IntroductionIntroduction| 00:04 |
(SOUND) This is David Mattingly, author of
the Digital Matte Painting Handbook.
| | 00:08 |
While learning The Fundamentals of Digital
Matte Painting, you will be creating a
| | 00:12 |
castle on a rugged coastline.
First, we'll concentrate on coming up with
| | 00:17 |
an interesting concept for your project.
I'll teach you how to get you ideas down
| | 00:21 |
quickly and accurately.
Next, you'll get a lesson in perspective.
| | 00:26 |
I'll get you up to speed and able to do a
precise perspective drawing.
| | 00:31 |
After that, we'll get into adding tone,
where you light your project and add cast shadows.
| | 00:37 |
Then I'll show you how to add photographic
textures and color to your scene, using a
| | 00:42 |
variety of techniques.
Finally, we'll put it all together using
| | 00:46 |
the 3D picture Maya.
At the end of this tutorial, you'll not
| | 00:50 |
only have a full understanding of the
basic tools of digital map painting, but
| | 00:55 |
also a photo realistic castle ready for
your demoreel.
| | 00:59 |
So, let's get started.
| | 01:00 |
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| Overview of the course| 00:01 |
This Fundamentals of Digital Matte
Painting tutorial is broken into five sections.
| | 00:05 |
Each part builds on the one that came
before it.
| | 00:08 |
So, the course is designed for you to work
through it in order.
| | 00:11 |
Those five parts are Concept, Perspective,
Tone, Texturing and Camera projection.
| | 00:20 |
In the concept section, I'll show you how
to get your ideas down quickly.
| | 00:24 |
Establishing a mood for the scene and
creating a distinctive silhouette for your castle.
| | 00:30 |
We will also define the direction of
lighting your scene and set up basic forms.
| | 00:35 |
I will encourage you to work quickly in
this phase, allowing yourself 30 minutes
| | 00:39 |
to an hour for each concept sketch.
Perspective is a complex topic that could
| | 00:45 |
easily take up a ten hour tutorial by
itself.
| | 00:48 |
But by using the 90/10 rule that says
you'll use 10% of the tools of perspective
| | 00:53 |
90% of the time, I'll teach you the most
important rules of perspective that you
| | 00:58 |
use every day as a matte artist.
In the tone section, you will learn about
| | 01:04 |
the properties of light, and how it falls
on an object.
| | 01:07 |
Working only in black and white, we will
set up a clear light side and dark side,
| | 01:13 |
then add cores, cast shadows, and an
ambient seclusion layer.
| | 01:17 |
Now, you will have all of your lighting
problems solved before you start coloring
| | 01:21 |
and texturing your castle.
In the Texturing section, you'll use
| | 01:26 |
photographs creatively to give your
project a photo realistic finish.
| | 01:31 |
By not using photographs until this point
in the project, you were able to get your
| | 01:36 |
creative ideas down without relying on
photography.
| | 01:41 |
You will learn how to use a variety of
photographic sources, distorting and color
| | 01:45 |
correcting them to suit your project.
This way you can use photographs to
| | 01:49 |
enhance your vision and not be limited by
available reference.
| | 01:55 |
In the camera projection section, you will
use advance matte painting techniques to
| | 02:00 |
turn your flat painting into a full 3D
scene.
| | 02:03 |
Using the 3D program AutoDesk Maya, you
will project your painting onto rough
| | 02:08 |
geometry, then set up an animated camera
to rephotograph your scene.
| | 02:13 |
I'll also teach you some compositing
tricks in Maya to add more movement into
| | 02:18 |
your scene, like a moving sky, smoke and
fire.
| | 02:23 |
If you're a beginner, you may want to
follow along and do exactly what I'm doing.
| | 02:28 |
If you are more advanced, think about
making your own version of this project,
| | 02:32 |
adopting the principles I will show, to
create your own unique castle.
| | 02:38 |
Here are just a few examples of castles
that have been produced by my students.
| | 02:42 |
So, feel free to get your creative juices
flowing, and see what you can come up with.
| | 02:47 |
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| Using the exercise files| 00:00 |
If you are a premium member of the
lynda.com online training library, you
| | 00:05 |
have access to the files used in this
demonstration, to the exercise files tab,
| | 00:10 |
to the right of the table of contents tab
on the lynda.com website.
| | 00:15 |
Each section has its own folder, but I
would recommend downloading all of the
| | 00:19 |
exercise files to your desktop before you
start, since some of the chapters will
| | 00:24 |
refer to the resources first used in
another section.
| | 00:28 |
If you are a monthly or annual member of
lynda.com, you still have access to the
| | 00:32 |
original plate I will be using for this
demonstration, along with the footage that
| | 00:37 |
your final castle will be composited into.
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| What is a matte painting?| 00:01 |
What is a matte painting?
The word matte in matte painting refers to
| | 00:05 |
the fact that the painting would matte out
or block the image in the background.
| | 00:10 |
Here is how a matte painting was done as
far back as 1907.
| | 00:13 |
Let's say a filmmaker has built the ground
floor of a castle but hasn't built the
| | 00:19 |
upper floors and towers for budgetary
reasons.
| | 00:22 |
So a matte artist is called in.
A secure platform is built to get the
| | 00:26 |
camera to the correct eye level and the
shot is framed through a large sheet of
| | 00:31 |
glass mounted in front of the camera.
Working with the cameraman, the matte
| | 00:36 |
painter would then paint the top part of
the castle on the glass matting or
| | 00:41 |
blocking out the scene behind the
painting.
| | 00:44 |
Since the camera has only one eye, it
wasn't possible to tell that the painting
| | 00:49 |
was actually much closer to the camera
than the scene in the background.
| | 00:52 |
And as long as the camera didn't move, the
painting and the background scene were
| | 00:57 |
merged together on film.
The man who was credited with the
| | 01:01 |
invention of matte painting was Norman O
Dawn.
| | 01:05 |
Dawn's 1907 film, The Missions of
California was the first film to use the
| | 01:10 |
matte painting process.
Matte paintings were used in films
| | 01:15 |
extensively throughout the history of
cinema but the general public was largely
| | 01:19 |
unaware of the use of the technique.
For instance, you have probably seen the
| | 01:23 |
classic film, Gone with the Wind.
But we're probably unaware that whenever
| | 01:28 |
you see Scarlett O'hara's home Tara, it is
at least partially a matte painting.
| | 01:33 |
And in another classic film Citizen Kane,
many of the signature shots are also matte paintings.
| | 01:40 |
I want to talk about two of the greatest
matte artists to work in the pre-digital
| | 01:44 |
age, Peter Ellenshaw and Albert Whitlock.
Peter Ellenshaw film credits include Mary
| | 01:51 |
Poppins, The Sword and the Rose, Darby
O'Gill and the Little People and Treasure Island.
| | 01:59 |
My matte painting mentor was Harrison
Ellenshaw, son of Peter Ellenshaw and a
| | 02:03 |
master matte painter himself.
Harrison shared with me this high
| | 02:07 |
resolution scan of his father's painting
for Stanley Cubrick's film Spartacus.
| | 02:13 |
I want to zoom in a bit to show you some
of the detail on this painting.
| | 02:18 |
Back before audiences could rewind and
look at a matte painting many times to
| | 02:22 |
analyze the fine detail.
Matte artists concentrated on the overall
| | 02:26 |
effect of their painting.
How light fell on surfaces, rather like
| | 02:30 |
the great impressionist painters.
And many of the matte paintings from this
| | 02:33 |
era look surprisingly loose to the
contemporary eye.
| | 02:37 |
But when viewed in the context of a movie,
they look perfectly photographic without
| | 02:42 |
actually painting in all of the fine
detail.
| | 02:46 |
Albert Whitlock is the second great matte
artist of the pre-digital edge that you
| | 02:50 |
should know about.
Whitlock was long associated with Alfred
| | 02:55 |
Hitchcock and his film The Birds, is one
of Whitlock's masterpieces.
| | 03:00 |
Other movies that include matte paintings
by Albert Whitlock that you should check
| | 03:04 |
out are, The Hindenburg, The Sting, and
Mel Brooks' History of the World Part 1.
| | 03:12 |
I began my career painting on glass.
But the availability of the digital tools
| | 03:17 |
I will introduce you to in this course has
rendered those older techniques obsolete.
| | 03:22 |
However, there's still a great deal to be
learned from the great masters of the past.
| | 03:27 |
For a complete history of matte painting,
you should find a copy of The Invisible
| | 03:31 |
Art by Craig Barron and Mark Cotta Vaz.
It is out of print, but if you can pick up
| | 03:37 |
a used copy, it is the best book ever
written on the topic.
| | 03:41 |
A website that everyone interested in
matte painting should know about is www.mattepainting.org.
| | 03:48 |
Mattepainting.org has great discussions on
matte painting.
| | 03:53 |
And it's a site where newcomers can get
their efforts critiqued by professionals.
| | 03:57 |
Another site you should check out is
nzpetesmatteshot.blogspot.com.
| | 04:04 |
This site concentrates on matte artists of
the pre-digital era and is updated
| | 04:09 |
frequently with new interviews and
articles.
| | 04:11 |
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|
|
1. Starting Your ProjectSetting up your Photoshop workspace| 00:00 |
Before we get started with our concept
painting, I want to have you optimize your
| | 00:04 |
Photoshop work space for matte painting.
If you haven't changed your work space in
| | 00:09 |
a previous session, Photoshop defaults to
the Essentials work space.
| | 00:14 |
You can go up to the right corner of the
interface, and look through the Drop- down
| | 00:18 |
menu to see the various preset work spaces
that Photoshop offers.
| | 00:23 |
The painting work space is a good starting
place for creating a special matte
| | 00:27 |
painting work space.
So, go ahead and choose that one from the menu.
| | 00:31 |
Your painting work space may look slightly
different from mine, depending on what
| | 00:35 |
options were chosen in a previous session.
Your work space should be optimized, so
| | 00:40 |
that the windows you use less often are
hidden.
| | 00:44 |
If you decide you need a certain window
that is not visible, you can always go up
| | 00:47 |
to the top menu, choose Window, and then
the window you need.
| | 00:52 |
In the painting work space, there are a
lot of windows open taking up space that
| | 00:56 |
you don't need.
So, first close swatches.
| | 01:00 |
I will encourage you to do all of your
color picking using the heads-up color
| | 01:03 |
picker instead.
Then close Navigator.
| | 01:07 |
Navigator can be helpful if you were
getting lost in a document, but I don't
| | 01:11 |
generally keep it open.
Also, close the brush presets.
| | 01:15 |
We will set up a lot of custom brushes
while working on this project, but I'll
| | 01:20 |
show you a more convenient way to access
your brushes.
| | 01:23 |
There are three states for your windows.
One is open on the side, like we have this
| | 01:29 |
Layers window.
The second state is tabbed, but not open.
| | 01:34 |
I like to keep the Layers, Channels, and
Paths all together in one open window.
| | 01:40 |
The third state is iconized, like these
four icons to the left of the open windows.
| | 01:46 |
If you click on the icon, it reveals the
larger window, and you can access the
| | 01:51 |
control options there.
The window stays open until you close it.
| | 01:55 |
Either by clicking on the arrow in the top
right, or by selecting another icon.
| | 02:01 |
You can also tear them off when you want a
free floating window.
| | 02:05 |
If you decide you want to move one of the
iconized tabs into an open window, you can
| | 02:10 |
drag and dock them to the desired
location.
| | 02:14 |
When you see a blue line when docking, you
will create a new open window separate
| | 02:19 |
from the other open windows.
If you get a blue box that goes around the
| | 02:23 |
entire selected window, that will add that
window as a tabbed choice.
| | 02:30 |
Let's get rid of some of the iconized
windows.
| | 02:32 |
I don't use the Clone tool very much in
matte painting.
| | 02:36 |
And when I do, I access it through the
Tools window on the left on the interface.
| | 02:42 |
I also don't use the tools preset.
So, close that one.
| | 02:47 |
You'll want to have the brush window
iconized on the side, so that you can
| | 02:51 |
adjust the custom brush attributes on the
fly.
| | 02:54 |
You'll want to have the History window
iconized along with the Actions window.
| | 03:00 |
The other windows I like to have open are
the Info and Properties windows.
| | 03:05 |
Go up to the top menu and choose Window >
Info.
| | 03:10 |
In this case, both the Info and Properties
windows opened at the same time.
| | 03:15 |
Drag the Info window above the window that
had Layers, Channels, and Paths in it, and
| | 03:21 |
when a blue line appears drop it.
If the Properties window is not already
| | 03:25 |
open, go up to the Window menu and choose
it.
| | 03:29 |
Tab it right along side of the Info
window.
| | 03:33 |
So, your final setup for your matte
painting work space should be like this.
| | 03:38 |
The top open window should be Info and
Properties.
| | 03:42 |
The bottom open window should be Layers,
Channels, and Paths.
| | 03:47 |
The iconized window should be Actions,
History, and Brushes.
| | 03:52 |
With your work space set up, be sure to
save it under a special name.
| | 03:55 |
I'm going to call mine matte painting work
space.
| | 03:59 |
Go ahead and choose your keyboard
shortcuts and menus to save them also.
| | 04:03 |
That way, if I choose another work space
to do some special work, I can always get
| | 04:07 |
my matte painting work space back by going
up to the upper right corner and choosing
| | 04:12 |
it from the Drop-down menu.
In this lesson, you learned how to set up
| | 04:16 |
a work space specifically for matte
painting, and how to save that work space
| | 04:21 |
for future use.
| | 04:23 |
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| 16-bit color| 00:00 |
Most professional matte paintings are done
in a supercharged color space called 16
| | 00:05 |
Bit Color.
So, what is 16 Bit Color?
| | 00:09 |
8 bit color is the color space where most
digital photographs in the world exist.
| | 00:14 |
Including most photos on the internet.
They are made up of 256 levels of grey for
| | 00:20 |
each of the red, blue and green channels
that represent digital colors.
| | 00:24 |
Basically, 8 bit color's created by
multiplying 8 by 8 by 8 which equals 256.
| | 00:32 |
Then each of those 256 levels of gray in
each channel are multiplied by each other,
| | 00:38 |
equaling 16.8 million colors.
That may sound like a lot of colors, but
| | 00:44 |
as a mad artist you need a richer color
environment.
| | 00:48 |
16 bit colors is created by multiplying 16
by 16 by 16, which equals 65,536 levels of
| | 00:55 |
grey for each channel.
Then that 65,536 is multiplied by itself
| | 01:02 |
two more times, making a total of 281
trillion colors.
| | 01:09 |
Let me show you an example of why 16 bit
color is better.
| | 01:14 |
Let's take a look at this 8 bit photo of a
blue alpine sky.
| | 01:18 |
The problem is that a fine smooth gradient
like this can't be well represented by a
| | 01:23 |
bit color.
There's just too many slightly different
| | 01:26 |
levels of blue.
As a consequence, you get banding, or
| | 01:30 |
these clearly defined jumps in color.
Let's switch over to the 16 bit version of
| | 01:36 |
this plate and see what the difference is.
Here we're getting a very smooth gradient
| | 01:41 |
of blue, because there are many more
colors in this 16 bit plate to represent
| | 01:45 |
the sky.
If you're seeing banding, that banding was
| | 01:49 |
introduced by the compression that was
necessary for this video to be streamed.
| | 01:54 |
But take my word for it, this is a
beautiful, smooth gradient.
| | 01:58 |
Let's switch back to the 8 bit plate and
take a look at another difference.
| | 02:02 |
If you look at the file size in the lower
left corner of your Photoshop document,
| | 02:07 |
you'll see that an 8 bit document is half
the size of the same document in 16 bit.
| | 02:13 |
As I switch back and forth between the 8
and 16 bit document, you'll see that the
| | 02:17 |
file size doubles.
So, even though it makes our file size
| | 02:21 |
bigger, we're going to be working in 16
bit color to take advantage of the rich
| | 02:25 |
color space it offers.
| | 02:27 |
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| Prepping the plate| 00:00 |
Let's take a lot at the plate we'll be
working over for this project.
| | 00:04 |
If you're a lynda.com premium member,
you'll have access to all of the files I
| | 00:09 |
use to create this project.
If you're not a premium member, you'll
| | 00:13 |
still have access to the Photoshop plate
and to the movie file we'll be compositing
| | 00:19 |
our final castle into.
Before starting this tutorial, you should
| | 00:24 |
download the exercise files to your
desktop then double click on the folder to
| | 00:30 |
open it.
The first folder 1 concept contains all of
| | 00:33 |
the exercise files for the first section.
The first file in this folder is
| | 00:38 |
ConceptFinal.psd, which is my final
concept painting.
| | 00:42 |
You should look at this when you're done
with this section.
| | 00:46 |
The second file is Plates.mov, which is
the movie we'll be compositing our final
| | 00:52 |
castle into.
Double-click on the movie and let's take a
| | 00:56 |
look at it.
This is a piece of high definition footage
| | 00:59 |
that I shot in the Virgin Islands and it's
a beautiful coastline with some waves
| | 01:04 |
crashing in on it.
We're not going to be able to work on this
| | 01:08 |
moving footage, so we need to copy out a
single representative frame to paint over
| | 01:13 |
in Photoshop.
So, stop on a frame that you like and
| | 01:16 |
Cmd+C to copy that frame out of QuickTime.
Then return to Photoshop and press Cmd or
| | 01:22 |
Ctrl+N to create a new document.
And by default, Photoshop opens up a
| | 01:27 |
document that's same size as the copied
file.
| | 01:30 |
In this case 1920 by 1080, which is the
same size as the high definition movie file.
| | 01:36 |
Under color mode, you'll want to choose 16
bit which is that supercharged color space
| | 01:43 |
I mentioned before.
Then press OK and then Cmd or Ctrl+V to
| | 01:47 |
paste the single frame of the movie file
into your Photoshop document.
| | 01:53 |
Next, you're going to want to double the
size of your Photoshop document.
| | 01:58 |
This will allow you to work at twice the
size of your movie file and add lots of
| | 02:04 |
detail to your castle.
Go up to Image > Image Size and make sure
| | 02:08 |
Re-sample Image is checked.
In the width drop down, choose Percent
| | 02:13 |
rather than Inches.
Change the height and width to 200%.
| | 02:17 |
Now your file size is 3840 pixels by 2160.
Press OK.
| | 02:22 |
Press Cmd or Ctrl+Minus key so that you
can see the whole plate.
| | 02:27 |
Since you doubled the size of the video
footage, it's now softer than what you
| | 02:34 |
should work over.
I've provided you with a high resolution
| | 02:38 |
reference file that was shot at the same
time.
| | 02:42 |
Reference.cr2.
The CR2 file format is Camera Raw.
| | 02:46 |
A special file format with a much richer
color environment than a standard JPEG photo.
| | 02:52 |
That's because it gives you access to that
16 bit mode I mentioned before.
| | 02:58 |
Double-click on Reference.cr2 to open up
the Camera Raw control panel.
| | 03:03 |
First, pull the Exposure slider to the
left.
| | 03:06 |
You need to make sure that none of the
whites on the wave tops are blown out or
| | 03:12 |
completely white.
Click in the bottom center of the window
| | 03:16 |
to open up the Workflow Options.
Under Depth, the default is 8 bits a
| | 03:22 |
channel, but I want you to choose 16 bits
a channel.
| | 03:26 |
Then under size, I want you to choose the
native resolution of the camera sensor,
| | 03:32 |
which is 21 Mega Pixels.
Press Ok to accept it all, and open image.
| | 03:37 |
And then the file opens in Photoshop.
Select all, which is Cmd or Ctrl+A.
| | 03:43 |
Return to the file that contains the
single frame from the movie.
| | 03:48 |
Before we paste in the high resolution
reference from the Camera Raw file, let's
| | 03:54 |
add some room at the top for the sky.
Go to the top menu and choose Image >
| | 03:59 |
Canvas size.
And then you're going to change the height
| | 04:04 |
to add more room for the sky.
I'm going to change it to 3024 pixels.
| | 04:08 |
Since I only want to add room at the top,
I need to click on this down arrow.
| | 04:14 |
That way it'll only add pixels to the top.
Click OK.
| | 04:18 |
Now remember you still have that high
resolution 16 bit photo in the clip board.
| | 04:24 |
Press Cmd or Ctrl+V to paste it into this
plate.
| | 04:28 |
If you turn the visibility on and off by
clicking on the eyeball to the left of the
| | 04:34 |
layer, you can see the two photos are not
lining up.
| | 04:38 |
Press Cmd or Ctrl+T to invoke the
Transform tool, scale and reposition the
| | 04:44 |
two layers until they line up.
When it looks pretty good, hit the Return
| | 04:49 |
key to accept the transformation.
In order to not have that band of white at
| | 04:55 |
the top, invoke the Marque tool, either
from the toolbar or by pressing the M key.
| | 05:01 |
Draw a Marquee right around the top sliver
of the sky.
| | 05:05 |
Press Cmd or Ctrl+J to copy that section
out.
| | 05:09 |
Then press Cmd or Ctrl+T to invoke the
Transform tool again and transform that
| | 05:16 |
section up to cover up all the white.
We now have a lot of extra pixels outside
| | 05:22 |
of the border of our image, so we need to
apply a crop to this.
| | 05:27 |
Invoke the Crop tool by pressing the C
key, then make sure that the Delete
| | 05:33 |
Cropped Pixels box at the top is checked.
Press the Return key twice to accept the crop.
| | 05:40 |
Then merge all of these layers together by
selecting them all and pressing Cmd or Ctrl+E.
| | 05:46 |
The reason we went through this process is
we want our high resolution file that
| | 05:51 |
we're going to paint over.
To match the video footage that we're
| | 05:55 |
going to be compositing the castle into.
You can either save and use the file we
| | 06:00 |
just created, or go to the Linda.com
course materials and open up the file plate.psd.
| | 06:07 |
Either one will work as the prepared plate
for us to paint over for our castle concept.
| | 06:13 |
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| Concept painting basics| 00:00 |
We're about to embark on this five part
tutorial, where we'll create a matte
| | 00:04 |
painting over the plate we just prepared.
But first, we're faced with the dilemma
| | 00:08 |
every artist encounters.
What are we going to paint?
| | 00:12 |
You need a basic concept for your castle
before you start work on your matte painting.
| | 00:18 |
Different artists have different
approaches on how to get their ideas down.
| | 00:21 |
So let me share mine with you.
I like to do a number of different ideas
| | 00:26 |
before I start a project, spending
anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour on
| | 00:30 |
each one.
Here are a few examples of what I did
| | 00:34 |
before I started this video series.
Don't worry, I'll slow way down after this
| | 00:39 |
and walk you through it step by step.
But the important thing is don't settle
| | 00:44 |
for your first idea.
Try out a few before you start work on
| | 00:48 |
your final.
These sketches here took anywhere from 30
| | 00:52 |
minutes to an hour.
If an idea is going well, I'll spend a
| | 00:55 |
little bit more time on it.
If it looks like a dog, I'll cut my loses
| | 00:59 |
and start on another one.
Two other things that I want you to think
| | 01:03 |
about while you're working on your concept
sketch.
| | 01:07 |
First I want you to design your castle so
that it is set at an angle to the viewer.
| | 01:11 |
Let me show you what I'm talking about.
Many students when coming up with their
| | 01:16 |
castle concept will create their castle so
that it is looking straight onto us like this.
| | 01:23 |
There's a problem with this view.
The castle is very flat and it shows no dimensionality.
| | 01:29 |
While working on your concept, I want you
to think about showing two sides of your castle.
| | 01:35 |
An angled view of a scene will almost
always be more interesting than a flat view.
| | 01:39 |
So paint your castle at an angle,
something like this, where you see a right
| | 01:44 |
and left face of your structure.
I've just drawn these two examples using
| | 01:49 |
lines, but while painting your concept
sketch, I want you to avoid line and think
| | 01:53 |
in terms of mass, at least while starting
the sketch.
| | 01:58 |
Most great matte artists I have known are
paint pushers rather than drawers, meaning
| | 02:02 |
they don't generally draw outlines of
their projects, but rather develop the
| | 02:06 |
masses in paint, something like this.
In nature, edges are defined by tone
| | 02:13 |
rather than line.
We want our map painting to look as photo
| | 02:16 |
realistic as possible.
So concentrate on thinking in terms of
| | 02:20 |
mass rather than line while doing your
concept sketch.
| | 02:25 |
With those ideas in mind, let's start
working on our painting.
| | 02:28 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
2. Toning the PlateExtracting the hill| 00:00 |
Before starting on the castle structure, I
find it very helpful to tone the plate to
| | 00:05 |
more closely match the environment of the
castle I envision.
| | 00:09 |
If you plan to do a castle on a bright,
sunny Caribbean hill, then your work is done.
| | 00:14 |
But often you'll want to tone and color
correct your plate to make it something
| | 00:17 |
more dramatic than your source material.
Even if you don't plan to change the
| | 00:22 |
plate, you should watch the next couple of
videos just to get a handle on how to do it.
| | 00:28 |
You'll probably want to deal with the hill
separately, so it would be helpful to
| | 00:32 |
separate it from the rest of the scene
before we begin.
| | 00:35 |
You could do this be using the Lasso tool
to carefully select around the hill.
| | 00:40 |
But I want to show you a better and more
accurate way of doing that.
| | 00:46 |
Go to the dock windows on the right of the
interface and choose the Channels tab.
| | 00:51 |
Here you can view the red, green, and blue
color channels that make up your image.
| | 00:57 |
Look through the individual channels and
see if one of them shows the hill more
| | 01:00 |
clearly separated from the rest of the
scene.
| | 01:04 |
In this case the blue plate shows the hill
darker than both the sky and the water.
| | 01:10 |
Make a copy of the blue color channel by
dragging it to the bottom of the window on
| | 01:15 |
to the Create a New Channel icon.
It looks like a square with the bottom
| | 01:19 |
left corner turned up.
That copy labelled blue copy appears and
| | 01:25 |
it's selected.
Now press Cmd or Ctrl+M to open up the
| | 01:29 |
Curves panel.
You want to pull the black point which is
| | 01:34 |
in the lower left corner of the curve to
the right until the hill becomes
| | 01:38 |
completely black.
Then pull the white point which is at the
| | 01:42 |
upper right corner of the curve to the
left until the water becomes almost
| | 01:46 |
completely white to create a high contrast
matte.
| | 01:51 |
this channel isn't clear enough to get it
perfect using only the curves, but it'll
| | 01:55 |
get you most of the way there.
Either choose the Lasso tool from the Tool
| | 02:00 |
panel or press L on the keyboard to access
it.
| | 02:03 |
And now you'll need to do some hand
lassoing to get rid of these dark tones in
| | 02:07 |
the water.
Once you have made an initial selection,
| | 02:11 |
you can add to this selection by holding
down on the Shift key while using the
| | 02:15 |
Lasso tool.
With your initial selection made, you'll
| | 02:20 |
want to fill it full of white, so make
sure that white is in your foreground
| | 02:23 |
color picker, and then press Delete.
Photoshop will ask you what you want to
| | 02:28 |
fill the contents with, and choose
foreground color.
| | 02:33 |
Now I can see, there's a couple of areas
I've missed, and I'll go ahead and add
| | 02:37 |
them to the selection.
I'm going to make sure white is still in
| | 02:41 |
my foreground color picker, and hit Delete
again.
| | 02:44 |
Now all of the areas that contain water
and sky are completely white.
| | 02:50 |
You'll need to do a bit of patching on the
hill so quickly marquee around all of the
| | 02:54 |
white in the hill.
Press the X key to swap the foreground and
| | 02:58 |
background colors in order to get black
into the Foreground color picker.
| | 03:03 |
Press Delete and choose foreground color
again.
| | 03:06 |
You'll also want to clean up these rocks
in the water so marquee around them.
| | 03:13 |
Press Delete and then fill the rocks full
of black.
| | 03:17 |
Now you have a clean, high contrast matte.
However, what you want is white where the
| | 03:22 |
hill is, and black where the sea and sky
were.
| | 03:26 |
You want the inverse of this, so go ahead
and select all, Cmd or Ctrl+A, and then
| | 03:30 |
invert the channel, Cmd or Ctrl+I.
Now the area with the hill and the rocks
| | 03:39 |
is completely white and the area with sky
and water, completely black.
| | 03:43 |
Cmd or Ctrl click into the channel
thumbnail preview to the left of the
| | 03:48 |
channel name to load the selection in.
Photoshop loads a 100% selection into any
| | 03:54 |
area that is white, and a 0% selection
into areas that are black, cleanly
| | 04:00 |
selecting the hill alone.
Click on the top RGB icon to view your
| | 04:05 |
color plate again.
And then click on the Layers tab.
| | 04:10 |
Now press Cmd or Ctrl+J to separate the
hill from the background and place it on a
| | 04:15 |
new layer.
In this lesson, you learned how to
| | 04:19 |
separate your hills from the background
using a high contrast matte extracted from
| | 04:23 |
one of the RGB channels.
| | 04:25 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Applying adjustment layers| 00:00 |
The next step is to tone your plate, so
that the environment more closely matches
| | 00:04 |
your idea for your castle concept.
I have in mind a castle on on a sea of lava.
| | 00:10 |
But right now, this beautiful Caribbean
coastline looks very little like that.
| | 00:15 |
By toning the plate, I'm going to change
this blue ocean into a more threatening
| | 00:20 |
red volcanic environment.
Turn off the hill that you extracted in
| | 00:24 |
the last section, so, we can work on the
overall plate.
| | 00:28 |
You should start by adding an Adjustment
layer.
| | 00:31 |
Adjustment layers are added by clicking on
the icon at the bottom of the Layers
| | 00:35 |
window that looks like a circle with white
at the top and black at the bottom.
| | 00:40 |
Adjustment layers offer you most of the
controls available in the top menu under
| | 00:45 |
Image Adjustments, like curves, levels,
hue and saturation and many more.
| | 00:51 |
However, Adjustment layers are different
from regular image adjustments, in that
| | 00:55 |
they are non-destructive.
Choose Curves from the Adjustment Layers menu.
| | 01:01 |
The Curve Adjustment layer appears in the
Layers tab, and the Curves window appears
| | 01:06 |
in the Properties tab.
If you don't have the Properties window
| | 01:10 |
open, choose it from the Window drop-down
menu.
| | 01:15 |
We'll use the Curve Adjustment layer as
the first pass on toning our plate.
| | 01:21 |
You want to make the plate darker overall.
So, in the RGB curve, pull the white point down.
| | 01:29 |
That crushes all of the bright whites in
the water.
| | 01:34 |
Next, click on the middle of the curve and
pull down.
| | 01:37 |
That darkens all of the mid-tones in the
plate.
| | 01:41 |
I want to make the plate redder, and get
rid of the bright blue-greens of the ocean
| | 01:45 |
and the sky.
Go to the color channel selector at the
| | 01:49 |
top left of the curves window, and select
Red.
| | 01:54 |
Now, you can adjust the red channel of the
plate individually.
| | 01:58 |
Since we want the plate to have more red,
we will click in the center of the red
| | 02:02 |
curve to add a point and then pull up.
Anytime you pull up on a curve, it adds
| | 02:08 |
more of that color and also lightens the
plate.
| | 02:12 |
Next, select the green channel from the
Drop-down menu.
| | 02:16 |
When we pull down on the green curve,
we'll both add the complement of green,
| | 02:20 |
which is red, and also darken the plate.
I'm also going to pull down on the white
| | 02:26 |
point at the top of the green curve, in
order to darken the white caps of the ocean.
| | 02:31 |
Then pull down on the middle of the curve
a little more.
| | 02:35 |
The plate is looking very violet and we
need to add some yellow to counteract that.
| | 02:40 |
Go up to the Channel selector again and
select the Blue channel.
| | 02:44 |
To add yellow to the plate, you need to
take away blue.
| | 02:48 |
So, pull down on the middle of the blue
curve, then pull down on the white point
| | 02:53 |
of the blue curve to add more yellow to
the white caps.
| | 02:57 |
If you switch back to the RGB drop down,
it shows you all of the adjustments you've
| | 03:01 |
made to all of your color channels.
Using only this single Adjustment layer
| | 03:06 |
curve, we've gone from this to this.
Next up, we're going to use layers set to
| | 03:13 |
different transfer modes to further tone
this plate.
| | 03:16 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Examining transfer modes| 00:00 |
With the fist pass on toning our plate
completed using the Adjustment layer we're
| | 00:04 |
ready to further tone the plate using
layer set to transfer modes other than the
| | 00:09 |
default normal.
First, add a new layer to this by clicking
| | 00:14 |
on the Add a New Layer icon at the bottom
of the Layers window.
| | 00:18 |
Change the name of this layer to red
multiply.
| | 00:22 |
Now, we're going to use the Gradient tool
to tone this layer.
| | 00:26 |
Either pick the Gradient tool from the
Side tool bar or press the G key on the keyboard.
| | 00:32 |
I want you to select a particular gradient
by clicking on the Edit Gradient box in
| | 00:36 |
the upper left corner.
If the available gradients are different
| | 00:40 |
than what's shown here, choose Reset
Gradients from this drop down menu.
| | 00:46 |
The gradient that Photoshop defaults to is
Foreground to Background.
| | 00:50 |
But that's not the one you want to use.
Foreground to background gradients between
| | 00:54 |
whatever you have in the foreground color
picker, and the background color picker.
| | 00:59 |
The gradient that's much more useful is to
the right of it.
| | 01:01 |
Called Foreground to Transparent.
Click on that one.
| | 01:05 |
And now your gradient goes from whatever's
in the foreground color to transparent.
| | 01:10 |
Click OK to accept that gradient.
Then, to the right of the Edit Gradient
| | 01:14 |
box are five different styles of gradient.
You want to choose the first one, Linear Gradient.
| | 01:21 |
Now we need to pick a foreground color to
use with the Gradient tool.
| | 01:25 |
There are several ways of picking color in
Photoshop.
| | 01:28 |
The old way was to use the color picker at
the bottom of the toolbar.
| | 01:33 |
Clicking on the foreground color brought
up this color picker where you could make
| | 01:37 |
your selection.
In the most recent versions of Photoshop
| | 01:41 |
there is a better way of doing it using
the heads up color picker.
| | 01:45 |
With either the Gradient tool or the brush
selected, on the Mac hold down the
| | 01:49 |
Cmd+Ctrl, and option keys all at the same
time and click, or on the PC hold down the
| | 01:55 |
Alt and Shift keys and then right click.
There are several heads-up color pickers
| | 02:01 |
available, and you should check them all
out under Photoshop, Preferences, General.
| | 02:07 |
Under the Heads Up Color Picker I've
chosen Hue Wheel.
| | 02:10 |
I should check them all out and see which
one suits your workflow best.
| | 02:15 |
So invoke the Heads Up Color Picker again,
and this time I want to pick a dark
| | 02:20 |
intense red to darken the sky.
On this Color Picker, you select the hue
| | 02:25 |
on the outer ring.
Then drag in to the center to select the
| | 02:28 |
saturation and value.
With the gradient tool selected and the
| | 02:33 |
opacity set to 20%.
Drag from the top down to about the middle.
| | 02:38 |
The layer I'm adding the gradient tool is
still set to normal and I want to set it
| | 02:42 |
to Multiply so that it will darken the
sky.
| | 02:46 |
A layer set to the multiply transfer mode
will always darken the underlying layers.
| | 02:52 |
Now drag the Gradient tool down a couple
more times.
| | 02:55 |
Since it's set to 20% you can slowly build
up the tone.
| | 03:00 |
Add passes at the top and bottom until the
plate darkens up to your satisfaction.
| | 03:07 |
Next, we're going to add a red overlay
layer so that we can tone the water in
| | 03:10 |
intense red color.
Add a new layer above the RedMultiply
| | 03:16 |
layer and name it RedOverlay.
Now, set the transfer mode for the layer
| | 03:21 |
to Overlay.
You need to select a brush.
| | 03:25 |
With the Brush tool selected, right click
to bring up the brush selector.
| | 03:30 |
Select a round soft edge brush to glaze
red into the layer.
| | 03:35 |
You need a large brush for this so Ctrl+
Opt click on the MAC, or Ctrl+ Alt right
| | 03:41 |
click on Windows to modify the brush on
the fly.
| | 03:45 |
Drag left and right to re-size the brush
and up and down to harden or soften it.
| | 03:51 |
Now lightly brush red on to this layer.
Since the layer transfer mode is set to
| | 03:55 |
overlay the water and sky will become both
redder and more saturated.
| | 04:02 |
While adding red to the layer you can
paint fairly loosely and build up tones as
| | 04:06 |
you go.
The plate looks redder, but still needs
| | 04:10 |
lava highlights.
We use a mass created from one of the
| | 04:13 |
color channels.
Turn off the Toning layers that were
| | 04:17 |
already created to get back to the
original plate.
| | 04:21 |
Then select the individual channels, and
look through the red, green, and blue.
| | 04:26 |
Looking through the RGB channel, the red
channel has the white caps of the waves
| | 04:31 |
most clearly defined.
So, select and duplicate that red channel.
| | 04:35 |
Then press Cmd or Ctrl+M to open up the
Curves window.
| | 04:41 |
Pull that black point to the right until
everything except the white caps becomes black.
| | 04:47 |
Then pull the white point to the left to
make the white caps even whiter.
| | 04:52 |
Then press OK to accept the curve.
You'll need to do a little lasso clean up
| | 04:58 |
to get rid of remaining detail in the hill
and in the sky.
| | 05:02 |
With black in the background color picker,
hit Delete to clean up the channel.
| | 05:07 |
Load in the mask created by this
high-contrast matte, by command or
| | 05:11 |
control-clicking into the channel icon
preview.
| | 05:14 |
Click on RGB to restore the color, and
click on the Layers tab to return to the
| | 05:20 |
Layers window, and turn on the other
toning layers.
| | 05:24 |
Create a new layer and call this one
orange overlay.
| | 05:29 |
We're going to fill the selection we just
created with glowing orange to make it
| | 05:33 |
look more like molten lava.
Press B to bring up the Brush tool and
| | 05:38 |
then using the exact color picker, choose
a bright orange.
| | 05:43 |
Set the transfer mode for this Orange
Overly layer to Overlay.
| | 05:48 |
With your big soft brush, brush that tone
into the selection.
| | 05:53 |
Press Cmd or Ctrl+H to hide the selection
while you're painting.
| | 05:58 |
You can be quite painterly with this.
Because the selection is constraining your tones.
| | 06:04 |
Now at a glow to the horizon line on that
same layer, and with the same orange color.
| | 06:10 |
Turn off the visibility of all your toning
layers again, so that we can use the
| | 06:14 |
original plate to extract one more high
contrast matte, this one containing only
| | 06:19 |
the wave highlights.
Click on the Channels tab and select the
| | 06:23 |
red channel, and then duplicate it.
We use the red channel again.
| | 06:28 |
Because it mostly clearly separates the
ocean whitecaps from the other elements in
| | 06:32 |
the plate.
We're going to apply another high contrast
| | 06:35 |
curve to this copy.
This time, to get only the whitest parts
| | 06:39 |
of the waves separated.
Now, lasso around the brighter part of the
| | 06:44 |
whitecaps, so you can apply another curve
to them.
| | 06:47 |
All you want is the brightest highlights
of the waves to create hot spots in the lava.
| | 06:51 |
Cmd or Ctrl+click into the channel
thumbnail preview of the high contrast
| | 06:57 |
matte to load the selection.
Click on the Layers tab and create a new
| | 07:02 |
layer called yellow normal.
This layer will be left at the normal
| | 07:07 |
transfer mode to provide the bright
highlights.
| | 07:09 |
Turn back on all of the toning layers,
make sure you're still on the yellow
| | 07:15 |
normal layer.
Then hide the selection and press the B
| | 07:19 |
key to get your Brush tool back.
Bring up the heads up color picker, and
| | 07:24 |
choose a bright saturated yellow.
Brush that bright yellow into the
| | 07:29 |
selection to create the lava highlights.
Now that's starting to look a lot more
| | 07:34 |
like a lake of lava.
There's one last thing to deal with.
| | 07:38 |
The hill now looks too red and is no
longer silhouetting against the sky.
| | 07:44 |
Cmd or Ctrl + click into the layer
thumbnail preview of the hill to load the
| | 07:48 |
selection of the hill.
Turn off the yellow Normal layers and the
| | 07:53 |
orange Overlay layers because they are
substantially lightening the hill.
| | 07:57 |
Cmd or Ctrl+Shift+Copy to copy merged,
which copies out all the pixels under the
| | 08:04 |
selection, not just those on the current
layer.
| | 08:08 |
Paste in that copy of the hill and then
apply a curve to it to make it darker.
| | 08:14 |
Pull the black point to the right a bit to
darken the overall silhouette.
| | 08:19 |
Press OK and now the hill sits in the
scene much better.
| | 08:23 |
Change the name to hill and then delete
that old version of the hill with no color correction.
| | 08:29 |
Turn on those other two toning layers.
And now you have a real sense of this environment.
| | 08:35 |
Scroll down to the original plate.
And then Opt or Alt click on the
| | 08:39 |
visibility eyeball to the left of the
layer.
| | 08:42 |
That turns off the visibility of all the
layers, except the one you've selected.
| | 08:47 |
Click it on and off a couple of times and
you can see the difference that the toning
| | 08:50 |
has made.
Feel free to come up with your own
| | 08:54 |
solution to toning the plate.
Here are a couple of additional solutions
| | 08:58 |
each of which would produce a radically
different environment for your castle.
| | 09:03 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
3. Finding the SilhouetteSilhouette: Rectangular forms| 00:00 |
With the plate toned in the environment
prepared for your castle, it's time to
| | 00:04 |
work on the silhouette.
I want you to paint the raw form of the
| | 00:08 |
castle, not worrying about any of the
details of the light or dark side to begin with.
| | 00:13 |
The first thing your viewer will perceive
when they look at the castle is the
| | 00:17 |
silhouette, and it should tell you a lot
about the castle does and what sort of
| | 00:21 |
person lives inside of it.
If it's made out of soft round forms,
| | 00:25 |
that's going to be a nonthreatening
castle.
| | 00:28 |
On the other hand, if your castle is made
out of sharp spiky forms, your viewer will
| | 00:33 |
immediately get an idea that this is a
completely different kind of castle.
| | 00:37 |
Rather than trying to paint everything at
once, I want you to break the castle down
| | 00:41 |
into understandable chunks.
In this first section, we're going to
| | 00:45 |
worry about only the rectangular or the
square edged forms that make up the base
| | 00:50 |
of your structure.
First, create a new layer and name it silhouette.
| | 00:56 |
Next, you want to create a custom brush
shape that will help you in the painting
| | 01:00 |
of your forms.
I'm seeing my castle as mining this ocean
| | 01:04 |
of lava for energy, and it should have a
solid square base.
| | 01:08 |
So, I'm going to create a custom brush to
paint my rectangular forms with, that's
| | 01:12 |
just a square.
Go up to the top menu and choose File >
| | 01:17 |
New, and create a new 8-bit document
that's 500 pixels by 500 pixels.
| | 01:24 |
We're going to use this as a work space to
create and test our custom brushes for
| | 01:28 |
this project.
Make sure black is in your foreground
| | 01:31 |
color picker, and the Rectangular Marquee
tool selected.
| | 01:35 |
Then hold down the Shift key to constrain
the selection, and click and drag to
| | 01:39 |
create a square.
Go to the top menu and choose Edit > Fill.
| | 01:45 |
Fill it full of 100% black.
And with the selection still active, go up
| | 01:50 |
to Edit -> Define Brush Preset.
Name this square, then return to the
| | 01:57 |
plate, press the B key to access the Brush
tool.
| | 02:00 |
And we're ready to start painting the
silhouette.
| | 02:03 |
From the top Brush menu, select the New
Square Brush.
| | 02:07 |
I want my castle to be built out of a dark
burnt orange colored stone.
| | 02:11 |
So, I need to select that color to paint
my silhouette.
| | 02:15 |
Hold down on the Cmd+Ctrl+Option +Click or
Alt+Shift+right-click to access the heads
| | 02:21 |
up color picker.
Then choose the orange from the outside
| | 02:25 |
ring, and then pull into the center square
to choose a darker less saturated color.
| | 02:31 |
First, I want to paint the base of the
castle.
| | 02:33 |
These are going to be the walls that
surround the structure, and it needs to
| | 02:38 |
sit on the hill.
To draw straight lines, I'm clicking, then
| | 02:41 |
holding down the Shift key and then
clicking again.
| | 02:44 |
You can re-size the brush on the fly by
Ctrl+Option+clicking or
| | 02:50 |
Ctrl+Alt+right-clicking and dragging right
and left.
| | 02:54 |
You should paint at 100% opacity on the
silhouette.
| | 02:58 |
If you're getting a varying opacity in
your brush, go to the Brush panel and make
| | 03:02 |
sure that transfer is unchecked.
If transfer is checked, your brush will
| | 03:06 |
vary in opacity depending on how hard you
press your stylus.
| | 03:11 |
Also make sure that brush tip shape is
selected in the menu, and then turn down
| | 03:15 |
the spacing on your brush.
If spacing is set too high, you'll get
| | 03:20 |
jagged edges on your brush.
Now, finish up the base of the castle and
| | 03:25 |
make sure it's completely opaque.
Keep your fingers on the E and the B keys,
| | 03:30 |
so, you can switch back and forth between
the Eraser tool and the Brush tool.
| | 03:35 |
Load that square brush into your Eraser
tool.
| | 03:38 |
And now, you can refine the edges of this
outer wall.
| | 03:41 |
By working at full opacity, you can add
and subtract from your forms using the
| | 03:46 |
brush and eraser.
I'm envisioning this castle as having two
| | 03:50 |
more upper walls, and I'm going to quickly
block those in, each time treating them as
| | 03:54 |
big cubes.
Now, paint that left side of the cube and
| | 04:00 |
fill it in.
And then I'm going to cut in on each side
| | 04:04 |
with the Eraser tool, and then make the
brush larger and add that third level.
| | 04:14 |
And that finishes up the tiered base of
the castle.
| | 04:18 |
I want to add a bridge that extends out
from the front of the castle and has it's
| | 04:21 |
footings on these foreground rocks.
It'll be dramatic to have lava coming out
| | 04:27 |
of this castle and cascading over this
bridge, down into the sea.
| | 04:33 |
Now, connect the footing with the castle,
but don't let it intersect the horizon.
| | 04:38 |
Add a rounded support on the front of the
bridge, to make the transition more attractive.
| | 04:43 |
And then with the Eraser tool, continue
refining the shape of the castle.
| | 04:48 |
The front of this bridge should have two
symmetrical heat venting stacks.
| | 04:53 |
And they should be perched on two blocky
forms at their base.
| | 04:58 |
Continue to find two misshapes using the
Eraser tool.
| | 05:02 |
Then go around the castle and refine the
edges by cutting into them.
| | 05:06 |
All the time, considering these as basic
geometric forms that will ultimately make
| | 05:11 |
up the more complex castle.
Now, adding all of these finishing
| | 05:15 |
touches, I'm completely all of the square
forms.
| | 05:20 |
In the next section, we'll deal with
rounded domes and the towers that will
| | 05:23 |
make up the final silhouette.
| | 05:25 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Silhouette: Domes and towers| 00:00 |
With the rectangular shapes on the castle
set up, now we're going to add some domes
| | 00:04 |
and some towers using a different custom
brush shape.
| | 00:08 |
We're going to start with a Round brush
from the Photoshop Brush Picker.
| | 00:11 |
And then open the Brush window to make
some modifications to it.
| | 00:16 |
First, we want to turn off transfer
because we want to paint at 100% opacity again.
| | 00:22 |
If the line that your brush is producing
has lumps in it, you can decrease the spacing.
| | 00:27 |
You'll also want to turn this into an
ellipse by adjusting the roundness of the brush.
| | 00:32 |
Pull down on this top control to elongate
the circle, then rotate the angle 90
| | 00:37 |
degrees so that the ellipse is upright.
Then return to that document we used to
| | 00:41 |
create our Square custom brush to use as a
scratch pad.
| | 00:45 |
This Elliptical brush makes it easy to
paint elegant rounded dome shapes.
| | 00:50 |
Return to the main plate and let's paint a
large round dome on top of the castle.
| | 00:56 |
If you build up each side of the dome, you
can maintain reasonable symmetry as you work.
| | 01:04 |
Next let's add some towers around the
dome.
| | 01:06 |
If you hold down the Shift key, you can
maintain the verticality of the tower.
| | 01:11 |
And then go back on subsequent strokes and
give them a slight angling-in on each side.
| | 01:16 |
Now paint in two front towers; these will
be symmetrical to the entranceway of the castle.
| | 01:23 |
If you look at the toolbar window, you can
me switching back and forth between the
| | 01:27 |
Brush and the Eraser on the fly, using the
B and E keys.
| | 01:32 |
I'm going to pick that Square brush again
so that I can add a base to that front tower.
| | 01:38 |
As I'm painting with either the Eraser or
Brush tool, you'll see lines that seem to
| | 01:43 |
pop on.
That's because I'm clicking at the
| | 01:46 |
starting point for my line, holding down
the Shift key, then clicking again.
| | 01:51 |
This draws a straight line between the two
marks and is a great way to paint the
| | 01:55 |
tower sides.
Then add a couple more towers on top of
| | 02:01 |
the castle, this time on top of the dome.
Add one more behind the dome.
| | 02:17 |
I'm going back over all the towers to get
them a similar thickness.
| | 02:26 |
I'm envisioning a side tower that attaches
to the main walls of the castle on the
| | 02:31 |
left side of the structure.
I'm thinking this one will have a square
| | 02:35 |
top to contrast to the round towers
already on the castle.
| | 02:43 |
Holding down on the Shift key, paint the
top spire of the tower, then paint each
| | 02:48 |
tapering side and fill in in the middle.
Return to the document we created to build
| | 02:55 |
our custom brushes.
Create a new layer that we can work on.
| | 02:59 |
Now draw using the Lasso tool.
I want to create an elegant rounded tower
| | 03:04 |
top like those on St Basil's Cathedral in
Moscow or on the Taj Mahal in India.
| | 03:11 |
Fill this selection with black.
We've only done half of the tower so clean
| | 03:15 |
up that left side so we can duplicate and
flip it.
| | 03:18 |
Then select the whole tower half.
And then Cmd+Option or Ctrl+Alt drag to
| | 03:24 |
duplicate the selection.
Press Cmd or Ctrl+T to invoke the
| | 03:29 |
Transform tool.
Then right click in the Transform box and
| | 03:33 |
select Flip Horizontal.
Holding down the Shift key, scoot that
| | 03:38 |
symmetrical left side right on top of the
right side.
| | 03:41 |
I'm going to add a little bit to the base
of the tower top using the Rectangular
| | 03:47 |
Marquee tool.
The tower looks a little wide to me right
| | 03:51 |
now, so I'm going to select the entire
tower and transform it horizontally.
| | 03:56 |
Select the whole shape, getting in a s
tightly as you can without cropping
| | 04:00 |
anything off.
Choose Edit > Define Brush Preset.
| | 04:05 |
And name the brush tall tower top.
Open the Brush window and adjust the spacing.
| | 04:13 |
By adjusting the roundness parameter, you
can turn this tall, elegant tower top into
| | 04:17 |
a squat, fat tower top all using the same
custom brush.
| | 04:23 |
Now return to the main document and load
black into the foreground color picker.
| | 04:27 |
So that we can see the tower tops as we
paint them in the dark sky at the top of
| | 04:31 |
our composition.
I want this top most tower a little
| | 04:34 |
squatter, so I'm going to adjust it in the
brush window.
| | 04:38 |
Then click once to add the tower top.
The next tower top should be taller and
| | 04:42 |
thinner so I'm going to adjust the
roundness parameter again.
| | 04:46 |
Then resize the tower top and click to add
it on this tower.
| | 04:51 |
Then add another tower top to the left of
it.
| | 04:54 |
This far left tower is a little too tall
so I'm going to erase a bit of it before I
| | 04:58 |
add the tower top.
I want these front tower tops to be even
| | 05:03 |
taller, so I'm going to adjust the
roundness again.
| | 05:07 |
Click to add that front tower.
I'm going to zoom out to check the silhouette.
| | 05:15 |
By using the same custom brush shape
multiple times in different variations
| | 05:19 |
while creating the castle silhouette.
We're adding a unifying design element
| | 05:23 |
that will help the castle come together as
a whole.
| | 05:27 |
That completes the castle silhouette.
Since we worked the whole time at 100% opacity.
| | 05:32 |
If you Cmd or Ctrl click into the layer
thumbnail preview.
| | 05:36 |
You'll get a clean selection that we'll
paint into in the next lesson to establish
| | 05:40 |
a light and dark side on the castle.
| | 05:42 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
4. Light and DetailFinding the light side| 00:00 |
With your castle silhouette blocked in
now, you want to set up a basic light and
| | 00:04 |
dark side on your castle.
Since you worked at a 100% opacity on your
| | 00:09 |
silhouette, you can command or Ctrl click
into the layer thumbnail preview for the
| | 00:14 |
Silhouette layer to load its selection.
Press Cmd or Ctrl+H to hide the selection,
| | 00:20 |
but keep it active.
If you're hiding a selection for the first
| | 00:24 |
time, Photoshop will ask you if you want
to hide Photoshop or hide extras.
| | 00:29 |
Be sure to choose Hide Extras.
Load the base color from you sillouite
| | 00:34 |
into the foreground color picker, and then
choose a lighter version of that same color.
| | 00:39 |
With your brush selected, choose Overlay
from the Mode menu at the top of your interface.
| | 00:46 |
Make sure that you have a soft, round
brush selected, and Transfer turned on and
| | 00:51 |
set to Pen Pressure in your Brush panel.
Now, paint into the silhouette to start
| | 00:57 |
finding the forms in your castle.
You don't need to be accurate in this
| | 01:01 |
pass, you're just roughly defining the
light side.
| | 01:05 |
Reusing the overlay brush because it
allows you to build up tones slowly.
| | 01:11 |
We based the light color we're painting
with on the dark tone of the silhouette,
| | 01:15 |
and in overlay mode, it lays down a nice
rich color for your light side.
| | 01:20 |
This soft round brush is ideal for
blocking in the towers and domes, so, go
| | 01:24 |
ahead and indicate the light side on all
of them.
| | 01:29 |
Since we're building up the tones, your
light side may get a little spotty.
| | 01:33 |
But don't worry about that, we'll unify
the light side color in minute.
| | 01:39 |
With the light side very roughly blocked
in, select that square brush again.
| | 01:45 |
Select that red ochre color that the
overlay brush gave you, and then go up to
| | 01:49 |
the top menu and set your brush mode to
Normal.
| | 01:53 |
Now you can start clearly blocking in your
light side, discovering where your
| | 01:56 |
surfaces meet at a 90 degree angles.
At this point in the process, it's good to
| | 02:02 |
think of your castle as being constructed
from basic geometric forms, like boxes and cylinders.
| | 02:08 |
Don't get involved with the fine details
yet.
| | 02:12 |
On each corner of the castle, I plan to
add bastions.
| | 02:15 |
Basically large square boxes that anchor
each corner of the walls.
| | 02:21 |
How this front bridge attaches to the
castle still has to be worked out.
| | 02:33 |
This castle is going to have three layers,
so, block in the light side of his middle tier.
| | 02:42 |
At this point in the process, I'm
discovering the edges of the forms where
| | 02:46 |
the castle turns from the light side to
the dark side.
| | 02:50 |
Clean up the soft edges on this side
tower.
| | 02:52 |
The square brush makes it very easy to do
that.
| | 02:55 |
In fact, it's impossible to get a soft
edge with the brush.
| | 03:03 |
Go through and finish up all of the hard
edges on the form.
| | 03:09 |
Switch back to that round brush to work
some more on the towers and domes.
| | 03:13 |
You want to add a nice curvature to this
dome, and obviously the square brush won't
| | 03:17 |
work for that.
Switch back and forth between the round
| | 03:22 |
and square brush to correct problems as
you see them.
| | 03:32 |
Add a little flame holder to the right
side of this bastion.
| | 03:43 |
These front towers should have square
bases.
| | 03:45 |
So, again, that square brush is good for
that.
| | 03:51 |
The front edge of this castle still needs
to be cleaned up, and it can be a little wider.
| | 04:00 |
That soft round brush is good for cleaning
up the dark sides of these towers.
| | 04:04 |
Make sure they're rounding nicely.
It still isn't clear how this bridge
| | 04:09 |
attaches to the front of the castle.
So, return to that square brush to do a
| | 04:14 |
little more work on it.
Then painting the underside to show how it
| | 04:18 |
curves around.
There are still a few adjustments to be
| | 04:23 |
made, figuring out how the castle
intersects the ground and how wide the
| | 04:27 |
front should be.
That's looking pretty good with the light
| | 04:33 |
side of the castle clearly defined.
Next up, we'll start painting the forms in
| | 04:37 |
the structure on both the light and dark
sides.
| | 04:40 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Drawing internal forms| 00:01 |
With the light side clearly defined, now
it's time to start finding some of the
| | 00:04 |
interior forms on the castle.
Open up the brush window.
| | 00:08 |
I like to use a brush with some roughness
and scatter on it when drawing internal
| | 00:12 |
forms to make the line more interesting.
Select a dark color from the composition
| | 00:18 |
that will show up on both the light and
dark side.
| | 00:20 |
And let's start finding the edges of the
interior forms.
| | 00:28 |
Delineate where the tops of these walls
are.
| | 00:31 |
As before, you can click, hold the Shift
key and then click again and Photoshop
| | 00:36 |
will draw a straight line in between the
two clicks.
| | 00:40 |
With that shortcut, you have a built in
ruler for drawing straight lines.
| | 00:47 |
When drawing horizontal or vertical lines,
you can hold down the Shift key and drag
| | 00:51 |
and Photoshop constrains the brush to a 90
degree angle.
| | 00:56 |
Now you can define the entrance to the
castle.
| | 00:59 |
This box is extending out from the front
face and will contain the doorway.
| | 01:06 |
This area where the back of the bridge
meets the castle needs some definition.
| | 01:12 |
Then figure out a little bit more about
what the forms on the front of this bridge
| | 01:16 |
are doing.
You don't have to be terribly precise
| | 01:22 |
while doing this part of the project.
Here you are finding the positions of the
| | 01:26 |
internal forms.
And as you can see, I sometimes make two
| | 01:29 |
or three slightly different lines as I try
to find where a surface would be.
| | 01:39 |
If you're doing a traditional analog
painting of a castle like this, you might
| | 01:43 |
start by doing a line drawing of the
structure.
| | 01:46 |
We will be working out the formal
perspective with the line drawing in the
| | 01:49 |
next section.
But for this concept phase, we're
| | 01:52 |
basically doing the reverse of the analog
process.
| | 01:55 |
Here, we started by finding an interesting
silhouette and only then start drawing the
| | 02:00 |
internal forms.
Once you have found out where a form
| | 02:11 |
should be, like this castle entrance, that
Square brush is good for knocking in the
| | 02:16 |
dark side.
And looking at this, I feel like the
| | 02:20 |
bridge needs to be in front of these rocks
not right on top of them.
| | 02:24 |
So I'm going to extend it down a bit.
Now that more of the interior forms of the
| | 02:35 |
castle have been found.
It's time to add some shadows and darken
| | 02:39 |
the areas where the three tiers of the
castle meet.
| | 02:42 |
That way the edges will start to be held
with tone rather than line.
| | 02:47 |
For the final piece to look photographic,
none of the edges should be defined with a line.
| | 02:51 |
So even in this concept phase, it's a good
idea to start to think about separating
| | 02:57 |
edges with tone.
I want to darken the area behind this side tower.
| | 03:05 |
So I'm going to make a selection with the
Rectangular Marquee tool, invert it and
| | 03:09 |
then hide the selection Cmd or Ctrl+H.
Darken behind the tower so it stands out
| | 03:16 |
from the castle wall.
Invert the selection again, so you can
| | 03:20 |
paint on the actual tower.
With a big, soft brush, paint in a shadow.
| | 03:25 |
Since this tower is behind the castle, it
would be in shadow.
| | 03:32 |
Even at the dark side of this tower.
There should be another little flame
| | 03:38 |
holder on this left face of the castle.
Go back to that big soft brush.
| | 03:52 |
Here I'm adding some more dark tones on
the castle to even out these forms.
| | 04:08 |
Switching back to this Square brush, I
want to redefine the tops of these walls
| | 04:12 |
and even out these tones that have gotten
kind of lumpy.
| | 04:26 |
With a slightly lighter tone, I'm finding
the back sides of these castle structures.
| | 04:33 |
I'm going through and cleaning up the top
of these castle walls.
| | 04:36 |
I plan to add some decorative detail in
just a minute.
| | 04:39 |
But I want 'em nice and clean before I do
that.
| | 04:46 |
I'm almost done, but I want to skip around
and clean up things that are still
| | 04:49 |
bothering me, like the top of this castle
dome.
| | 04:52 |
And also darkening the area behind each
tier of the walls on the light side.
| | 05:07 |
And darkening the front of the bridge a
little bit.
| | 05:10 |
The underside of the bridge still needs to
be dealt with.
| | 05:13 |
I'm going to go a head and marquee that
off so that I can add a nice soft tone to
| | 05:18 |
show where it's curving away from the
light.
| | 05:24 |
That finishes roughing in the interior
forms.
| | 05:26 |
Next up we're going to add some decorative
crenelations to the castle.
| | 05:30 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Crenellations| 00:00 |
Next up I want to show you a great way to
add repeating unifying detail to your
| | 00:05 |
castle by adding crenelations to the tops
of the castle walls.
| | 00:09 |
Crenelations are repeating blocky forms
soldiers used as protection while
| | 00:14 |
defending a castle.
Many castles had distinctly shaped
| | 00:18 |
crenelations and it's a wonderful way to
give your castle personality.
| | 00:24 |
Open up the document we used to create the
tower tops and square brush.
| | 00:27 |
Select the lasso tool or press the L key
and with the feather parameter set to 0
| | 00:34 |
draw a triangle.
Go up to the top menu and chose Edit, Fill
| | 00:40 |
and fill it with 100% black.
I think I made the triangle a little too wide.
| | 00:46 |
So, I'm going to press Command or
Control+T and transform it horizontally.
| | 00:52 |
With the selection still active, go up to
the top menu, choose Edit, Define Brush
| | 00:56 |
preset and let's name this brush Triangle.
Press the B key to access the brush tool
| | 01:03 |
and they go up the top brush menu and
choose triangle.
| | 01:07 |
Deselect the triangle, Command or
Control+D, so that we can do some tests
| | 01:13 |
with the new triangle brush.
Depending on what the defaults are set to
| | 01:17 |
in your brush window, if you drag the new
triangle brush horizontally, you should
| | 01:22 |
get something like this.
Let's undo that and make some adjustments
| | 01:27 |
in the Brush window.
The parameter we want to deal with is
| | 01:32 |
spacing, or how much distance there is
between each dab of the brush.
| | 01:37 |
As the spacing percentage gets higher, you
can see there's more distance between each crenelation.
| | 01:44 |
For this to work, you need to make sure
that Transfer is turned off in your Brush controls.
| | 01:49 |
If it's checked on, there'll be an opacity
difference between the depths of paint.
| | 01:55 |
Return to the castle document and let's
start painting some crenelations.
| | 02:00 |
First, make a new layer and name it
Crenelations.
| | 02:05 |
Pick a color from the dark side of the
castle and then line the crenelation up
| | 02:09 |
with the top of the bridge.
Click once, go to where you want the
| | 02:13 |
crenelations to end, and click again.
You get a nice repeating pattern of
| | 02:19 |
crenelations across the top of the bridge.
In this case I think the crenelations are
| | 02:23 |
a little too large.
So I'm going to undo.
| | 02:26 |
And then use the Bracket key to adjust the
brush size.
| | 02:29 |
Press the Right Bracket key to make the
brush larger.
| | 02:32 |
And the Left Bracket key to make it
smaller.
| | 02:35 |
With the slightly smaller brush click
once, hold down the Shift key, and then go
| | 02:40 |
to where you want the crenelations to end
and then click again.
| | 02:44 |
I'm going to add in the visible
crenelations on this back side also.
| | 02:47 |
Now add crenelations throughout the castle
using that same technique of clicking,
| | 02:53 |
holding down the Shift key and then
clicking again.
| | 02:58 |
Select the light side color so you can
paint the light side crenelations.
| | 03:03 |
When doing this you should keep the
spacing between the crenelations the same,
| | 03:07 |
most castles won't have different spacing
between the crenelations on different walls.
| | 03:13 |
Next I want to show you an easy way to add
a back side to these crenelations.
| | 03:17 |
Right now they're flat but we want to add
some dimension to them.
| | 03:23 |
Choose the Lasso tool and then select only
the crenelations on the light side of the castle.
| | 03:27 |
All of your crenelations were painted on a
new layer so make sure that layer is
| | 03:33 |
selected and then press Cmd+J to copy
those light side crenelations onto a new layer.
| | 03:40 |
Move that copy behind the Crenelations
layer, select a color from the dark side
| | 03:45 |
of the castle.
Go up to Edit, Fill, and with Preserve
| | 03:49 |
Transparency checked, fill the light side
crenelations full of that dark side color.
| | 03:56 |
Let me zoom in so you can see what I'm
doing.
| | 04:00 |
Select all, and hide the selection.
Then press and hold the Command option, or
| | 04:05 |
Control+Alt keys.
And press the left arrow key multiple times.
| | 04:10 |
This makes Photoshop create slightly
offset duplicate layers of the dark side crenelations.
| | 04:17 |
Each slightly offset to the left of each
other creating a dimensional back side to
| | 04:22 |
the crenelations.
Let me turn off the other layer so you can
| | 04:26 |
just see this Backside layer.
Now select all of the dark side
| | 04:32 |
crenelations and let's do this same
process.
| | 04:37 |
With those selected, press Command or
Control+ j to copy the dark side
| | 04:41 |
crenelations onto a new layer, and place
that layer behind your existing crenelations.
| | 04:48 |
Select all, and then Command option or
Control+Alt, Right Arrow key to duplicate
| | 04:53 |
the backs of the dark size crenelations.
Then select one of the darker colors from
| | 04:59 |
the dark side.
And fill those duplicate dark side
| | 05:02 |
crenelations full of that color.
Now, all of your crenelations are fully dimensional.
| | 05:10 |
Next up, we'll add more detail to the
castle.
| | 05:12 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Finding more details| 00:00 |
With the crenelations finished up, now
it's time to find more of the internal
| | 00:04 |
detail on the castle.
I'm using that rough drawing line brush
| | 00:09 |
again, that has a bit of scatter on it,
just so that the line isn't too pristine
| | 00:13 |
and it's more in keeping with the
character of this old castle.
| | 00:20 |
I'm tracing over the edges of the
crenelations, staying loose, but adding
| | 00:24 |
lines that roughen up the surface of the
castle.
| | 00:27 |
I generally don't zoom in too tightly at
this point in the painting, but prefer to
| | 00:31 |
stay zoomed out enough that I can't get
involved with fine detail.
| | 00:41 |
When working on these castle sketches that
should take under an hour, I sometimes see
| | 00:45 |
students being too meticulous when
painting.
| | 00:48 |
And I encourage them to let out their
inner child.
| | 00:50 |
Introducing a little messy, broken tone
into these areas of flat color from the
| | 00:56 |
silhouette, will go a long way towards
giving the surface some character, even if
| | 01:01 |
every line is not precisely drawn.
You can zoom out to check the large masses
| | 01:11 |
of the castle by pressing the Cmd or
Ctrl+minus key.
| | 01:15 |
Then zoom back in by pressing the Cmd or
Ctrl+plus key.
| | 01:25 |
Now, I'm going all over the castle adding
a little bit of detail wherever I think
| | 01:29 |
it's needed.
And here on top of the dome, I'm adding
| | 01:32 |
some cut lines starting the process of
developing some detail in this curved surface.
| | 01:38 |
I also want to add some details in these
towers just to show that they're rounding.
| | 01:51 |
It's starting to give an indication of
what's going on with this square tower
| | 01:55 |
boxing out this pointed top.
This cast shadow on the square tower is a
| | 02:02 |
little too dark.
So, I'm using the Rectangular Marquee tool
| | 02:05 |
and then the big soft round brush again,
and I'm going to lighten it and sort of
| | 02:10 |
soften that shadow.
I am going to zoom in a bit here.
| | 02:15 |
I still have the crenelations on a
separate layer, and I'd like to merge
| | 02:18 |
these all into one.
So, I'm pressing Cmd or Ctrl+E.
| | 02:22 |
Now, everything is on that same Silhouette
layer.
| | 02:26 |
With the Rectangular Marquee tool, I'm
going to section off a little bit of that
| | 02:30 |
front of the castle.
And then Cmd+Option or Ctrl+Alt drag down
| | 02:34 |
that section to cover up the crenelations
on the front of the castle.
| | 02:39 |
Selecting that square brush, I'm going to
clean up these side crenelations a little more.
| | 02:53 |
Same on these mid level crenelations.
This part of the project is getting
| | 03:01 |
repetitive, so, I'm going to go to double
speed for the next couple of minutes.
| | 03:08 |
I'm using the Lasso tool to sketch in an
arm that connects the square tower to the
| | 03:12 |
side of the castle.
Then using a big soft brush, I'll paint in
| | 03:17 |
the light side.
Using the Lasso tool, I'm tapering the top
| | 03:22 |
of this tower, so, it'll look a little
more elegant.
| | 03:27 |
Then working out this spire on the tower.
This connecting arm needs a dark underside
| | 03:38 |
to define it.
Then selecting that drawing line again,
| | 03:45 |
I'm going to add some more of those cut
lines in the castle.
| | 03:58 |
Now, I want to go in and do some more work
on these towers in the dome.
| | 04:02 |
I want to show that this tower is in front
of this large dome, and add a little
| | 04:12 |
flying buttress arm between the tower and
the dome.
| | 04:17 |
I want to add a design to this dome.
So, I'm going through and breaking it up
| | 04:21 |
into these filigree segments, and then
divide up the top also.
| | 04:37 |
Now, I'm going through and indicating a
little decorative detail on these towers.
| | 04:44 |
I'm just scribbling in this detail, there
isn't time to get specific.
| | 04:47 |
But this can be very helpful in showing
the viewer what kind of structure they're
| | 04:51 |
looking at.
We're coming near to the end, so, I'm
| | 04:55 |
going to go back down to regular speed to
finish off this section.
| | 05:03 |
And I'm working out a few more of these
little details on the towers.
| | 05:12 |
Let's zoom out.
Next, we're going to create a custom brush
| | 05:15 |
to paint the sky, and add erupting
volcanoes to spice up our environment.
| | 05:19 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating a cloud custom brush| 00:00 |
Now that the castle's looking pretty good,
I want to add a dusky sky and some
| | 00:04 |
erupting volcanoes in the background.
To do that, I want to create a special
| | 00:10 |
custom cloud brush.
So, let's open up that document we used
| | 00:14 |
before to create the previous custom
shapes.
| | 00:18 |
Let's turn off those previous shapes and
create a new layer.
| | 00:22 |
To start this, pick a soft round brush
shape from the brush panel.
| | 00:27 |
I want to build a custom brush for
painting clouds and you might think that
| | 00:31 |
painting a very elaborate cloud shape,
something like the clouds on the Columbia
| | 00:35 |
pictures logo of a robed woman holding up
a torch would work best, but actually a
| | 00:41 |
much different brush shape would work
better.
| | 00:43 |
Let me show you why.
Here I'm quickly painting an elaborate
| | 00:47 |
cloud bank with lots of detail.
This may look a little strange, since you
| | 00:52 |
need to paint your cloud shape in black.
That's because when defining a custom
| | 00:56 |
brush, the black areas will be the
paintable shapes.
| | 01:00 |
If you find this awkward, you can always
paint white clouds on a black background
| | 01:04 |
and then invert it before you make your
custom brush.
| | 01:10 |
With the cloud bank roughed in, select the
rectangular marquee tool and make a
| | 01:14 |
selection around the clouds.
Then go up to the top menu and choose
| | 01:19 |
Edit, Define Brush Preset.
I named the brush, CloudBank.
| | 01:25 |
Turn off the brush and make a new layer.
On this new layer, let's create a test sky
| | 01:31 |
so we can try out our new brush.
Pick a blue sky color and then with the
| | 01:37 |
gradient tool, gradient down from the top
of the document.
| | 01:41 |
Then pick a ground color and do a short
gradient up from the lower third.
| | 01:46 |
Select the brush tool and then choose your
new CloudBank brush.
| | 01:52 |
Then choose white for your clouds.
And now we can test the new brush.
| | 01:57 |
The first dab of the brush looks really
good.
| | 02:00 |
The problem comes when we start using the
brush more.
| | 02:04 |
Outside of making it larger or smaller, we
can't get any variation from this brush.
| | 02:10 |
In fact, because the brush is so complex,
we can't rotate it, or scatter it to make
| | 02:15 |
it look different from stroke to stroke.
It always looks the same.
| | 02:19 |
Let's try it a different way.
Select a soft round brush with Transfer
| | 02:24 |
turned on and the Control set to Pen
Pressure.
| | 02:29 |
To create a better cloud brush, you
want to paint something that looks like an
| | 02:32 |
x-ray of a popcorn kernel.
You should dab the paint to get a soft
| | 02:37 |
puffy mark.
You want the brush to be asymmetrical on
| | 02:40 |
every side.
The reason for that, is you'll add a
| | 02:43 |
rotational attribute to the brush and
varying the sides will make each
| | 02:47 |
application of the brush create a slightly
different edge to the cloud.
| | 02:53 |
Be careful to make the edges of your brush
pure white.
| | 02:56 |
You don't want any areas of slight tone,
since that will create a hard line issue paint.
| | 03:03 |
If you run the color picker over the edge
of your brush, it should read 255, 255,
| | 03:08 |
255 in the Info panel.
If its lower then that, its not pure white.
| | 03:14 |
I'm cleaning up the edge here to make it
pure white again.
| | 03:18 |
Making this asymmetrical is harder than it
sounds.
| | 03:21 |
The human brain naturally goes to
symmetricality.
| | 03:24 |
So you'll have to consciously work on
this, to get the sides different.
| | 03:28 |
You should also create some smaller
internal forms, to break up the big masses.
| | 03:41 |
Don't have any forms out on the side like
this.
| | 03:44 |
Dangling forms will make a lump in your
cloud edge, and make the brush less useful.
| | 03:49 |
Keep everything confined to the main mass
of the brush.
| | 03:52 |
Again, like a popcorn kernel.
Once you have the big forms established,
| | 03:58 |
you can glaze over the hold brush with
white and then go in and add more forms
| | 04:02 |
within the forms you already established.
This allows you to add a second level of
| | 04:08 |
complexity to the brush, and create forms
within forms.
| | 04:18 |
It's starting to look like a proper cloud
brush.
| | 04:20 |
Asymmetrical on every side, and filled
with interesting internal detail.
| | 04:24 |
Now it's time to define the brush, and add
some dynamics.
| | 04:30 |
Choose the rectangular marquee tool and
make a selection around the cloud that is
| | 04:34 |
just large enough to contain it but
doesn't cut off any of the edges.
| | 04:39 |
Then go up to the top menu and choose
Edit, Define Brush Preset, and name this
| | 04:44 |
one, Cloud.
Now we need to add some dynamics to the brush.
| | 04:48 |
Turn on that Sky Layer, and add a new
Layer.
| | 04:53 |
Choose that new Cloud brush.
By default, the brush comes in with no
| | 04:57 |
dynamics applied to it, so lets open up
the brush window and make it more interesting.
| | 05:04 |
Look at the preview without any dynamics
applied to it.
| | 05:06 |
Pretty boring, and it doesn't look
anything like a cloud.
| | 05:10 |
Let's turn on shape dynamics first.
The Size Jitter control makes each dab of
| | 05:16 |
the brush a slightly different size, and
that's good for making the brush less regular.
| | 05:22 |
Having the control set to Pen Pressure,
will make the irregular dabs larger or
| | 05:26 |
smaller depending on how hard or soft you
press your stylus.
| | 05:31 |
Angle Jitter will give you a randomized
rotation on each dab as you paint.
| | 05:36 |
That takes advantage of the asymmetrical
edges you gave the brush.
| | 05:39 |
Roundness Jitter will randomly squash and
stretch each dab of the brush.
| | 05:47 |
Next, click on Transfer and make sure that
the control for Opacity Jitter is set to
| | 05:51 |
Pen Pressure.
That makes the cloud lighter or darker
| | 05:55 |
depending on how hard you press the
stylus.
| | 05:59 |
Set the minimum slider to around 40.
That will prevent you from making clouds
| | 06:03 |
that are too transparent.
Then check scattering, and select it.
| | 06:09 |
Scattering randomizes the placement of
dabs as you paint.
| | 06:13 |
A lot of scattering can make the brush
hard to control.
| | 06:16 |
While too little scattering won't give you
the random placement of cloud edges you need.
| | 06:22 |
Count increases or decreases the number of
randomized dabs that are applied.
| | 06:27 |
And then one more control under brush tip
shape.
| | 06:30 |
Spacing.
This controls the distance between each
| | 06:33 |
dab of the brush.
Something around 15% will work well for a
| | 06:38 |
Cloud brush.
With that set, close the brush window and
| | 06:42 |
let's do some painting.
Select a blue from the sky and open up the
| | 06:46 |
color picker.
Pick a slightly darker, less saturated
| | 06:50 |
version of the sky color.
We're going to paint the dark sides of the
| | 06:54 |
clouds first, and then, paint into the
shape for the light side.
| | 07:01 |
As you can see, our custom brush is giving
me lots of great cloud shapes as I paint.
| | 07:06 |
You can't completely control the shapes
you get.
| | 07:08 |
Because of the amount of randomization we
added.
| | 07:11 |
So keep your finger on the Undo key for
when you get something you don't like.
| | 07:17 |
Clouds get smaller as they get closer to
the horizon, because they are further away.
| | 07:31 |
So I'm adding a couple of lines of small
clouds in the back.
| | 07:41 |
That finishes up the dark side of the
cloud.
| | 07:45 |
Let's go ahead and paint the light side.
Lock the layer so you can't paint on any
| | 07:50 |
area that doesn't already have the dark
side of the cloud painted on it.
| | 07:54 |
Load white into the foreground color
picker and now you can paint into the
| | 07:59 |
existing cloud form.
You want to pay attention to the direction
| | 08:04 |
of the light, the clouds should be lit
from the left, so I'm painting on that
| | 08:07 |
side of the cloud formation.
I'd like more variation in the opacity of
| | 08:16 |
the brush, so I'm going into transfer and
changing the minimal opacity percentage to 17.
| | 08:21 |
Now I can add some lighter tones to the
area of transition between the light and
| | 08:28 |
dark side.
I forgot to save the Cloud brush again,
| | 08:32 |
after I added all of the dynamics to it.
If you don't do that, and select another Brush.
| | 08:37 |
When you choose that original Brush again,
all the dynamics will be gone.
| | 08:41 |
Save the Brush's CloudDynamic.
And then go in and delete that original
| | 08:46 |
Brush, so you won't get confused by it.
Now, I can select another Brush, without
| | 08:53 |
fear of losing the dynamics I set up on
the Cloud brush.
| | 08:57 |
Here I'm using the soft round brush to
even out the clouds a bit.
| | 09:05 |
I'm using the dark side color here to get
the transition from the light side to the
| | 09:09 |
dark side smoother.
As a finishing touch, select that
| | 09:15 |
CloudDynamic brush again, reduce its size,
choose widen the color picker and use it
| | 09:21 |
to add a bright highlight to the leading
edge of the cloud.
| | 09:24 |
PAUSE These smaller clouds in the
background could use a little highlighted
| | 09:36 |
edge, also.
PAUSE Be sure to find some inner
| | 09:44 |
surfaces on the cloud and add some
highlights on them also.
| | 09:52 |
And back to that soft round brush one more
time to smooth out the tones.
| | 10:04 |
And with a few finishing touches that's
done.
| | 10:08 |
Next up, we're going to use this brush to
paint a dramatic background for our castle.
| | 10:12 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
5. Rendering the EnvironmentPainting the sky| 00:00 |
With the cloud brush prepared, let's paint
a sky for this castle.
| | 00:04 |
I'm envisioning a firey, dusky sky with a
streak of yellow right here at the horizon.
| | 00:10 |
Make a new layer behind the castle and
hill layer, and name it sky.
| | 00:14 |
Using the heads-up color picker, choose a
dark, intense red.
| | 00:20 |
Start by darkening the horizon.
And then, let's choose a bright orange red
| | 00:24 |
off of the plate.
We'll use that to intensify the red of the
| | 00:28 |
sky behind the castle.
Then add some red tones behind it to
| | 00:33 |
clarify the silhouette.
Select our clouds dynamic brush to start
| | 00:37 |
adding some clouds to the sky.
The custom brush is giving us some really
| | 00:44 |
nice randomized cloud shapes that would be
hard to do with a normal brush.
| | 00:53 |
Now select a darker tone off the plate so
we can cut into the clouds we just painted.
| | 00:59 |
You should constantly re-size your brush
as you paint so you get a lot of different
| | 01:03 |
cloud sizes.
Adding indication of clouds at the horizon.
| | 01:10 |
Now select a burning yellow-orange color.
Let's add a streak of that yellow like the
| | 01:17 |
sun burning through the clouds.
Paint some streaks around it where the sun
| | 01:23 |
would catch the bottom of the clouds.
I'm adding lots of little strokes to give
| | 01:31 |
the look of a layered cloud bank.
Now chose a slightly darker, intense red
| | 01:46 |
to give these clouds a little more
definition.
| | 01:48 |
I'm going to add some dark streaks to
break up the sky a little more.
| | 02:05 |
I'm selecting that soft, round brush
again.
| | 02:08 |
I want to even out some of the lumpy areas
in the sky.
| | 02:16 |
I'm hopping all around here, reworking
areas I'm not happy with.
| | 02:26 |
And then back to the cloud brush one more
time for some finishing touches.
| | 02:35 |
I'm making sure that these towers clearly
silhouette against the sky.
| | 02:42 |
Almost done, just a little bit more work
on the streaks of yellow.
| | 02:48 |
That finishes the sky.
Next, we're going to add some erupting
| | 02:51 |
volcanoes to the background.
| | 02:53 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Bringing in the mountains| 00:00 |
Let's add a couple of erupting volcanoes
behind the castle.
| | 00:03 |
And this time, we'll use the Lasso tool to
delineate them.
| | 00:08 |
Select the Lasso tool, or press L on the
keyboard.
| | 00:12 |
We're going to use the lasso as a Drawing
tool.
| | 00:14 |
Creating a selection shaped like the
erupting volcanoes behind the castle.
| | 00:24 |
Add a mountain on the left side of the
castle.
| | 00:26 |
With the selection complete, make a new
Layer in front of the sky, and name it Mountains.
| | 00:33 |
Select the Brush tool or press the B key
and select a Soft Round Brush with
| | 00:38 |
transfer turned on.
With the heads up color picker, choose a
| | 00:43 |
dark burnt red orange.
And start brushing in the background mountains.
| | 00:50 |
This isn't quite the right color, a darker
redder tone would work better.
| | 01:00 |
.
The mountain tops can be darker and more
| | 01:03 |
intense, since the base of the mountains
would be affected by the haze from the sea
| | 01:07 |
of lava.
Deselect all, Cmd or Ctrl + D and draw a
| | 01:12 |
second line of mountains at the base, to
add some more depth.
| | 01:19 |
Finish drawing the selection, and then
invert it Cmd or Ctrl + Shift I.
| | 01:25 |
Select that lighter haze color from the
base of the mountains, and brush that in
| | 01:30 |
behind the mountain range like there's a
little bit of haze separating them.
| | 01:35 |
Hide the selection Cmd or Ctrl + h, so you
can see what you're doing.
| | 01:43 |
Choose a slightly lighter, more orange
color to lighten the bottom of the haze.
| | 01:49 |
Then choose a nice bright red, to add some
intensity to the middle of these mountains.
| | 01:54 |
Then Deselect All, and add a haze over
both the mountains to unify them.
| | 02:03 |
That finishes the mountains, next we are
going to add some volcano smokes.
| | 02:07 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adding volcano smoke| 00:00 |
Now let's add some smoke coming out of the
volcanoes.
| | 00:03 |
First make a new layer, make sure it's on
top of the mountains layer and call this
| | 00:08 |
one volcano smoke.
Open up the Brush window and chose the
| | 00:13 |
Cloud Dynamic brush.
Select a dark intense red color for the smoke.
| | 00:21 |
Then starting small where the smoke comes
out of the mountain, re-size the brush so
| | 00:26 |
that the smoke dissipates out into the
atmosphere.
| | 00:31 |
This Dynamic Cloud brush does most of the
work for you because of all the variation
| | 00:36 |
on the brush.
The volcano smoke is getting lost in the clouds.
| | 00:44 |
So choose the sky layer, select a big soft
brush and glaze in some lighter red behind
| | 00:58 |
the smoke, so that it shows up.
There should be some fiery material right
| | 01:04 |
where the smoke comes out of the mountain.
So select that Cloud Dynamic brush again
| | 01:08 |
and select a bright yellow-orange color.
Make sure you're on the volcano smoke
| | 01:14 |
layer and dab in some of that fiery tone
right where it would be erupting from the volcano.
| | 01:22 |
Select a bright red tone and use that to
blend from the yellow to the darker smoke color.
| | 01:33 |
I'm switching back to that Round brush to
smooth things out.
| | 01:40 |
The sky at the horizon behind the
mountains looks too bright, and I'm going
| | 01:43 |
to return to the sky layer, and with a big
soft brush, darken it.
| | 01:48 |
This area where the sun is breaking
through the clouds could be more intense.
| | 01:53 |
So, I'm going to select a bright yellow
orange and change the transfer mode on the
| | 01:57 |
brush to overlay.
Overlay increases contrast and saturation
| | 02:02 |
and it works here really nicely.
That completes the background for the painting.
| | 02:08 |
Next up we're going to add some lights and
a lava waterfall.
| | 02:11 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adding waterfalls, lights, and the entryway| 00:00 |
I have some fun details in mind that I'd
like to add to the castle.
| | 00:04 |
First, I envision a lava waterfall that
comes off the front of the bridge.
| | 00:09 |
Sort of like the castle is processing the
lava as a power source.
| | 00:13 |
Choose the lasso tool, and select the area
where the waterfall will be painted.
| | 00:19 |
Choose a brush with some scattering on it
to mimic the rough look of the lava.
| | 00:24 |
Choose a deep intense red as the base
color for the waterfall.
| | 00:28 |
Make a new layer to paint on in front of
the castle and we'll call this layer, Effects.
| | 00:36 |
That selection should be filled with that
bright red color.
| | 00:41 |
A slightly darker version of that red
would be great for adding some detail.
| | 00:46 |
Then choose a fiery bright yellow.
And now we're going to paint in some
| | 00:54 |
steamy streams of lava pouring over the
lip of the bridge.
| | 00:58 |
You want to break up and randomize these
streams so that they're irregular.
| | 01:08 |
I have to admit I haven't seen many lava
waterfall so I'm guessing about this.
| | 01:18 |
It would probably be darker at the bottom
than at the top since the lava would cool
| | 01:24 |
as it went over the edge.
I'm going to zoom in so I can add some
| | 01:29 |
flames on each side of the entrance in
these flame holders.
| | 01:40 |
Bright yellow would work well for the core
of these flames.
| | 01:52 |
I'm going to add a little bright red to
intensify that look.
| | 02:00 |
And I want to paint the flame on this
other side.
| | 02:21 |
I want to add some little yellow windows
on each side of the entrance.
| | 02:26 |
And then a little red exterior glow.
Maybe a little bit more red on those flames.
| | 02:37 |
This entrance needs a glow so I'm going to
marquee off.
| | 02:44 |
And then select the big soft round brush,
and grab a bright red orange.
| | 02:51 |
And then a brighter yellowish, we look
more into the interior of the structure.
| | 02:59 |
I want to marquee off the inner wall of
that entrance.
| | 03:10 |
It needs to be darker.
I'm thinking some smaller copies of the
| | 03:15 |
crenelations I have on the castle walls
would look over this doorway, so I'm going
| | 03:21 |
to marquee off this set.
Copy them out and paste them in place.
| | 03:32 |
Then drag them down over the entrance,
press Command or Control+T to transform
| | 03:37 |
them, then right click, and select distort
to wrangle them into position.
| | 03:44 |
Press return when it looks about right.
We're almost done with the concept painting.
| | 03:49 |
In the next lesson, we'll add more implied
detail and finish this up.
| | 03:54 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Finishing the details| 00:00 |
We're almost done with this concept
painting.
| | 00:02 |
And what is left to do can get
repetitious, since it involves a lot of
| | 00:06 |
cleaning up and reinforcing forms I
already added.
| | 00:10 |
However, I want to show you a few more
tricks and tips on how to imply detail on
| | 00:14 |
a sketch like this, and how to quickly
revise sections you don't think are quite right.
| | 00:21 |
A good example is the bastion or square
structure below the flame holder on the left.
| | 00:27 |
I wish it was higher.
Rather than repainting it, I'm going to
| | 00:31 |
Marquee around the section I want to raise
up.
| | 00:34 |
Cmd or Ctrl+Shift+Copy that section out,
and paste it back into place.
| | 00:40 |
Then I can nudge it up into the new
position, and the correction is done very quickly.
| | 00:45 |
The difference between Cmd or Ctrl+Shift+C
for copy merged, and the regular Cmd or
| | 00:51 |
Ctrl+C for regular copy, is that copy
merged copies all of the pixels within the selection.
| | 00:57 |
Not just the ones on the current layer.
I'll mention that shortcut several times
| | 01:02 |
during the course of this series, because
I think it's one of the most valuable
| | 01:07 |
shortcuts for changing the position of
elements in a painting.
| | 01:11 |
Another technique I want to highlight is
Cmd or Ctrl+clicking into your layer
| | 01:15 |
thumbnail preview to load selections from
your layers.
| | 01:20 |
I just loaded this selection from the
castle sillohuette and it allows me to
| | 01:24 |
paint into the castle without fear of
painting onto the background.
| | 01:29 |
Pressing Cmd or Ctrl+H hides the
selection, so, it isn't distracting while
| | 01:33 |
you paint.
Another idea you should keep in mind is
| | 01:39 |
that of implying detail.
I want to add a stone carving above this
| | 01:43 |
door, but in a sketch that should take an
hour or so, there isn't time to really
| | 01:47 |
design it.
However, a few symmetrical scratches can
| | 01:51 |
easily imply that there is more there than
meets the eye.
| | 01:56 |
While working on a concept sketch, keep an
eye on your number of layers.
| | 02:00 |
When Cmd or Ctrl+Shift copying layers out
to make corrections, you could accumulate
| | 02:05 |
a lot more layers than you need.
And it's a good idea to keep your file as
| | 02:09 |
compact as possible at this stage.
Merge unnecessary layers together by
| | 02:15 |
selecting them and press Cmd or Ctrl+E.
Right now, the castle is not sitting on
| | 02:21 |
the hill very well, and that's because
there's no ground shadow.
| | 02:25 |
Cmd or Ctrl+click into the layer of
thumbnail preview for the hill layer to
| | 02:30 |
load the selection.
Then select the layer.
| | 02:33 |
Choose a big soft round brush and paint
into the hill layer, darkening around the
| | 02:38 |
castle where it would be casting a shadow.
Now, the castle appears to be correctly
| | 02:46 |
attached to the hill.
Select a brush with some roughness and
| | 02:50 |
scatter on it and let's paint some details
on the dome.
| | 02:53 |
In keeping with the lava theme, I'm adding
windows to the dome starting with a bright
| | 02:58 |
yellow, then surrounding the yellow with
red to make them pop.
| | 03:04 |
So far, I've been using the brush in
normal mode.
| | 03:07 |
But I'd like to add some more saturated
orange to the front of the castle using
| | 03:11 |
the Overlay mode.
First, here's the effects layer we've been
| | 03:16 |
painting the details onto into the
silhouette layer.
| | 03:19 |
So, we're painting on just one layer.
From the Mode Drop-down menu, choose Overlay.
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Cmd or Ctrl+click into the layer thumbnail
preview of the castle silhouette layer and
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then hide the selection.
Then pick a bright orange yellow using the
| | 03:35 |
heads up color picker.
Now, start brushing that orange lightly
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onto the front of the castle.
In overlay mode, the color is applied at
| | 03:44 |
high saturation without destroying the
underlying detail you've already painted.
| | 03:50 |
Now, I'm switching to black to darken the
base of the castle a bit more.
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There's a couple more things left to do.
After getting all of the forms nicely
| | 04:00 |
defined, save a little time to dirty them
up.
| | 04:04 |
Select that brush with some scatter on it,
then open up the brush window and add even
| | 04:08 |
more scatter and spacing to it.
Make sure transfer is checked, so,
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there'll be some variation in the opacity.
This will work great for adding streaks
| | 04:19 |
and dirt to the castle.
Now, go in and scribble over these flat
| | 04:24 |
areas of tone.
Right now they look too pristine.
| | 04:27 |
But the moment you break up the tones a
bit, they'll have more character and look
| | 04:31 |
more like an old castle.
Even on a quick sketch like this, I like
| | 04:37 |
to save some time to do this since it adds
a lot to the final effect.
| | 04:43 |
I'm going to fast forward on this sketch
and add a final smoke effect to the base
| | 04:48 |
of the lava waterfall.
Select that cloud dynamic brush again,
| | 04:54 |
create a new layer for the smoke effect,
and dab at some clouds in the base to show
| | 05:01 |
how the lava is smoking.
I did a bit more work on the sketch after
| | 05:14 |
the recording was turned off, mainly
rearranging and cleaning up elements.
| | 05:18 |
So, here is my final castle concept.
You can find a copy of this in the course
| | 05:23 |
materials named CastleConcept.psd.
This completes the demonstration for the
| | 05:29 |
first part of the course, but hopefully
this has given you some useful techniques
| | 05:33 |
to help get your ideas down quickly.
Since these sketches take anywhere from an
| | 05:38 |
half hour to an hour to complete, why not
go ahead and put down a couple of ideas yourself.
| | 05:44 |
And then choose your favorite to go on to
the next section perspective.
| | 05:49 |
(SOUND)
| | 05:49 |
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ConclusionGoodbye| 00:00 |
I hope you enjoyed watching this first
part of the fundamentals of digital matte
| | 00:04 |
painting series concept.
There's four more parts to go, so I hope
| | 00:09 |
you'll join me in the following section
where you'll learn all about the next
| | 00:13 |
important technique in the digital matte
artist tool kit, perspective.
| | 00:17 |
There you'll learn how to do a linear
perspective drawing over your finished
| | 00:21 |
concept sketch.
| | 00:22 |
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