5.3 Adding Further Animals

Hello, and welcome back to Lesson 16 of creating a fancy book cover. So we're near the end of our course here but we're gonna add in some few more animals before we start to work out our book and our text. So, I set in the pelican here. So, I do think we could just add this to the water, and then use like a layer of style, but it didn't work. We're going to have to cut out ourselves. But I want to keep the bottom half of the water because I think that's really cool with the shadow. So, I'm going to use a pen tool here. Just another trick to use, another way to use it. So, I'm just going around the actual selection of the pelican quite roughly. Again, it's going to be in the back. So, don't worry too much, I'm going to actually, go inside of this where the feathers meet the actual water. So, that's to do that saves us a lot of time, to be roughly around the edge here. Too much so it's more like that. Okay, it's not on the feathers. A bit loosely here. Clicking loads of times to make this a bit easier for us. I find it quite easy to just, if you click in quick succession, going around the shape, moving your mouse, it just makes a lot easier for you. Something like that. And let's try, and keep this bottom half of the water. Might not be able to, but we'll try. So Make Selection. Mask it, right-click, refine mask, and then just go over around the pelican to try and bring back some of these feathers, like so. Okay. And it's got rid of those, that's good. Contrast, okay. Okay, it looks good, so let's actually place this into our water, now. So it's Ctrl+T. And submit this smaller holding Shift+Alt on my keyboard to make this in proportion. Let's place it behind his left foot, or his right foot actually, forget about that side, that's fine, zoom in a bit more. I'm gonna try, and make this water match the water below. There's a lot of white in it, so let's actually make a new layer. So, select the color of the water, and just go up for this, using gradient tool. So, already that's looking pretty good. An actual mask of the pelican, and you get the brush, the soft round. And I'm just going to try and make this blended a bit more. I may have pass it a bit more than that. And I guess, looking good already? So, you don't always have to cut out the entire shape of the animal, or the object. You can actually get a way of doing it a little bit differently. I'm going to have to select the neck of the pelican cuz that's too dark. Well, I'm seeing a lot of pixels here. This will be a fine like that, make selection, and I'm not sure, the mask I can just get rid of that, like so. And work on this area here. Okay, let's zoom out, see if that looks good. So look a little bit better, so you can see that the reflection of the pelican is still there, which is what we wanted. Now, I'm pretty happy with that, and it looks pretty good. But we have got a little bit of an error around the edge of our pelican. You can see that there is a bit of black hint of line. Now, we could rasterize it, and do like we've done before with the matting. I'm not going to do that, to save us a little bit of time. I'm actually gonna add a new layer above the pelican, so it attaches already. Click on the white of its color of its tail and its feathers, and just go over the edge of the bird, maybe a bit brighter than what we got there. And that get rid of our black faint hint of a line, like so. Also makes it a little bit brighter as well. And on the beak as well we can add the color of the the white. And there as well on the white there in the back, a bit brighter there. Like that, let's zoom out. So, it looks really good. Maybe add a bit of yellow in there to match the scene again. So, let's just make a new layer above. Add the color of the sky. Soft round, attach it to the pelican, and just go over it once or twice, lower opacity down to zero, increase the opacity until you like what you see. And so, something like that. And now, he matches into the scene. Looks really good. He might be a bit big, but I think he looks pretty cool. Wow, he is. So, I'm actually gonna duplicate this. Let's put this in the group first. Control+G, call this Pelican. Let's actually place this in the right order of our groups. So let's place this in the background group, cuz that's where it is, in the background. I'm gonna duplicate this. Pelican copy > Edit > Transform > Flip Horizontal. Let's place him in a different area. So, make sure we see where he's gone. So, he's gone over here. Let's place this somewhere in the back. We've got a bit more action going on. And I was doing this because of obviously our layers, and they're about that, just make it smaller. So, somewhere like that. And it's smaller again, then. I guess we got two dark pelicans in there. Let's add a bit of blur to this one, cuz he's farther back, so open up the group. On the pelican group layer > Blur > Gaussian Blur, and then add a blur radius of 0.2, that should be fine. Click OK. Okay, that's really good. So it's looking a bit too bright still. I am going to add in an exposure to this. Other than a layer adjustment of exposure. And bring off the offset to the right hand side, and it makes it a bit brighter. Same with the exposure, and the gamma as well, gamma down, and exposure down a little bit. That makes him just blend in a little bit more with the scene. That looks good. So now, let's add in our other animals so we've got the pelican there, let's call this Pelicanright, and then, we know the other pelican is to the left. So we've got a few amounts out here. We got this is that an ostrich, yes, an ostrich. So, let's actually zoom this in, Ctrl+T+Shift and Alt, and I'm gonna place this in these reeds here. So, a bit smaller. Something like that. Okay, so let's get rid of his feet, make sure he like blends in with the grass. So, on the mask, I'm just going go soft round, that'll be fine for the opacity. Get rid of his feet, so they blend in, and he's like walking through the grass. Like that. And then, when you got to his feet here, and we've got a good size in there, go back to your grass brush, we've used before. Open up the brush preset, turn off color dynamics, and transfer. And then, just to add a bit to the bottom of his feet using a black brush. Okay, so you got that. I need to add a bit of a shadow so make a new layer, and group these now, if you want. Call this Ostrich. Ostrich, I'm not sure how to spell it. Okay and then, get a black brush. Soft light. Low opacity and flow. I'm actually going to change it to soft light so it will work well on the grass. And just try adding a bit of a shadow. Not too much, otherwise it will become too evident, but just a little bit, something like this. Let's zoom out and see if it looks okay. See that, it looks good. Let's start adding a bit of shadow, and highlights to this, let's make a new layer, attach it to our ostrich like we've done before, soft light, black brush. And inside of it, the shadow works for this side of the body. Okay, and also add some highlights the top as well, as you can see on the left hand side. That's where the sun would be hitting it. Again, switch between them using the X on your keyboard. Add a bit more depth, maybe a bit flow a bit more. It'll be easier for us. So, it's looking good. A bit more depth in there, a bit more detail. There between two layers, between the white and the black. So, the white on the neck there, on the tail. Okay. On his underbelly. On the right side of his leg, and then, use the white on the left side of his leg. And I see what we've done, let's zoom out. If I turn this off and on, you can see that it's just made a little bit of a more of an impact and he's looking really cool. Just make this smoke more yellow as well, so it fits into the scene more. New layer, attach it to the ostrich, soft round, select the sky. And just go over it a few times, like that. Adjust opacity to zero, and then, go up like I've done before until you like what you're looking at. So, something around there matches the scene. So, we're gonna have to fix this feather here, in the back. So we have used a fur brush before, so we get the fur brush. For the opacity, let's keep the flow about 50%. Okay, turn off transfer, and just try, and add a few more like that, just to get rid of the bottom of the tail. For the opacity, now, like so. Okay, let’s make a new layer, above everything. Fade to black, or the same color as the tile here, and just add a few of the hairbrush just to make a little bit more like it's realistic. Let's zoom out. So, that looks pretty good. Let's add a bit of white to the back as well, just to match. There you go, got a bit of a blackness, and the white in there, a bit more realistic. Lower the brush size about two. I added a few hairs at the back there. Okay, let's zoom out. I'm pretty happy with that. Maybe rotate it a little bit just, so that it follows the line of the tail. Little bit more. Just something like that, a little bit less intrusive, a little bit less dominant. So, that looks really good. I'm liking how that looks. He's looking a bit too sharp for me, so I'm gonna blur him a little bit as well. So, I'm gonna actually add a blur to filter, Blur > Gaussian Blur. 0.5. Nope. 0.9. Bit too much. 0.6. I think 0.5 might be good actually. Nope, 0.3, let's do 0.3 again, looks good. Okay, so I'm pretty happy with what we got now. The shadows looked a bit too much I think, too heavy on the floor there. So I lowered the opacity a little bit. So make that, that looks good. Okay, so it's looking really good now. I think he needs to come a bit smaller, and a bit more to the right. So, you see if I turn on the actual gray layer, this is our front cover. He looks a bit too dominant here. You'll actually get the whole group ostrich. So, reduce the size. And let's place him somewhere else, so somewhere about, say about there. Zoom in a bit. And now, that we've done that, I think our pelican a bit too big. So, let's actually change that. So, we got that's the pelican. Let's actually make him smaller as well. Something like that. Put that there. Put it back. Zoom in, again. Okay, it looks fine, now. Now, the ostrich still looking like he's too dominant, and you're still not blending in very well. So, what we're gonna do, open it up, add in the exposure layer, done before. And lower down the gamma, and the offset to the right. Okay, that's done a little bit of the job for us. Zoom in. Now, his neck's a bit too dark, so like we've done before with the vulture, let's fix that. New layer above on the soft light layer, bit of white. Back to soft brush on a white brush, and just try, and reveal his neck a bit more like, so and the top of his neck as well. So, that's better already. Zoom out. Okay, so this is looking good. Lower opacity, and just bring it up until you think it looks good. So now, that we've done that, we might not need the exposure layer. Let's see if we need this. Just lower down the opacity of the exposure layer just to see. So I think about there looks fine. I've got bit of a line going on around our vulture, so we need to get rid of that. So, what I'm gonna do, I'm gonna actually apply the layer mask. Go to Layer > Matting > Defringe, defringe by 1, and I'll get rid of any of our errors we just had. Let's see if he looks, better now. So, it does look like he fits in with the scene a bit more. Now, I'm pretty happy with that. I'm gonna give him a little bit of a partner, just like a friend or something, so this could duplicate the layer of the group. Let's Edit > Transform > Flip Horizontal, and place it right next to him. Basically, they're fishing for the right, or the same animal, some fish or something like that, or they're picking at the grass. I'm not sure what ostriches eat, but the error we have here is that the ostrich is exactly the same. So, to fix that, let's change the height of the neck. Let's go to the actual layer, go to Edit > Puppet Warp, click on the tail, the body on the neck, the start of the neck, and the end of the neck. And let's just bring up the end of the neck like this. As you can see, we've changed the angle of the neck, and it is completely different. Okay, so I'm pretty happy with that. So, in the next lesson we're going to add in some flamingos, we've put that in between lessons, because you've seen how I've done it. So, I'm gonna add a few in the background, just to make it a little bit more populated. On the next lesson, we're gonna be doing the final color correction, and completing the course, going into in design, and working out our print file.