In this tutorial, we are going to focus on creating character concept art from photo reference in Photoshop.
I'm going to create a quick thumbnail in Sketchbook. Regardless of what our drawing skills are like,
we want to have some kind of thumbnail, to have an idea of what we're creating.
Once we have that concept, then we're going to step into Photoshop to start editing.
So we switch to Photoshop and see that I've got a character posed and ready to go,
and I'm going to use this as my template for my character art. I'm going to take my photo reference and lay it on top of this body.
Now I've used a 3D model that I already have, if you don't have one, use a photo. It'll do the same thing.
So here I've got some photo reference of a bikini top that I found on the internet,
and the goal is to change it, and alter it to fit our base template.
We're going to be using a lot of the same tools - everything under this Edit > Transform menu that we see here.
I'll use Edit > Transform > Scale / Rotate to fit it to the shape of my template.
I'll also adjust the opacity
of the layer to make it easier to see the photo reference on top of my template and
I'm just trying to fit it, so it looks like it forms itself around the character's body.
Let's look at Edit > Transform > Warp. This will create a lattice around our photo reference
and allows us to push and pull
and change the photo reference in a nonlinearr way. So we can squash it and stretch it to fit our character's body better.
Warp is very useful. We will also use Layer Masks extensively.
So Layer > Layer Mask > Reveal All. This will apply an Alpha Channel to our layer so we can
mask parts of it out. This will become crucial for blending our photo reference
into our template's base shape.
Now the Edit menu tools and the Layer Masking will get us pretty far,
but, we will need to do more.
Here's an example, where I'm taking the same bikini, but a different image of it, and I will reapply it onto my template so I get optimum coverage
of my model so it doesn't looke like I have any gaps.
Here's a good example of where our photo reference can fit better. The bikini on the
right isn't adhering to the shape of the breast. Now I'm going to use one of our other crucial tools, which is under the Filter menu:
Filter > Liquefy. And Liquify is a soft modification tool, we select that brush at the top, and then we can affect our photo reference layer
within the radius of that brush. With Liquify, we can reshape our photo reference
with even more precision than we can with the Edit > Warp tool.
Filter > Liquify will come into play quite a few times during this tutorial. So, those are the basic tools:
the Edit > Transform tools, the Filter > Liquify we just looked at, and Layer > Layer Mask.
Now: let's do it all again on the shorts. We will wrap the shorts around the body the same as we did with the bikini,
We will start with the Edit > Transform menu, and usually, Edit > Transform > Distort can do most of the work we need.
So I'll use Edit > Transform > Distort,
to generally fit the photo reference to my template
I'll use the Edit > Transform > Warp tool to fine tune the fit,
and again, it's helpful to lower the opacity on the layer, so we can see both the template body underneath,
and the photo reference while we're working with it.
Next, I'll either Erase Brush or Layer Mask out the skin detail,
I know I'll never need it, because I have skin on the base template, so I can safely erase it.
Now I need to cross the legs on my photoreference, the way that my base template is.
I won't to be able to do that with Warp or Liquify. So I'll use my Lasso Tool, to select part of
leg of the short, and then I'll use Filter > Liquify to push it in to shape.
That gets us most of the way there, but I am going to have to
cut it (Ctrl-X) and then paste it (Ctrl-V) onto its own lawyer, so I can make changes to it. By doing that,
now I can push it under the other layer, it gets a natural overlap, it feels much more like the shorts should feel.
Now I'm at the the point where I can make global changes. I can make final adjustments with the Edit > Transform > Warp tool,
so I can lower the waist line and fit the shorts to the hips of my templates.
Next up is her shoulder rig,
I'll use Edit > Transform > Flip Horizontal,
we use the Flip a few different times, we want to know where it is, it's in the Edit > Transform menu.
Now I want to Mask out some of these areas that I'm not using.
I want to get rid of the black pixels, and to do that I've used my Quick Select tool,
which is the fourth tool down on the left brush menu. It allows me to intuitively select different areas of color on the photo reference,
and so I can quickly cut out the parts of that image that I don't need.
I'm with just the shoulder rig pixels, and then I can use my Edit > Transform > Warp to fit it into shape.
I do the exact same thing with the belt around the hips,
Edit > Transform > Warp / Distort to get it into the general shape,
then either Layer > Layer Mask, or Erase Brush the details that I don't need.
Layer Mask is the safe choice, if I make a mistake I can always paint over it to undo it.
Time for another new tool: Image > Adjustments > Match Color.
What Match Color will do, is to take one layer, it looks at the colors on a separate layer, and will make my layer match that separate layer.
By using Image > Adjustments> Match Color, I make the side pouch match my belt more closely.
In order to do this, I do have to adjust the Image Properties down below. I need to
tell Photoshop which image I want to use, and then point it to the correct layer to match to.
There are few tools to tweak the color changes. By doing that, I can very quickly chang the color of several different layers
to match each other. Now Match Color won't always work, as we saw with the shoulder rig on her chest.
I'm trying to use the Image > Adjustments > Levels tool to brighten it up, and then attempt to use Match Color,
but the chest belt is a bit too dark for us to successfully Match Color.
So, I'll have to change the color manually,
and I've added a new layer on top of the belt layer, and I've painted it with a brown that matches the waist belt,
and I'm going to change the Layer Blend Mode (which you just saw me do there) I've switched it to Hue, and then I'll try Color,
and maybe a few other options, like Screen and Soft Light.
In this case, I'll stick with Screen mode and lower the opacity of that brown lawyer a little bit.
This will brighten up the chest belt, and it will simultaneously color it, so it matches the other belts more.
Now on to the coat: we see I have a few different reference pieces, and once again I'm using my Edit > Transform > Warp and other
Edit > Transform tools> I've split the coat into two separate layers, and I'm erasing the parts of the coat I don't need.
In this case, it's the sleeves. I'll use the Warp tool to wrap the coat around the body,
and use my Lasso Tool to grab the arms from this other coat,
and match them to my body template. No surprises here: Edit > Transform > Warp once again.
I'll quickly duplicate the layer by using my Move Tool and holding down Alt while I move the layer, that'll make a duplicate
and then I will just cut it up, move it around, use Liquefy and Warp to fit the sleeve to the other arm.
I end up with sleeves that are red, on a jacket that's yellow, I try and use the Match Color on the jacket to make it red,
it didn't quite work well enough. Instead, I'll use Hue/Saturation. So: Image > Adjustments > Hue/Saturation.
and I can play around the Hue slider to make the coat more red. Once I've switched it to red, then I can use Match Color on the sleeves,
and match the sleeves to the body of the coat, instead of vice versa.
Next: The boots the start off the same way that everything else does, Edit > Transform > Warp, then Filter > Liquefy
with the boots, we end up doing a lot more painting,
because we don't have image reference that matches the perspective of our template very closely.
So I'm duplicating lots of different pieces and at the end, I'm drawing in detail by hand,
to make sure that I've got something that matches the body template,
as opposed to using the reference very literally. If we can get perfect reference, we need to be able to change our reference
using a tool like Liquefy, to match your body template,
or, we have to figure out how to draw in new detail wherever it's missing.
I'll add a little blue to the legs for a splash of color, and then we turn our attention to hair.
We see I have a picture of a celebrity from the internet,
and I'll immediately erase her face so that we just have the hair.
And hair is difficult to mask out, it's going to be sloppy. Go for it, just use the eraser with a soft brush
and a low flow to blend it in as well as you can,
and once we have something that's masked out, we can start to adjust the perspective and distort it,
so it starts to fit our character's head a bit better.
With hair like this, part of it is laying in the reference as we've done before,
but another part of it is layering it with multiple bits of reference.
I've got more than one piece of hair reference here, and I'll mask it out.
And layering these bits together is what creates an interesting hair style for a character like this.
I've chosen hair reference that's relatively similar in color, that'll make it a lot easier to blend.
Then I'll position these layers on top of each other to try and get something that
feels more interesting than just taking one image and laying on top of our template.
We do want to keep these as very distinct, separate layers,
this means if we can alter them separately,also means we can reposition them.
I can move one up or down in the stack to cover-up other bits, or hide under other bits.
I'll all the other tools that I've used so far.
Image > Adjustments > Match Color to adjust the different samples of hair so that they match each other,
I duplicate different pieces and rotate them around to end up with something interesting.
Then I turn my attention to shading. A lot of what will the unify the look of our concept, is adding shadows onto the
surface of our character, and to the photo reference we've created. I just added a little bit of a shadow from the hair on to her face
and that immediately makes the hair and the face feel more solid. It feels like they're interacting with each other.
Creating that kind of blending is something we want to do in general, but the first
let's make her hair blue. The same way that I recolored the belt on the chest,
I'm going to add a new layer on top of the hair layers, and play around with the blend modes. So: Hue, Color, Overlay, Soft Light,
eventually we'll find one that we like, to get whatever effect we're going for.
It will create something more different and interesting than just using photo reference as-is.
Once I have the blue hair, I'll start shading to it. I create a new layer, and paint with a darker blue color,
and I set that layer blend mode to Multiply. You see that
where I paint that darker color, we get something that's a little bit more shadowy.
It's important to use a color that is related to the surface we're painting on. So blue hair gets blue shadows.
I'll add a bit of blue shadow to her face, to make it look like the hair is reflecting on the surface of her skin.
Now, let's turn our attention to adding shading to the rest of the character in general.
Again: shading and lighting is very important to creating the overall effect. We have a bunch of different photo references,
all with different lighting. We need to unify that. So we pick a direction that the lighting is coming from,
we paint shadows on one side, and light on the other side. So the light is coming from the left side of the canvas,
which means areas on the right of the character should generally be shadowed.
I'll just create a new layer for each area I want to add shadow in,
I'll choose a color related to the surface that I'm painting on,
and I'll use the Multiply Blend Mode. I can also use Layer Effects like Drop Shadow and Outer Glow, to add shadow to the character.
But generally we're going to be painting by hand.
So I've got a new layer, I'm painting in a dark color on top of the surface of the character,
and I'm trying to create shadows they feel like they match wherever our light is supposed to be in our scene.
While I'm creating these shadows, I want to pay attention to the relationship between objects. So the legs are close together,
that creates some ambient shadow. The jacket is sitting above the character's chest, that it creates shadow.
The bikini is above the character's chest, so I'll add some shadow there.
I'm not just creating shadow based on the placement of the light, I'm also creating shadow based on the proximity of objects to one another.
This kind of interaction between objects is what really sells the concept as a cohesive whole,
as opposed to looking like a collage of different images that we just slapped together.
Now I'll start to do tinier and tinier details - so I want to start big, doing
the shadow across the entire arm or the entire side of the body. Then I'll start to narrow my focus
to the shadow on the side of the bell loop,
or the shadow on the edge of the bikini,
until I have something I feel covers the entire surface of the character. In some areas I need shadow that feels darker than other areas,
I'll want to do that on its own layer,
so I have control over these even darker shadows,
vs. the base layer of shadows. I can also use this layer to dim areas that are too bright. So if something is a little bit too shiny,
maybe there's a bit too much flash in the photo we used, we could use our Multiply layer to darken areas like that,
until we have something that works. Then, after we've darkened things, we'll want to brighten things.
The brightening process will be the opposite of the darkening where we were adding shadows,
we think about where the light is in the scene, and paint bright areas that agree with where that light is affecting the character.
This will be another new layer up, I'll paint usually using a bright color like white, or a pale yellow or pale blue,
and apply that as a Screen or an Overlay or a Soft Light layer.
Play around with the different blend modes to see which one works best.
So the lightig pass is absolutely the most important pass for this style of character concepting. We really want to focus a lot of
attention creating good shadows and good highlights on the surface of our character. That's it for the character, now we can spend time
with the presentation of the character, the background and details like that.
And that's it for this tutorial. We took a look at taking regular photo reference from the Internet and making it
into the character concepts, no drawing required.