Fire Text Tutorial

In this most recent project in my graphic design class, I was to complete a tutorial on fire text.  I used a great tutorial from psd.tutsplus.com.  To begin my tutorial, I was to download a paper texture from bittbox.com to create the background.  This paper texture can be seen to the lower left.  I created my background by combining this paper layer with a gradient layer.  I then added my text.  In this tutorial I used my name 'ZACH'.  I applied many different glow, gradient, opacity and blur effects to the text.  I used the smudge and burn tools to create the base of my flames on the letters.  I downloaded a flame image from flickr.com.  I used the pen and lasso tool to cut this image into 6 separate pieces of flame.  I continued to use many glow effects to perfect the flames and made them fit perfectly on the letters.  Finally, I created a highlight using a white to black radial gradient on a layer which I lowered the opacity of.  This can be seen in the background of the image, which goes from light to dark.
        This was by far the hardest tutorial I've done this year.  It was not as descriptive as ones i have done in the past and it required me to experiment and ask more questions. Although it was challenging, I learned a lot from this project!

Fantasy Scene

Fantasy Scene Poster

          After practicing the tutorial posted earlier in my blog; I was able to create my own fantasy scene poster.  This poster is supposed to have a futuristic space look.  The landscape and cityscape images to the left were the images I used to create my poster.  I got my landscape image from deviantart.com and the cityscape image from parkerlab.bio.uci.edu.  Like I said in the tutorial I first combined these two images to make them blend realistically.  I then used the burn tool to further blend the images and create a dark space look.  I added planets in the sky using planet brushes found at deviantart.com.  I experimented with and made a lot of changes to different gradient, light, sharpness, color and blur effects until I was able to come up with an image that I really liked.
        

          To the left is the original sketch I made before starting my project.  Although my sketch is not very skilled, it accurately shows the idea I came up with and is similar to my final product.  The only change I made is that in my sketch I was planning on including a flying car in my image.  I decided to exclude this from my final project because I think it actually made my project less attractive and unique.      

          Below is the final version of my fantasy scene poster.  After experimenting a lot with the lighting, gradient and color effects, and using many different layers and opacities; I came up with a result that I really liked.  I think the burn tool made for a great spacey/ twilight look for my poster and helped blend my two original images together well.  I worked very hard on the project and some of the steps, including experimenting a lot with many different effects, which ended up being fairly time consuming.  I hope you like my final product!

Fantasy Scene Tutorial

Photoshop Fantasy Scene Tutorial

For my second tutorial based project in my graphic design class I decided to make a futuristic fantasy scene.  To do this I used the "Create Spectacular Concept Art in Photoshop" tutorial.  This tutorial can be found at psd.tutsplus.com.  This tutorial gives instructions on how to make a futuristic looking city by adding stars and planets to the image.  I got an image of a stock grass landscape and a cityscape from google.  I combined these two images well and made use of the burn tool to blend the images as well as make a shadowy, dark look. I then used planet brushes downloaded from deviantart.com to add planets to the sky. I utilized different lighting, color, gradient, blur and curve effects in this tutorial as well.  The maker of the tutorial told that it was up to me to experiment with many of these effects to find one that fits my project perfectly.  I also experimented with many different layers and opacities and used the sharpen tool to sharpen my image and finish the tutorial off.

          I think this was a great and very helpful tutorial.  It was descriptive and its use of pictures helped me out.  The only problems I ran into were experimenting with the effects until i found something I liked.  This was fairly challenging but overall I think I did a great job with this tutorial!

links to images: Grass Landscape, Cityscape