RUSTY PAINTED METAL:
Using standard common filters such as noise and distort plus a little
variation in colors and shades, we'll create a dull metallic texture.
The techniques used can be applied to a lot of materials, and I'll give
you a couple of hints as to how you can make things look un-computerized.
MY NAME IS MR. BLACK: I wanted to give this
a 3d-look, so I drew some fragmented blocks in a layer (using the - yep!
- polygonal lasso tool), filled it black, duplicated, grey fill, cut off
chunks here and there.. done. Now we've got two layers... forget about
the backmost until the end of the tutorial.
YE OLDE AIRBRUSH: Ah, yes. Time to put the
trusty paintbrush to work. We'll do some unsmooth shading. Click the thumb
and read the instructions. Basically, it's all about creating some variation
and avoiding too even transitions.
STUART REDMAN: Happy? OK. Let's add some
colors to this thing. Make a new layer (yeah I like keeping things layered.),
fill it with any color (Here I've used R155 G050 B034). Looks bad? Hill
Yeah! Why? Well, the red is nice but it all seems to flat and boring.
Now, you can mess around with that hue slider all you want, cos' it ain't
gonna change a thing. We need some color variation...
AH OK, I GET IT: First off, pick
a less saturated color and quickly brush shadows and spray some random
strokes here and there. I like to keep shadows low saturated - they're
supposed to be dull and dark, not glowing. Secondly, pick a yellow color,
create another layer, and draw some blobs. Now, I chose the places where
I know I'm going to add details and noise later. Look at the screenshot
and find the yellow and low saturated red colors.
MY PARTY: Let's make some noise! You should
probably have a look at the PSD file to grasp this one. We're still dealing
with much too smooth graphics, so let's add some noise. Now, we don't want
the same amount of noise everywhere.., that would be in direct violation
to the rule of variation, and doesn't really look noisy...'cause it's evenly
distributed! (smart?) What I did was mess around with a white brush on a
new layer, set it to blending mode 'multiply', then apply noise. Experiment
until you've got something that either looks good or in any way resembles
Elvis.I have to tell ya I messed up. You see those dark outlines around the boxes? Those should have been on a separate layer, but I did them on the noise layer. Anyway, they give the boxes a sharp edge which helps create the 3D illusion. I made them by using the poly lasso tool to select areas just within the boundaries of the boxes, then shade those areas using a high opacity brush. Now, you *could* have just selected the boxes layer and done a Select-Modify-Contract-1, but that wouldn't have looked right, as we don't want a one-pixel edge.. we want *variation*. Yep, That's the keyword boys and gals.
WOW, SO DIRTY: Now for some dirt. This is purdy
easy. Again we create a new layer and mess around with the brush. I paint
the same areas I did when doing the yellow layer. Now this doesn't really
look dirty does it? We'll just have to work on it, I guess.
FINALLY SOME FILTERS!: Woohoo, now it's time
to track down that Eye Candy Regcode, everybody. Eye Candy 3.0 has got a
nice little something called 'Jiggle' which is a lot better than Photoshop's
Distort-Ripple filter. Nevertheless, I will stick with Photoshop's build-in
for this tutorial, so if this looks crappy - blame Adobe!OK, setting size to medium and amount pretty high up, I got this result. Doesn't look like Elvis, but it'll do.
AINT NO TELLIN: Aha! Looks like this worked.
What I did was color the distorted layer (just a simple color fill), set
blending mode to overlay and mess around with the opacity until I got something
nice. Then I made another distorted layer (exactly the same way).. bigger
this time, ran a noise filter and moved it around until I was happy.Great. Now what? More variation of course. But of what kind? The dirt is dirty enough (Though looks too computer generated.. blame Adobe), the luminosity noise elsewhere is OK. Hmm.. Oh, yeah - colors. The color dept. is somewhat lacking.
RUSTY PAINTED METAL: Added another layer (blending
mode 'screen' to lighten things up a bit) with some blue airbrush sprays,
and added some shades to the backmost layer (I told ya I'd get back to it).
Now, there you are. It's done. A simple texture. I use distort and noise
on most of my textures to avoid making them look flat and lifeless.