the soft light layer at the very top of the screened layers.
Next duplicate the base, move it to the top, and desaturate it. I chose to keep mine at normal mode (but you can change it to like soft light or overlay or screen). I also chose to put it at 81% opacity, but don't put yours at this because you will have a different image, so just put it at whatever you think it looks good at.
Now comes one of my favorite parts of icon making. I do this in most of my icons. Open a new document (size 2 PIXELS by 2 PIXELS). Yes it is very very small. Now zoom into the new document ALL THE WAY (1600%). You should see a square about the size of like an aim icon or something. Now pick a colors out of your image or just colors that you would like your image to be. We will basically be coloring our picture. This is what mine looked like:
. I usually pick three different colors and put the ones that are the same, opposite from each other. Now you get to do the cool part. Change the image size of the new document to 100 px by 100 px. You just made a gradient! This is what it should look like: 
Don't worry if part of it is very see-through. It will work fine.
Now drag this new document onto your icon. I chose to set this gradient like layer at soft light. I didn't like how it looked so I duplicated it. That made the gradient a little to dark. So the top gradient layer I put at soft light 50% opacity. Now you have your base!
You can now add text, brushes, borders, or whatever your little heart desires.
What I chose to do was add a brush that is just an X. You can make your own, I did. Its simple.
Now i added text. I typed in Samwise. I typed it in black text. Then I right clicked on the text layer and chose: Blending Options. I chose to do inner shadow, outer glow, and satin. But you can do whatever you want.
Now we get to animate the text (but don't open imageready just yet). Save your document as Samwise 0 (or whatever your text was). Click Filter > Blur > Motion Blur. I chose to keep 45 degrees. And then I typed 1 into the distance box. I saved this document as Samwise 1. Then I did this until I got up to saving Samwise 6. That means that you have 7 documents saved for the word samwise. Now go into the layers box and close the eye on all the text stuff. So that all you can see is the base and the X. Now make another text box (i just copied the samwise one so that i wouldnt have to do all the blending options over again). I typed 'the' in this one. I repeated all the steps for blurring so that I had 7 saved again. I did all of the again for the word 'Brave'.
Now is when you open image ready. Open up your samwise 0 document. Then go to file > place. Do what it tells you to do (different versions of this program are different). What you want to do is open up the next samwise document (samwise 1). Repeat this step until you get through 'brave'. After all of this you should have one document open with a hell of a lot of layers. Close all the eyes on the layer palet that have to do with text at all. This means that all you have open is the X and the base. Now you click on the eye for Samwise 0. This makes that appear. In the animation palet click on the new frame/duplicate frame. Now in this frame you just click on the eye in the layer palet that says Samwise 1. You dont need to close to the eye for Samwise 0 becuase Samwise 1 is on top of that. You repeat this over and over again until you get through the word 'brave'. You should have 21 frames (or more if you chose to keep doing the motion blur and saved more documents or if you have more than three words). I kept all of the frames at 0 seconds, but if you want you can make the first one for every word be .2 seconds. I found it looked funny when that happend. NOW YOUR DONE! Save optimised as and put it on the web! Please if you made an icon using this tutorial, I would really like to see it. Just post it as a comment. That would make me very happy :).
accomplished ]Hello this is my first icon tutorial ever. The first half of this tutorial is very basic, but then when I get into the text part it gets complicated.
We will be going from
First we start out with the base.
Duplicate the base 5 times and set the 5 new layers to screen. This is what I chose to do, but if you like the brightness of your icon then only do it once or not at all. My base was dark so I made it a lot lighter. If you want to you can merge all the screened layers together, but make sure you dont merge the base because we need it still.
Next duplicate the base again and set it to soft light. Make sure you put the soft light layer at the very top of the screened layers.
Next duplicate the base, move it to the top, and desaturate it. I chose to keep mine at normal mode (but you can change it to like soft light or overlay or screen). I also chose to put it at 81% opacity, but don't put yours at this because you will have a different image, so just put it at whatever you think it looks good at.
Now comes one of my favorite parts of icon making. I do this in most of my icons. Open a new document (size 2 PIXELS by 2 PIXELS). Yes it is very very small. Now zoom into the new document ALL THE WAY (1600%). You should see a square about the size of like an aim icon or something. Now pick a colors out of your image or just colors that you would like your image to be. We will basically be coloring our picture. This is what mine looked like:
Now drag this new document onto your icon. I chose to set this gradient like layer at soft light. I didn't like how it looked so I duplicated it. That made the gradient a little to dark. So the top gradient layer I put at soft light 50% opacity. Now you have your base!
You can now add text, brushes, borders, or whatever your little heart desires.
What I chose to do was add a brush that is just an X. You can make your own, I did. Its simple.
Now i added text. I typed in Samwise. I typed it in black text. Then I right clicked on the text layer and chose: Blending Options. I chose to do inner shadow, outer glow, and satin. But you can do whatever you want.
Now we get to animate the text (but don't open imageready just yet). Save your document as Samwise 0 (or whatever your text was). Click Filter > Blur > Motion Blur. I chose to keep 45 degrees. And then I typed 1 into the distance box. I saved this document as Samwise 1. Then I did this until I got up to saving Samwise 6. That means that you have 7 documents saved for the word samwise. Now go into the layers box and close the eye on all the text stuff. So that all you can see is the base and the X. Now make another text box (i just copied the samwise one so that i wouldnt have to do all the blending options over again). I typed 'the' in this one. I repeated all the steps for blurring so that I had 7 saved again. I did all of the again for the word 'Brave'.
Now is when you open image ready. Open up your samwise 0 document. Then go to file > place. Do what it tells you to do (different versions of this program are different). What you want to do is open up the next samwise document (samwise 1). Repeat this step until you get through 'brave'. After all of this you should have one document open with a hell of a lot of layers. Close all the eyes on the layer palet that have to do with text at all. This means that all you have open is the X and the base. Now you click on the eye for Samwise 0. This makes that appear. In the animation palet click on the new frame/duplicate frame. Now in this frame you just click on the eye in the layer palet that says Samwise 1. You dont need to close to the eye for Samwise 0 becuase Samwise 1 is on top of that. You repeat this over and over again until you get through the word 'brave'. You should have 21 frames (or more if you chose to keep doing the motion blur and saved more documents or if you have more than three words). I kept all of the frames at 0 seconds, but if you want you can make the first one for every word be .2 seconds. I found it looked funny when that happend. NOW YOUR DONE! Save optimised as and put it on the web!