Full Icon Tutorial - Adam Levine "CHAOS" icon
Okay. So y'see, I was kinda in the mood to make a tutorial. Good? Good. So I made an icon, and now here come the tutorial bit. But I'm really nervous. Cuz first of all, this is my first tut ever. And even besides that, very rarely does anybody but my friends see my icons, because I don't really know where to post most of them. So I'm also worried my icon is crap to begin with. But enough of my self-pitying mumbo jumbo, eh?
We'll be going from this:
to this: 
, in PSP8.
Okay. Woo. Here we go. I'm not going to get real detailed here, but if I lose you along the way just ask and I'll do my best to be less confusing.
We start with this image of Adam Levine, from Maroon 5, which I capped from the video for "This Love." When I take the cap, I crop it in a square immediately.
Resize that to 100x100, of course. (Image > Resize)
Now I try sharpening it. Sometimes sharpening doesn't go over so well, but in this case it looks good, so I keep it. (Adjust > Sharpness > Sharpen)
I also quickly filled in those pixels in the top left corner because they weren't black and they were annoying me. Maybe I'm just OCD.
Now, we paste in this texture, made by me, as a new layer.
I set that layer to Hard Light at 60% opacity.
My wonderful texture is getting in the way of the more wonderful Adam, so I erase some bits of it, mostly over his face. Just use a round brush at a very low hardness and opacity.
Next we add another texture. The first one was more to get purdy colors in there, but this one will really give us texture. This one was also made by me.
I set that texture layer to Hard Light at 75%.
Again, it's getting in the way of me admiring Adam's face. So we do the same thing again, erase a little bit of it over his face.
Now, between the flamey feel of this icon so far, and the line in the song "This Love" that goes "the fire burning in her eyes," I decide "FIRE" is a good word for this icon. So I add that in, in white in the font Roughedge at 24 pt. And I have the kerning set at 30 just because I was too lazy to change it. Then I throw that word up in the negative space by Adam's head.
Then I erase the little part of the "F" that seems to be poking Adam in the cheek.
I want this text to be not very stand-out-ish, if you have any idea what the hell I'm trying to say. So I set that layer to Screen at 55% opacity.
Then in black I add another word from the song, "CHAOS." Same font and all. I put this in the opposite corner. This is the main text of the icon, so I put this one completely on it, as opposed to the other one which was hanging off somewhat.
I set this layer to Multiply at 50% opacity. For once we don't have to erase anything! Yay!
Then I add in some small text. It says "that controlled my mind," to finish off the line from the song, but that doesn't really matter because you can't read it. You cannot. Liar. The font is Rasp. The size is something small, but I just screwed something up in PSP and so I can't check what size it was exactly. I'm pretty sure it was 4 pt though.
Then I duplicate this layer. Just because I feel like it, okay?! I move it down and to the right a little bit, and I set the new layer at 50% opacity. I'm almost positive I left both of these layers just set on Normal, because they're so small you don't really see a difference anyway.
Then we add a one-pixel border in black, on a new layer. You can either just draw this in with the paintbrush (hold shift for straight lines), or you could make a brush for it. Either way. And we're done!
Voila!! What do you think? I would really really love to hear your opinions on both the tutorial AND the icon. Pretty please?
If you happen to really like the icon and want to grab it, that's fine - I'd be flattered! Just comment and credit, you know the drill.
Also, those two textures that I used were some of my own that I've made. If you like them, feel free to use them too. Just if you do, credit me in a resources post or whatever like that you want to do. You know the drill as far as that goes too, I'm sure.
Hopefully I haven't left anything out. Let me know if there's any problems!!!
We'll be going from this:
to this: , in PSP8.Okay. Woo. Here we go. I'm not going to get real detailed here, but if I lose you along the way just ask and I'll do my best to be less confusing.
We start with this image of Adam Levine, from Maroon 5, which I capped from the video for "This Love." When I take the cap, I crop it in a square immediately.
Resize that to 100x100, of course. (Image > Resize)
Now I try sharpening it. Sometimes sharpening doesn't go over so well, but in this case it looks good, so I keep it. (Adjust > Sharpness > Sharpen)
I also quickly filled in those pixels in the top left corner because they weren't black and they were annoying me. Maybe I'm just OCD.
Now, we paste in this texture, made by me, as a new layer.
I set that layer to Hard Light at 60% opacity.
My wonderful texture is getting in the way of the more wonderful Adam, so I erase some bits of it, mostly over his face. Just use a round brush at a very low hardness and opacity.
Next we add another texture. The first one was more to get purdy colors in there, but this one will really give us texture. This one was also made by me.
I set that texture layer to Hard Light at 75%.
Again, it's getting in the way of me admiring Adam's face. So we do the same thing again, erase a little bit of it over his face.
Now, between the flamey feel of this icon so far, and the line in the song "This Love" that goes "the fire burning in her eyes," I decide "FIRE" is a good word for this icon. So I add that in, in white in the font Roughedge at 24 pt. And I have the kerning set at 30 just because I was too lazy to change it. Then I throw that word up in the negative space by Adam's head.
Then I erase the little part of the "F" that seems to be poking Adam in the cheek.
I want this text to be not very stand-out-ish, if you have any idea what the hell I'm trying to say. So I set that layer to Screen at 55% opacity.
Then in black I add another word from the song, "CHAOS." Same font and all. I put this in the opposite corner. This is the main text of the icon, so I put this one completely on it, as opposed to the other one which was hanging off somewhat.
I set this layer to Multiply at 50% opacity. For once we don't have to erase anything! Yay!
Then I add in some small text. It says "that controlled my mind," to finish off the line from the song, but that doesn't really matter because you can't read it. You cannot. Liar. The font is Rasp. The size is something small, but I just screwed something up in PSP and so I can't check what size it was exactly. I'm pretty sure it was 4 pt though.
Then I duplicate this layer. Just because I feel like it, okay?! I move it down and to the right a little bit, and I set the new layer at 50% opacity. I'm almost positive I left both of these layers just set on Normal, because they're so small you don't really see a difference anyway.
Then we add a one-pixel border in black, on a new layer. You can either just draw this in with the paintbrush (hold shift for straight lines), or you could make a brush for it. Either way. And we're done!
Voila!! What do you think? I would really really love to hear your opinions on both the tutorial AND the icon. Pretty please?
If you happen to really like the icon and want to grab it, that's fine - I'd be flattered! Just comment and credit, you know the drill.
Also, those two textures that I used were some of my own that I've made. If you like them, feel free to use them too. Just if you do, credit me in a resources post or whatever like that you want to do. You know the drill as far as that goes too, I'm sure.
Hopefully I haven't left anything out. Let me know if there's any problems!!!