373 Creating a piece of Minecraft-inspired art

- Hey gang, this is Deke McClelland. Welcome to Deke's Techniques. This week, I'm going to show you how to create a mind bending, Minecraft inspired piece of art inside Photoshop namely this double bladed axe which I am of course advocating that they add to the game. What I love about it most is that it measures 26 by 26 pixels for a total of 676 pixels in all. This is no megapixel image. This is a hectopixel file. Here, let me show you exactly how it works.

All right, just to make sure I was getting the look and feel of things down properly, I went ahead and scrupulously drew two of the actual Minecraft tools, the pickaxe and the sword in their diamond variations. These are the two sizes of the tools so you can see that the pickaxe is smaller than the sword. Our double bladed axe is going to be even larger still. To create it absolutely from scratch, go up to the File menu and choose the New command or press control N or command N on the Mac and make sure that the width and height values are both set to pixels and then go ahead and dial in with value of 26 pixels and change the height value to 26 pixels as well.

A resolution of 72 pixels per inch is just fine. Color mode should be RGB color, eight bit, background content should be white. You may need to twirl open this advance region and then if you want to get the same colors as me, set your color profile to this guy right there, Adobe RGB 1998. Then make sure the aspect ratio is set to square pixels as by default and click okay in order to create that image. Now it's very, very tiny, 26 by 26 pixels is just 500 and change pixels in all.

In order to zoom it on your screen, press control zero or command zero on the Mac. Now the farthest you can zoom in in Photoshop is 3,200% which looks really huge on this screen. On your screen though it might be smaller. In any event that's as far as you can go but I'm going to start off at this size right here. The fit in window size which you can get once again by pressing control zero or command zero on the Mac. Now we need to create a new layer so press control shift N or command shift N on the Mac and go ahead and name this layer diagonal guides and click okay.

Now we want to create those guides and we're going to do so using a tool that you probably don't use it often inside of Photoshop. It's located under the brush tool fly out menu, it's the pencil tool. Now, go up to this little pencil icon on the far left side of the option's bar, right click on it and choose reset tool. In that way you'll ensure that you've got the one pixel brush just like in the old days in Mac Paint back in 1984. The difference being of course that unlike with Paint, Photoshop accommodates color.

Go to the window menu and choose the color command if necessary to bring up the color panel and then click on this fly out menu icon right there and choose HSB sliders so that you have the same sliders I do and then go ahead and increase the B value to let's say 66% just because it's easy to enter. Then click in the upper right corner, right there and then shift click in the lower left corner. That will go ahead and draw an exactly diagonal line if you precisely click and shift click on those corner points.

The reason we're doing this is that all the Minecraft tools are pitched at a 45 degree angle. All right, now we need a perpendicular line so I'll go ahead and click in the upper left corner and shift click in the lower right corner in order to create this effect right there. All right, now we need to create another layer so press control shift N or command shift N on the Mac and we'll call this guy double axe and then click okay to create that new layer. We want a different color this time around and I went ahead and came up with a slightly alternate color scheme than you find in mine craft.

Went ahead and brightened up the browns a little bit and I shifted what are normally, these green colors for the diamond blades to more blue-ish colors. In other words you can go your own way if you like but I came up with a hue value of 185 degrees which is a shade of cyan by the way and then I want to go with a low brightness value of 40%. I'm going to take the saturation value up to compensate to 85% like so. Reading down where we have a hue value of 185, a saturation of 85 and a brightness of 40%.

Then you just want to click in this lower left corner like so then click twice more over here and twice more up and then once over and once over here. Now we need to fill in that base of the blade with a different shade of cyan. This time I'm going to take the brightness value up to 85% and once again to compensate, I'm going to take the saturation value down. When the brightness value goes up, typically you want to take the saturation value down. I'm going to take it down to 50% and then I'll click right in there in order to fill in that little bit of blue.

All right now we want to create the wooden shaft of the axe and so I'm going to dial in a shade of brown which is going to have a hue value of 30 degrees which is orange and then I'll take the brightness value down to 15% which is very low so I need to raise the saturation value otherwise we're going to get a very muddy brown by taking it all the way up to 100% so we have a nice vibrant brown. Then I'll click right here and I'll shift click some place up here. Notice next to my grid lines so that I get an exactly diagonal line like so. All right, now we want a slightly lighter shade of brown for the other side of this wooden shaft.

I'll take the brightness value this time up to 40% and I will compensate by taking the saturation value down a little bit to 85%. Now I'll click right about there and shift click here in order to create that line, now we need to fill in the wood. I'll take the brightness value up to 60% and again I'll compensate by taking the saturation value down to 75% and I'll click here and shift click here. All right, now we need to move on to the axe blades themselves and we're going to create the axe blades once again in diamond, this diamond cyan right here.

To lift that dark cyan color, I'll press the alt key or the option key on the Mac which gets me the eyedropper on the fly when I'm using a brush tool like the pencil. Then I'll click on that dark cyan pixel to lift that shade of cyan. I'll click right there and notice that I'm up into the right, one pixel from the great guide pixel. Then I'll drag down two pixels like so and then I'll click right there in order to create one, two, three diagonal pixels and then I'll click right there to create a fourth one and I'll shift click right there in order to create a line of one, two, three, four, five, six, seven horizontal pixels in a row.

Then you want to drag over two like that and then click here and here, so two pixels in a row. Go ahead and drag up a couple of pixels. All right, now let's start the process anew on the other side of the axe. It's just the easiest way to work so I moved one, two, three pixels over and clicked right there. I have a broad beam of metal coming out of the shaft of wood. Then I'll go ahead and drag over like so two pixels in one, two, three up and then a fourth one like so and then shift click down here in order to create a vertical line of one, two, three, four, five, six, seven pixels so that we have absolute symmetry over the course of this blade.

All right, now we want to fill in the blade a little bit using that medium shade of blue right there. I'll press the alt key or the option key in the Mac and click on it in order to lift that color as the foreground color. Then I'll start down here and click right at this location. Notice it's down into the left of those gray guide pixels. Just a little bit however and now I'll click right at this location and then I'll drag over here so they have two more pixels. Click right there then drag up a couple of pixels and drag up a couple of pixels more to this location in order to fill things in like so.

Now notice that we've created this region that we can fill in using of all things another tool that you don't find yourself using very often, the paint bucket tool. Go ahead and select it from the gradient tool fly out menu and then I want you to click on the word tolerance right there and change that value to zero so that we're just filling in a single color at a time. Turn off the anti-alias checkbox and then go ahead and click right here in order to fill that region with color.

All right, now I'm going to go ahead and turn off the diagonal guides layer because at this point, starts to get a little confusing and I'm going to dial in an even lighter shade of cyan by taking the brightness value all the way up to a 100% and I'm going to compensate with the saturation's concerned by taking it down to 30%. Then I'll click inside this region to fill it as well. Now I'm going to switch back to the pencil tool and click right here three times in order to create this little diagonal line. All right, now we need to create the other blade and the easiest way to do that is to flip the one that we've created so far which means I need to select the blade and believe it or not the easiest way to select that blade is to use a tool again.

You may not use it very often, a much blind tool. It's available from the quick selection tool fly out menu, is the magic wand tool. It's actually a great tool for selecting very specific colors which is what we need to do and you activate this feature by changing the tolerance value up in the options bar to zero and then turn off anti-alias and contiguous. All three checkboxes should be turned off and then you want to click here and notice that selects all the dark blue pixels. Shift click on this guy right there to select the medium blue pixels as well, the medium cyan pixels that is and shift click right about there to select all these light blue pixels.

If that doesn't manage to select these little light cyan pixels right there then just go ahead and shift click on anyone of them and that should select them as well. Now we've selected too much because you can see down here that the base of the handle remains selected. What you need to do is press the M key to switch back to the rectangular marquee tool up here at the top of the tool box and then just go ahead and alt drag or option drag around these pixels to deselect them. All right, now we need to create a copy of this blade and the easiest way to do that is to go up to the Edit menu and choose the Free Transform command but what you really want to do is transform a copy.

We've got to take advantage of another keyboard shortcut in which we add the option key or the alt key here in the PC. I'll go ahead and escape that here. I'll press control alt T or command option T for transform on the Mac. In order to switch to the free transform mode and transform a copy of this blade. Now I want to take this little target right there, move it to a different location but if I start dragging, I'll just drag the copy of the blade to a new location. I need to press control Z or command Z on the Mac to undo that. Instead what we want to do, see that little target right there.

Press and hold the alt key or the option key in the Mac and click on this brown square that's just up into the left of the selected cyan one to specify the location of the target. If you're ever having problems moving that target, an alt or option click is going to do it for you and then you want to right click any old place inside the image window and choose flip horizontal in order to flip the blade over to the left. Now, right click again and choose rotate 90 degrees clockwise in order to rotate the blade into the proper location and then press the enter key or the return key on a Mac in order to apply your change.

Now you can press control D or command D on a Mac in order to deselect the axe blade. Finally what we want to do is add a diamond tip to the shaft over here in the upper right hand region. The easiest way to get the same results as me is to go ahead and select this region right there. Everything above the axe blades with a rectangular marquee tool and notice I'm not selecting any of the pixels that are part of the blades themselves and I'll press the backspace key or the delete key in a Mac in order to get rid of them and then click inside the image to deselect it.

Now we'll go ahead and switch back to the pencil tool and go ahead and alt or option click on a dark cyan to lift that color. Click here and then keep clicking your way up into the right like so until you've created a total of four diagonal pixels and then click right above, click over to the left and then click here and shift click down here in order to create a diagonal line of those pixels. Now press the alt key or the option key in a Mac and lift the lightest cyan like so and then click here and shift click here in order to finish off the top of that staff.

Now the one remaining problem with this image is it's so darn tiny. You really don't want to be working with an image that has these few pixels. It's great when you're trying to draw the axe in the first place because that way you can better control the results when using the pencil tool combined with a single pixel brush. If you want to do anything else with the axe, this is going to be a problem. First thing I want to do, I've made a mistake. I actually want to raise the bottom of this staff handle a little bit. I'll go ahead and select the rectangular marquee tool once again and I'll marquee this region like so and then you want to press control up arrow and control right arrow if you've been working along with me.

That's command up arrow and command right arrow on a Mac in order to raise that handle just a little bit so we have a single pixel margin around the entire axe. Then click off the axe to deselect it, press control one or command one on the Mac to zoom all the way out so that you're seeing real pixels which of course looks terrible which is why we're going to go up to the Image menu and choose the Image Size command in order to bring up the Image Size dialog box. What you want to do is make sure the resample checkbox is turned on and I want you to change the resolution value to 300 pixels per inch.

Let's just start right there and then assuming that you have percent active for both the width and height values and that they're linked together. You want to go ahead and change the width value to 4,000% and the height value should be 4,000% as well. Now, I want you to see something. Most people will tell you when you're up sampling an image just about all the time you want your interpolation algorithm, this thing right here next to the word resample set to automatic. In which case here inside Photoshop CC you're going to get this globby result right here inside all the versions of the program you're going to get this effect both of which are terrible.

Anytime you're working with single pixels and this goes for screenshots as well and you don't want to gum up the transitions. You go ahead and change the resample setting to nearest neighbor and notice that just goes and blows up those pixels and they end up looking exactly the way you want them to at which point go ahead and click the okay button in order to accept that change. Now, you've expanded every pixel to 4,000% in other words each pixel now measures 40 pixels wide by 40 pixels tall. We have a much bigger version of the image and now you can see if I press control zero or command zero on the Mac, we're no longer seeing the pixel grid because we're not zoomed to 60.96% in my case as oppose to nearly 2,500% as we were seeing before.

That's how you create a big piece of old school pixel art in the form of an imaginary Minecraft double bladed axe here inside Photoshop. Say kids, wasn't that great? Now you can print that Minecraft tool really big and meld it on foam board in order to create a real world tool. Who needs thick ink anymore? If you're waiting for next week's free movie, I'm going to show you how to take that Minecraft tool and project it in 3D space. Deke's Techniques each in every week.

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