Recs, icons & more

Tutorial 05: Bill Kaulitz wallpaper

2009-11-09T13:12:51Z

This is a pretty simple wallpaper to make, as all it involves is throwing a bunch of textures at it and playing a tiny bit with the coloring.

How I made this wallpaper from this. This is not the original source image, though, as I had to size it down. The original source image is high-res and five times as big.

All right, the first thing I did was resize the high-res pic of Bill at the 2009 EMAs to something a little more manageable. I knew from the start I was going to make the wallpaper in two sizes, 1280x1024 and 1440x900, but I first started with the 1280 one as that's my native resolution. All the images in this tutorial have been sized down so they won't stretch browsers/layouts, and to reduce loading times.

The original image, despite being HQ, is very much washed out. That's the first thing I fixed. Duplicate your layer (Control + J) and set it to soft light. Then create a new layer and floodfill it with black. Also set this layer to soft light. The image now looks like this:

(Ignore the bar on the left. I saved the .psd, but I did the initial clean-up in another .psd that I no longer have, so I'm recreating the first bit from scratch.)

I decided to fix the background by recoloring it all the same color. I picked the color #2f1314 from the image itself (top right, close to Bill's hair because -- and I would like to state this for the record -- dealing with his hair is a giant pain in the ass. Therefore I opted to make it easier on myself; this way I wouldn't have to recolor any background on that side).

With the color #2f1314 selected, start coloring around him. This is the most tedious bit of the process, especially on the trickier bits, like HIS GODDAMN HAIR. Ahem. Anyway, when you're done, it will hopefully look something like this:

From here on out, it gets easier :). I added this texture and set it to soft light, 51%:

After that, I created a new selective coloring layer. Go to the little half-moon icon on the bottom of your palette and select "Selective Coloring".

In the reds: Cyan +18%, Yellow +10%, Black +17%.
In the neutrals: Cyan +45%.

I added this texture and set it to soft light, 68%:

And the last texture I added was this one. That texture layer was set to multiply, 30%. The end result is that the wallpaper now looks like this:

After all that, it's just a matter of adding the text. (I hate adding text because I suck at it.) After agonizing it for over half an hour, and scrolling through all my fonts at least three times, I finally settled on a line from World Behind My Wall, "they're telling me it's beautiful". The font is Print Clearly, at 30pt and 480 tracking (tracking is the space between each individual letter).

I then duplicated the text layer, lowered the opacity to 37% and moved it slightly below and to the right of the original line.

The end result:

See the fullsize.

:) That's it. Not too difficult, though it helps to start out with a high-quality image unless you're a real Photoshop wizard (I'm not) and are excellent at cleaning up pics.

[Wallpaper] Bill Kaulitz

2009-11-09T12:09:17Z

"They're Telling Me It's Beautiful"

1280x1024 • 1440x900

@ deviantArt.

GW2 Trailer concept art icons [14]

2009-08-22T14:50:26Z

Teasers:

The other eleven

[Icons] Tokio Hotel - Bill, twins

2009-05-11T15:54:04Z

Teasers:

As always, comments and credits appreciated, but not required :)

Tutorial 04: Guild Wars character shots

2009-04-30T08:47:53Z

shawn asked how I made these, sooo I figured I'd write up a quick guide. It's really not difficult, but it may require some fiddling and extreme zooming to get everything as close to perfect as you can. Rather than picking apart one I already made, I decided to just redo the one of my mesmer as I thought it was a little boring :D.

You need to have at least some understand of layers and various Photoshop tools, as well as a bunch of textures--if you don't have any textures, I zipped a bunch of my favorites for kamara ages ago. You can find textures all over LJ (texturize) as well as deviantArt (do a search for them).

I'll be making this:

First, pick your screenshot and crop it to the size you want. I'm making these 600px wide and 450px tall for no reason other than it being a nice size. Not too big, not too small.

Duplicate your layer and hide the original one. I always do this in case I fuck up somewhere and need to go back :P.

Time to mess with curves! The curves tool is ideal for brightening up your images and does a better job than just setting a new layer to screen. It can be found under Image --> Adjustment --> Curves, or you can just click the half-moon symbol at the bottom of your layers window and go from there.

Go back to your first layer and sharpen it a little if you think it needs it. Filter --> Sharpen --> Sharpen. If it's too much, go to Edit --> Fade Sharpen and adjust (or just hit Ctrl + Shift + F. Mmm keyboard shortcuts).

Duplicate your layer again and adjust the Brightness and Contrast. Don't overdo it, this is just to intensify the colors a bit.

If you're happy with the coloring and crispness of the image, merge all your layers (except the hidden original one) by hitting Ctrl + Shift + E.

At this point, you can do two things. You can either cut your character out of its background or you can just smudge the background around her. For these particular images, I choose the latter approach. Get the Smudge tool (R) and start smudging that bitch. You can do this in very broad strokes and it doesn't have to be perfect.

About halfway through here. Now, when you get close to the character, you need to switch tactics and just color around her. Pick a color from the image itself and start coloring.

Then get the Smudge tool again and go back at it. Again, this doesn't need to be perfect. It's okay if there's a difference in color (will make the end result better anyway) and you'll be throwing textures over it later regardless. This is what I ended up with:

I colored around her coat, but left the area around her head along because it's difficult and fiddly to get it right :P. For this reason, you might want to select an image where the head is against a peaceful background.

Now it's time for textures. This bit is mostly trial and error. I have hundreds of textures that I sift through trying to find one or two (or four or five, depending) that I like.

I picked this texture and set it to Linear Burn, 50% opacity.

Then this texture. Set it to Overlay, 35%.

Lastly, this texture, set to Multiply, 100%.

That's it for the coloring. Just add text (pick a text color from the image itself with the eyedropper tool) and play with fonts. For "Noel Avareth" I went with Jellyka Castle's Queen at a whopping 72pt, "mesmer" is An Unfortunate Event (24pt, 330 tracking) and "no one else will save you" is Little Lord Fontleroy, 18pt, italics, 300 tracking. (The standard font for all the images I did :P.)

The result:

Aaand that's it :D Hope this was at least a little bit helpful :P

Wallpaper: Liberty City's Most Wanted

2009-04-03T18:22:57Z

Niko Bellic: Liberty City's Most Wanted

1280x1024

Also: new Fallout header, as well as a new layout at my personal LJ: fraught

[Header] Burn Notice (Michael & Victor)

2009-03-07T14:06:41Z

Somebody Tries To Kill You:

900x500

[Icons] Avatar: The Last Airbender (20)

2009-01-06T18:06:55Z

Teasers

[Icons] Crusoe (16)

2008-12-08T13:41:15Z

Teasers:

001

002

003

004

005

006

007

008

009

010

011

012

013

014

015

016

Created with angelamaria's Icon Table Generator @ Bauble

As always, comments and credit appreciated, but not required :). Enjoy!

[Headers] Johnny Depp, 10th Doctor

2008-09-25T13:44:23Z

"Dream of Love" (Chocolat, Roux)

742x413

"Volatile" (Blow, George Jung)

700x300

"Traveler" (Doctor Who, Ten)

700x400

[Wallpaper] Tenth Doctor, [icons] Doctor Who, Journey's End

2008-07-07T18:04:14Z

"Beyond Your Wildest Imagination" (Doctor Who, Tenth Doctor)

1024x768 • 1280x1024

[Headers] Johnny Depp

2008-04-30T11:11:13Z

"Sheer Genius"

560x468

"Take Me There"

604x372

[Header] Johnny Depp - general

2008-03-07T12:36:08Z

700x600

[Wallpaper] Johnny Depp: Blockbuster Boy

2008-03-05T09:33:10Z

1280x1024 - 1024x768

[Header] Johnny Depp - Watching Me

2008-03-03T16:15:26Z

Not dead, just not in a graphic-y mood. For my new LJ layout (fraught), I made this:

960x163

Not gankable, just posting here to show off and for completeness' sake :P

Subject: Captain Jack Sparrow

2007-12-13T10:44:45Z

The first batch of Captain Jack Sparrow icons for 100potc

Subject: Captain Jack Sparrow
Status: 11/100
Final Deadline: February 29th, 2008
Credits: Recources

Teasers:

001

002

003

004

005

006

007

008

009

010

011

Created with angelamaria's Icon Table Generator @ Bauble

Themes:
002: Blue
004: Treasure
006: Texture
007: So Close
008: Sky
009: Faith
010: Green

Comments and credit appreciated, but not required. Enjoy :)

[Icons] potc_challenge week 117

2007-12-05T09:21:40Z

For potc_challenge's 117th challenge:

First ever challenge I participated in :). Thanks to those who voted for my icons!

[Fic rec] Ocean's 11/Bourne Identity trilogies crossover

2007-11-24T12:05:46Z

Title: Mirror, Mirror
Author: ficangel
Pairing(s): Linus Caldwell/Jason Bourne. Yep.
Summary: Linus has a doppleganger.
Comments: Hot. Kind of creepy, too, but mostly pretty hot. And awesome. Mustn't forget the awesomeness. Linus is so very Linus, all upset and flailing and freaked out, and the author nails Bourne as well.

[Fic rec] Pirates of the Caribbean

2007-11-24T11:02:27Z

Title: The Swan In Flight and Outlaws and Inlaws
Author: artaxastra
Pairing(s): Kind of Jack/Elizabeth, but not really.
Summary: Post-AWE, Elizabeth finds herself pregnant and in the company of Captain Teague at Shipwreck Cove.
Comments: Lots of great Jack backstory, wonderful voices, especially of Teague (who I adore), and it's just beautiful overall. Wonderful, lyrical storytelling.

[Header] A Change in the Wind

2007-11-21T16:53:16Z

960x400

Let's talk about text, baby

2007-11-20T12:56:47Z

Disclaimer: omg, it's a bunch of opinions. Feel free to disagree :)

Text sucks. It really does. At least for me and from what I can tell, I'm hardly the only one. Especially for larger graphics, I find the right text, and the right font, and the right location of said text, makes or breaks a graphic. So. Let's talk a bit about what we can do with text.

This is ye olde Photoshop text window, annotated with the things you might want to use. The font, font size and font color all speak for itself. Playing around with the space between letters (decreasing it, increasing it, etc.) can make for nice effects too. Some fonts can also look pretty good with inceased or decreased height. Just play around with it and figure out what works and what doesn't.

Also very important for text issues... the font. I agonize a lot over which font to use, at what size to use it, which color to pick, should it be all lower case, all upper case, small caps, a mix, should I bold words, use a different font size for capital letters, should I even pick a different font altogether for capital letters...? You name it, I've brooded on it for much longer than I care to admit :P The only thing I rarely do is using italics because I don't generally find it pleasing to look at.

There really aren't any rules to follow here, just some guidelines, I feel:

* Pick a font color from the image itself. Pick a light color if you want text on a dark background and vice versa, unless you think you're gonna add a drop shadow (which I usually don't, or a very subtle one, because I don't like the way it looks). You can also put a contrasting color behind the text area to make it stand out, like I did here, for example.

* Everyone's guilty of this :P, but experiment with different fonts. Everyone's got favorites (hi, Arrière Garde, Kravitz, Violation, Hannibal Lecter...), but try other fonts too. fontaddicts is a great resource for decent and popular fonts, as are DaFont and AbstractFonts.

* Location, location, location. Don't have text cover up important areas, like someone's eyes (note that this can work in some cases) or something interesting in the background.

* Vary fonts, font size, letter spacing, etc. Mentioned above, but you can make a line of text go from boring to interesting just by spacing out the letters or turning them into small caps (I love small caps, possibly too much). And while capital letters are good when writing LJ posts, you don't always have to use them on graphics.

* Don't be scared to use commonly used online fonts like Times New Roman, Arial, Verdana, Tahoma and the like. They're good fonts for a reason.

* If a popular, "overused" font like Violation fits your graphic best, go for it. I thought it the best choice for this header, so I went with it ^_^.

* Use different blend modes for your text. Duplicate the text layer if it's too washed out. Lower your text layer's opacity. Remember, blend modes aren't just for the graphic itself or the textures you've applied.

* Look at other people's graphics and icons and see how they've done it. Try to do it yourself, just to see if you can. Get inspired by people better than you. Pay close attention to their font choice and how they've used it.

* Pick a font that matches the mood of your graphic. Flowery fonts don't make a very good match for a grungy icon or wallpaper, imo.

* I *heart* tiny text :). Just make it actually tiny, like between 1-3px. Nothing's quite as annoying as tiny text that's just barely readable. Make it actually UNREADABLE if you're gonna use it, like in the icon I'm posting this entry with.

Hope this was useful for some ^_^

[Header] Roux, general Johnny Depp

2007-11-19T18:09:59Z

"Off the Beaten Path"

960x400

"Roux"

960x400

[Icon Post #02] Johnny Depp (various)

2007-11-15T16:50:59Z

Teasers:

1	2	3

4	5	6

7	8	9

Table created with The Icon Table Generator by 77words.

[Header, wallpaper] Pirates of the Caribbean

2007-11-14T12:27:55Z

"The Game"

960x400

"Bring Me That Horizon"

1280x1024

AWE DVD soon :D

[Header image] Guidelines Are Meant To Be Broken

2007-11-12T15:18:08Z

960x400

Feat. Barbossa, Elizabeth and Jack. I disliked this until I added the text :P. Which is actually the case with a lot of my work, come to think of it.