So, the semester is officially over, and so is this course. Looking back, I'd have to say that this has been one of the most valuable classes I've taken so far. Prior to this semester, I knew nothing about proper file preparation, and I barely had any experience with Adobe products. Now, I can proudly say I feel so much more confident with both the software and putting together files for output. The checklists we used in each project have already stuck with me. I find myself doing all of the same things for my projects in other courses.
I've liked each of the projects we've done over the course of the semester. As far as a favorite goes, I'm stuck between the billboard/magazine project and the final project. I liked the freedom we got in each of those, and I very proud my final products for each of them. Both are definitely portfolio pieces for me that I will gladly show off to friends, family, and future employers to come.
I hope you've enjoyed reading my blog, however boring it may have gotten at times.
And with that, I sign off for the summer!
Tuesday, May 8, 2012
Thursday, May 3, 2012
Adobe Tutorial #5
For my final tutorial for this class, I decided to do something a bit more in depth. About a month ago, I did a tutorial on WeGraphics to make a Transformers logo. I was watching Transformers 2 at the time, so I was pretty inspired. It turned out really well. You can see that full tutorial here.
That being said, when I got the email update from their blog about a tutorial to make a Batman logo that was pretty similar, I got pretty excited. You can follow along with the detailed steps of the tutorial here, as I'm just going to write a very basic summary as I show you my work.
Making the Bat
To start off, I went ahead and downloaded the vector bat symbol he provided on the tutorial, just to save some time. Plus, I get really finicky when I'm drawing these sorts of things, and I just didn't want to deal with my own stress.
Then, I brought the vector into Photoshop. I used a document size of 1280x800, so I could use this for a background on my laptop. After putting in a background color set to #2e3943 and pasting the vector into it's own layer, I was ready to get into the fun stuff.
Adding Texture & Lighting on the Bat
I applied the setting outlined in the tutorial to add an Outer Glow, Bevel & Emboss, and a Gradient Overlay. He didn't specify what colors to use on the Gradient, so I guessed based on the screen grab of the window he posted. I used #2e3943 and #a6b3bf, and it came out pretty close to what his was.
Next up is adding the texture overlays. I already had a scratched metal texture (see the free download on the Transformers tutorial that replaced the same ones this one calls for), and I downloaded the second one linked in this tutorial. I placed, scaled, desaturated, and deleted the unwanted areas of the texture around the bat symbol. Then, I set the blending mode to Overlay and repeated the whole process for the second texture too.
Now, I added the highlights and shadows with the Brush tool according to the image he posted. I turned the Flow down to around 40%, because the highlights were coming in too strongly. Also, the tutorial didn't say to, but I decided to set my highlights/shadows layer to Overlay, which seemed to make it look a bit better.
Adding Texture & Lighting to the Background
For the background, instead of the paid texture they suggested, I used another one I had downloaded before. It was in the Free Grunge Paper pack. Also, he says to set the blending mode to Opacity, but I'm fairly sure he meant Overlay.
When I went to paint in the highlight on the background, I wasn't liking the way the low-opacity white looked. So, I switched it to full Opacity and Flow on the Brush tool. Then, I set that layer blending mode to Overlay and turned the layer opacity down to 50%. This gave me more what I was looking for.
Here's my final image!
http://wegraphics.net/blog/tutorials/create-a-dark-knight-rises-style-wallpaper-in-3-easy-steps/
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