The Breakdown
This tutorial shows the breakdown of Phoenix's thinking process when creating a piece and some "Do's & Do Not's". Please note that great works don't come from just the best tools and the best techniques, but experience and creativity. For beginners, it's probably a good place to start by first imitating your favorite graphic artists and deconstructing/reconstructing their work, then slowly develop your own ideas and variations over time. With that said, here are some pointers for people to take note of after getting the hang of graphic making:
| Is my piece original? Did I simply copy someone else's style or slightly alter someone else's style? Is it just another carbon-copy of a current trend? Does it have a special "look" to it that differentiates my work from everybody else's? | What is my piece made out of? Do I simply use other people's premade brushes/vectors/stock photos/etc? Is my work meant to be a simplistic piece or one that contains a lot of little details and layers? | What difficult or special tricks/steps did I use to make the piece? Did I extract the image or simply slapped it on a single colored background? Did I completely vector/paint/re-CG the original image? | How did the overall piece turn out? Even after all the work I put into it, is the piece eye-catching? Does it LOOK like the actual amount of work that was put into it, or do all my efforts still look like crap? |
Here are some of my pointers for beginners on Photoshop. I tend to see a lot of it and would recommend you avoid them.
Brushes can be our friends, but brushes can also be your worst crutch. We should not depend on premade brushes to create our backgrounds. It is uncreative and relatively ugly at times- especially when using default Photoshop brushes. You want to avoid making flat backgrounds such as the sample below. The character has shadows, meaning the grass and everything else should too. Work on lighting and NEVER use the Lens Flare as a sun. It is the UGLIEST thing I've ever seen done on Photoshop.
Note that the direction of the light source on a scan is very important when you are blending scan images on stock photos. Their direction may not share the same directions and may have to be repainted/reCGed/flipped/etc. In the image below, the character's shadow would fall on our RIGHT side, stretching slightly in the direction of about 4 o'clock.
 Click Here Visit Wallpaper Section |
Just because a wallpaper is relatively large in size DOES NOT mean that every inch of space has to be filled. Many beginners make the mistake of putting text or smaller images on any free/empty space. Sometimes simplicity is best, as many of my wallpapers have shown. |
Now to analyze one of my wallpapers to see my thought process. Note that most of my wallpapers take hours to make and many derive from flukes/remakes of a single idea gone wrong.
 Click Here Visit Wallpaper Section |
As you can see, this wallpaper's composition was relatively simple- a giant mecha soaring throught the air. This can either be seen as an overkilled stock-whoring attempt, or a unique scene, never before seen in a Gundam wallpaper. Most of the white text was not meant to be seen and only added to the composition and balance of the overall wallpaper. (Notice the right side would be heavy without the text in the center.) The technique used to make this scene consisted of layers of blending and lighting techniques. As for its execution, that is for you to decide. Watch how this wallpaper was created with the steps below. |
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<-- Click The Thumbnails To FULLVIEW First I came up with the idea to use this awesome scan and create another "mecha flying through the air" type of wallpaper. Instead of a night sky or outer space, I wanted a city view. |
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<-- Click The Thumbnails To FULLVIEW Notice I did not take the time/effort to extract the scan. I created a layer mask to simply blend the scan into the background. To learn what a layer mask is and what it can do, visit my Layer Mask Tutorial. |
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<-- Click The Thumbnails To FULLVIEW Then comes the duplicating of the same layers/images and blending them until the right look comes about. Please note that this is all trial and error and contributes to the hours it takes to make a piece with merely just a vision and no guidance. |
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<-- Click The Thumbnails To FULLVIEW Now to make this piece duotoned in color. |
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<-- Click The Thumbnails To FULLVIEW The last step made the piece extremely dark so OVERLAYING a lighter color makes the image brighter. |
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<-- Click The Thumbnails To FULLVIEW The final touches were the text and giant exploding balls with a contrast to the main colors. Font choice is very important and must compliment/reflect what the rest of the wallpaper is showing/feeling. For example, based on this scene, you would NOT use a bubbly/flowery font. I like to use basic fonts in caps and S P A C E the letters. |
