Photoshopping a Dinosaur

I've been hard at it this week, producing the artwork for my first foray into the children's book market. The project has now past the half way post and is heading into the home straight.

Although at the moment its just a random selection of illustrations, it will soon coalesce into a book called Ryan's Dinosaur Dreams.

Originally it was a project I was going to do for my grandson on his birthday---and it still is--- but so many people have stated a desire to own a copy, I decided to offer it up as a print on demand (POD) book.

Of course the regular readers of my blog will already know this, but if you are new to our little corner of the web then please feel free to follow this link and catch up; don't worry we'll all just wait here for you.

Okay? All up to speed? Good, see I told you we'd wait; we were just sitting around, shooting the breeze and waiting for you to come back... we're good like that.

Anyway, I digress, as I'm wont to do on far too many occasions; let's move on to the purpose for this blog. This is another one of those 'behind-the-scenes' things I do from time to time; this one will deal with the Photoshop rendering of one of the cartoon illustrations from the Ryan's Dinosaur Dreams book...see, there is a connection. It's not just random stuff thrown up at the web...I'm digressing again aren't I?

Right, here we go. Ryan's Dinosaur Dreams--- a behind the scenes look at my Photoshop technique--- take one:

1. First off I scan my pencil and ink artwork into Photoshop as Black and White at 300dpi.
Once scanned I leave it as a Bitmap and clean up all the marks on the page.
I then click Image+mode+greyscale and thenclick Image+adjustments+levels and drag the dark cursor fully across and click ok and then do the same for the white.
Then I go back into Image+mode+CMYK; over in the layers box I click 'new layer' and select 'Multiply' from the drop down menu.

2. Next I chose my base colours and lay them flat using the 'paint bucket' tool.

Sometimes I work within the confines of a box or borders, but for these illustrations I wanted them to be soft edged and loose. I know the edges don't look very soft at present, but all will be explained in due course, my little pretties.

3. Now we come to the fun bit. This is where I give the characters a 3-Dimensional feel. I use a mix of the Air Brush tool; at around 65-100% and the pencil tool, usually at 19%. (These can be found on the left hand tower menu. It's the icon shaped like a pencil; the Air Brush tool is nested within the pencil icon box).

I select the area I'm going to be working on---in this case the dinosaur---clicked onto the mauve area with the magic want tool--- making sure that the 'contiguous' box is un-ticked. This means that when I airbrush in with darker colours it will only show on the selected area and not the other characters or objects around it. It's one of the very neat things about painting in Photoshop.

*Note: When you click the wand tool on your selected area a moving dotted line should highlight the area you've selected. If it selects an area outside of your chosen image it means you have a break in the line somewhere; deselect the magic wand (Ctrl+D), then connect up the broken area or areas and do it again. Also, those little dotted lines can be very distracting so to make them go away click Ctrl+H, this will hide the line but still leave your selected area selected.

I built up the layers of dark first, getting progressively heavier as I went on, while also thinking about the light source and how it would effect the dinosaur's muscle structure.

In this case, because its a night-time scene and its outside someone's house, the light coming out should be a soft yellow glow. Think where the light would hit and place it with the Air Brush tool, not the pen as the Air Brush has a softer edge to it and blends better. Also a good point to make: work with a lighter shade than you need, its always easier  visually to darken it later.

Once you've worked on the main character apply the same 'magic wand' technique to all the other objects and characters in your picture; always thinking about where the light will fall giving the whole picture a 3-Dimensional feel.

4. Once you've been around the whole picture, giving every character and object the same Air Brush and pencil treatment, its time to soften those edges.

This is really simple; all you do is make sure that you 'deselected' (Ctrl+D) the magic wand, select the Air Brush tool and select white as your colour and run it at 300%. Then just go around the picture and the white will automatically remove the hard edges and blend whatever it touches into a soft, feathered look. You can see the Air Brush in the picture above; it's denoted by the large circle.

A word of warning though: always make sure you never let the Air Brush tool touch your main characters; they must remain crisp.

Okay, that's it. That's how I produce an Air Brush cartoon in Photoshop and here's the finished piece of art.

Next week I'll be posting about my first short humorous novel about a village full of idiots, which is hopefully to be published later next month, and if I have time I'll post about the cover for my Ryan's Dinosaur Dreams book, but it may not happen until the following week.

Either way, don't forget to come back every Friday for the next page from my Brabbles & Boggitt graphic novel

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial? If you did and you've like to see more, including video tutorials, then  click here and let the learning continue! 

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Thank you

Colouring an editorial cartoon in Photoshop

If we go way back, and by way back I mean waaaaaay back, some of the more persistent members of my little coterie will remember that I published a post called how to draw an editorial cartoon and I seem to remember making some vague threat that I'd be posting another tutorial---probably the next week if I'm true to form---about how I colour it using Photoshop.

Well, the good news is, boys and girls, that week has finally arrived; I have completed it and here it is. Well, to be honest with you, I completed it a while ago; on the day I drew the cartoon to be absolutely accurate; but its taken me until now to find it---due to the fact that there's an awful lot of work on my hard drive and I can never remember what I name these damned things and so generally loose them to the ether within seconds of saving them. So in the grand tradition of all things of this nature, I found it yesterday while looking for something completely different...which, for the record, I didn't find.

Anyhoo, that's enough about me and my lackadaisical attitude to tidiness and tardiness. Lets get onto it shall we; lets get onto the second post, the one in which I show you my process in colouring an editorial cartoon in Photoshop.

1: First off I scan the cartoon into Photoshop, selecting Black and white and 300 dpi as its resolution. Once I've  previewed it I use the marque tool (the bounding box of broken lines that surrounds it), then I click scan.

2: Once the cartoon appears, I select the eraser tool (see highlighted) and start removing all the black dots and imperfections; making very sure that I don't rub out anything important to the finished cartoon.

3: Once the cartoon has been cleaned up its time to create layers. So first off I go to images+mode+greyscale. Then go through the same process again images+mode but this time select CMYK. (if the cartoon is purely for the net you can chose RGB---more about that later). 


Once you've completed that click on the 'new layer' tab (highlighted) and in the box that says 'Normal' change it to Multiply.

4: Next choose the'pencil' tool, select '1' as the ratio, and connect the broken lines. I do this because when I apply the 'paint bucket' tool, and if there are any gaps, the colour will flood out all over your mini masterpiece.

6: Now start filling in the picture with colours of your choice.

If you only want solid colours then your picture will soon be complete, but if, like me, you like to give your images a little more substance, then in the next part we see how I personally build up the colour layers with just a mouse and no tablet

7: First off select the colour you want to shade. In this case I chose the flesh tint. Once you've clicked on it with the 'magic wand tool' then un-tick the 'contiguous' box on the bar above. This will ensure that Photoshop now only recognises the areas that have flesh colour in it (or what ever colour you chose); in other words, if you accidentally went over the edge of the flesh area, the pen or air-brush tool wouldn't make a mess of any neighbouring colours.

7: If you don't want the dotted lines running around the perimeters of your selected colour, select Ctrl+H and they will stay hidden.

Now chose which direction the light is coming from and with the 'Pencil Tool' define the delineation  lines. Once that's done to all the areas of the colour you've selected, hit the shaded side of the lines with the 'Paint-Bucket' tool.

Once completed you must press Ctrl+D to make sure the 'Magic-Wand' tool has been deselected before moving onto your next colour.
Follow this process on until your cartoon is complete.

8: And that is pretty much it. The cartoon has been coloured, save it as a JPeg for the newspapers or what ever format is required, and name it. (that's when things normally go pear shaped and I lose the whole file)

On another note. If you wish to put your work up on the net and you upload it in CMYK, all the colours will look garish and horrible. So to avoid this happening you will have to re-save it as an RGB. That way when you put your masterpiece up on your Facebook or Twitter or any other social media site you have, it will look to others the way you intended it to look.

To make this happen, simply retrieve your CMYK cartoon from your documents then go to: Image+Mode+RGB---once this is done  re-save the cartoon. I normally do it by simply adding 'RGB' to the end of whatever it was originally called. And that's it. Your cartoon is now saved for print and the web.

Phew, well there you have it; how I paint a cartoon in Photoshop. If I have the time, the inclination or I can be bothered, I'll be doing a few more of these to show you how more complicated work is rendered.

Until then; happy double clicking and I'll see you all soon.

Cheers

Karl

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