Hello everyone Chris here from Spoon Graphics back
with another video tutorial.
Last week I received a great tutorial suggestion on Twitter from Daniel Alessandro, who asked
if I could create a guide based on the metal text effect from the title artwork of the
upcoming movie Fantastic Beasts.
It's a really nice shiny metal, almost chrome like effect with a mix of waterdroplets, lens
flares and some really cool custom type that adds sharp scales to depict the scary fantasy
beasts the movie is based around.
So I got to work and played around in Photoshop to create something similar.
Given the scaly dragon like theme I came up with this artwork based on the concept of
Saint George and The Dragon, so I could try out that kind of type customisation for myself.
In this tutorial I'll be showing you how to create this entire concept from scratch, so
I'll post up some kind of time stamp for anyone who wants to skip ahead to creating the actual
metal effect.
This tutorial follows on nicely from last time where I showed how to create a rad 80s
chrome logo, so hop in your time machine once again and we'll head back to the middle ages
for this one!
Now this full piece could certainly be created entirely in Photoshop, but if you have Illustrator
available you might as well use it to make life easier for yourself.
If this was a real world project, you would definitely want to create the basic branding
like this in vector format anyway.
Open up Adobe Illustrator and create a new document.
Grab the Type tool and begin laying out the words of your title or logo.
I'm using the awesome free font Cinzel, which has a historic roman style to it.
Create individual text elements for each word, or pair of words so you can rearrange them
into a nice composition.
Little tricks like lining up and scaling each element to match the other words helps keep
the overall design balanced.
Now onto the type customisation.
To make the text easier to work with, select all the elements, right click and click Create
Outlines.
There's a great opportunity to add a cross in the centre of the letter O in George to
depict the Saint George's cross.
Draw a thin rectangle with a black fill and no stroke, then Copy and Paste in Front a
duplicate.
Rotate this duplicate by 90 degrees, holding shift to keep the angle constrained, then
select them both and hit the Unite button from the Pathfinder panel to merge them into
one shape.
Click the word George and select Ungroup from the right click menu, which will allow you
to select just the letter O. Add the cross to the selection, then give the letter an
extra click to make it the Key object.
Use the Align panel to centre the shapes up both horizontally and vertically, followed
by the Unite Pathfinder button to blend them all together.
In the newer versions of Illustrator, there's some cool widgets then allow you to round
off the corners.
Use the Direct Selection tool to shift-click all the points around the cross, then subtly
adjust the corner radius.
Elsewhere on the artboard, draw a small circle.
Use the Direct Selection tool to drag out the left-most point, then select the Pen tool
and hold the Alt key while clicking the point to remove the bezier handles and make a sharp
point.
Click the New icon at the bottom of the Brushes panel and select New Art Brush.
Make sure the flow goes in the right direction to go from thick to thin.
Draw another cicle, then select and delete the top and left points to leave a quarter
circle.
Remove the fill, then apply the newly created brush.
Go to Object > Expand Appearance to convert this stroke into a sold shape.
Select the Rotate tool and hold the ALT key while clicking a pivot point to the left of
the shape.
In the options enter 10 degrees and hit the Copy button.
Press the shortcut for Transform Again, which is CMD+D to repeat the effect to form a series
of aligned shapes.
Select the first copy and scale it down by a small amount.
Select the next shape and press CMD+D twice to scale it down twice as much.
Repeat the process with the next one, except press CMD+D an extra time so the shapes incrementally
reduce in size.
Select all the shapes and group them together so they can all be selected and moved at the
same time, then begin scaling and rotating them to fit within the counter (which is the
typographer's term for the hole) of the letter D.
Rotate and align the shapes enough so that the angle of the curves matches up exactly
to create a smooth transition.
Hold the ALT key and drag a copy of the shapes, then scale, rotate and position them somewhere
within the next letter.
To mix things up, go to Object > Transform > Reflect to flip the shapes so they can be
used on the opposite side of other letters.
Keep creating copies and positioning these scaly shapes somewhere within every remaining
letter of the word Dragon.
The leg of the letter R also gives us a great opportunity to turn it into a spiky dragon's
tail.
Select the Brush tool and draw a long flowing path with a few bends.
Use the Direct Selection tool to tweak the points and bezier handles to produce a smooth
path.
With the Direct Selection tool still active, select and delete the points that make up
the shape of the letter R's leg so it can be replaced with the new brush stroke.
Bump up the stroke size to roughly match the weight of the font, then position it roughly
in place and tweak the points of the path.
Select the Pen tool and hover over the open point within the letter R shape.
You'll see a little circular icon which means the path will be extended.
Use this to draw a new shape then blends in with the end of the brush stroke.
Make any necessary tweaks with the direct selection tool to ensure everything transitions
smoothly, then go to Object > Expand Appearance to permanently convert the brush stroke into
a shape.
Continue with the brush tool to draw a series of spines down the tail.
The positioning doesn't have to be perfect, just plot a few smooth short paths.
Head back and zoom in to position each of the spine shapes more accurately so they blend
smoothly into the tail outline.
The overall logo for Saint George and the Dragon looks pretty cool with the type customisation,
but it's about time we actually got to the topic of creating a metal effect in this tutorial.
Create a new document in Adobe Photoshop.
I'm using a size of 2000x1300px.
Fill the background with black using the shortcut Alt+Backspace.
Open up a clouds or smoke image, like this one I found from Unsplash.com.
Press CMD+A to Select All, CMD+C to Copy, then switch to the main working document and
press CMD+V to paste.
Scale, rotate and position the image to fill the background, then press CMD+Shift+U to
desaturate it.
Change the blending mode to Linear Light to boost the contrast against the black background,
then reduce the opacity to around 30%.
Create a new layer and fill it with black.
Add a layer mask then set up a large soft brush.
Dab a few spots around the centre of the black layer to erase the centre of the mask, leaving
a vignette effect.
Switch back to Illustrator for a second to select and copy all the elements that make
up the logo, then paste and scale them to size to fit the main Photoshop document.
Make a duplicate of the logo layer using the shortcut CMD+J, or drag the layer over the
new icon.
Reduce the Fill amount of the duplicate to zero, making it invisible for the time being.
Double click the first logo layer to open the Layer Style options.
First Add a Color Overlay using a dark grey such as #313131.
Next add a Bevel and Emboss effect.
Change the Technique to Chisel Hard then max out the Depth and Size.
Alter the shading angle to somewhere in the upper left, around 132 degrees and 20 degrees
altitude.
Change the contour to the preset with the dip in the middle and check the Anti Aliased
option.
Change both the highlights and shadows mode to Overlay, then reduce the highlights opacity
to 30.
Add a Drop Shadow using the settings black, 100% opacity, zero distance and a size that
suits your document to create some soft shading.
For me 70px looked fine.
Click OK on these settings, then double click the duplicate layer to add some more styles.
Begin with a Bevel and Emboss, but change the shading settings so that the angle is
from the upper right.
You'll have to turn off Global Light to avoid also changing the other layer.
Change the contour to the spiky preset with two points.
Then change the highlights Linear Light at 60% and the shadows to Linear Burn at 20%.
Edit the Contour option from under the Bevel and Emboss menu and change the preset to the
smooth curve, followed by the Anti Aliased button.
Add a Stroke using the settings White, 1px, Inside and Overlay with 50% opacity to add
a thin little highlight around the edge of the text.
Then add some noise to the effect using an Inner Shadow.
Set it up with the Overlay blending mode using a mid grey, then max out the Noise slider
at the bottom.
Alter the Size so the effect covers the whole letter.
Add a Satin effect and change the settings to White and Overlay, then tweak the Distance
and Size to produce some nice highlights and reflections.
I ended up with 20px Distance and 68px Size.
OK these effects to see the shiny metal effect in action.
The key parts are the two Bevel and Emboss effects.
Using two layers instead of one allows the two different angles and shading settings
to interact and create a deeper shine.
Open up a rainy window photograph, like this one from Unsplash.
Copy and paste it into the document, then scale it down so it fits over a portion of
the text.
Hold the ALT key and drag out duplicates to cover all the words and letters.
Trim it down to size for the smaller words.
For any areas that are too big to cover without leaving a hard edge, use the Eraser to blend
them together.
Select all the copies from within the Layers panel and go to Layer > Merge Layers to blend
them into one.
Hold the CMD key while clicking the layer thumbnail of the logo layer to load its selection,
then go to Select > Inverse.
Hit the delete key to trim this rainy drops layer to size, then change the blending mode
to Overlay.
Reduce the opacity to around 60%, then add a Sharpen filter to bring out the details.
To save some time creating a lens flare from scratch, find a free pack online, like this
one from PSDbox.
Paste it into the document and scale it down in size, then change the blending mode to
Screen to render the black background transparent.
Move the flare into place over one of the letters, then drag out a copy while holding
the Alt key.
Scale and stretch this duplicate into a slightly different shape and position it elsewhere
over the design.
Repeat the process with a few more flare copies to add a range of highlights across the artwork,
scaling and stretching each one to make it unique.
Create a new layer and draw a selection around the smaller words of the logo.
Use the eyedropper from the foreground colour picker to select an orangey colour from the
lens flare and fill the selection using the ALT+Backspace shortcut.
Load the selection of the logo text layer, inverse it then delete the excess.
Change this layer's blending mode to Color and reduce the opacity to around 50% to give
these words a gold appearance.
One finishing touch to enhance the St George theme is to add a red cross to the background.
Create a new layer above the clouds layer and press CMD+A to Select All.
With the Marquee tool selected, right click and press Transform Selection.
Hold the ALT key and scale it down to a thin column, then give it a red fill.
Transform the selection again.
This time rotate it by 90 degrees and stretch it to fill the width of the document.
Fill it with red and change the blending mode to Color, reducing the opacity to around 20%
to tone down its impact.
The final design captures the style of the Fantastic Beasts movie artwork to produce
a fantasy movie title or book cover design of our own.
It's interesting to see how Photoshop's Bevel and Emboss settings work with those extra
bits of type customisation we did in Illustrator to create a realistic 3D effect.
So I hope you enjoyed this latest video tutorial.
If you did, be sure to subscribe to my YouTube channel to be the first to see my upcoming
videos.
If you want to see more, head over to my website at spoon.graphics and join my mailing list
to receive plenty of cool design related stuff.
Hit me up on Twitter or Facebook if you want to show me your results from this tutorial,
otherwise thanks for watching and I'll see you in the next one.