4.2 Making Perforated Skin

Hello, welcome back to creating a fantasy book cover. This is lesson number eight. So in this lesson we're gonna be focusing on our main character again and we're gonna be using our textures. What we've got in our sub-library and apply it to him to make him more of a perforated demon moss giant person. Not giant but a you know masked man of the swamp. So what we're gonna be doing here is just bringing in our textures so the first one we're gonna be bringing in is called RockPerforated013. So gonna bring that in. So the scorse files, again, are under the second lesson so if you want to go find those if you haven't got them already which I'm sure you have if you've gotten this far. So we're gonna be taking just the center piece of this. So we're just gonna use the lasso tool here and just draw around this center piece. All the parts which are jutting out, and also flat. So like that. Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V, just to copy it. We'll delete the straight edge here. Make sure you're getting the right ones. So that interferes with the lines. I didn't know that did that. Okay, so let's get rid of those lines for now, so Ctrl+ get rid of these. And then just get rid of that. Okay, so now for the mask we're not actually going to apply it to him like to do this we got that apply that. Because we won't have any ability to increase the texture anywhere else. It will be just clipped to him and it won't looks good. What we can do is just use the mask of the character, so hold Ctr on your keyboard, command on a Mac. Click on the character. And you get a selection, then add the mask to that rock texture. So what this is now is that now I can actually move these independently, but to do that I need to unlock them. So unlock the mask from the from upper clicking this in the middle of the two of them there's a little lock chain here. So the fact I call natural texture. And then select it with these arrows here, these bracket borders. You just drag it in and it will go right on him. I have noticed at the top of his head he's got a bit of like a ghosting we need to get rid of that first before we do anything. Let's make sure we do that so go to character, I'm just going to get a hard brush. Let's get rid of that horrible edge. Okay, he's got a bit of a white on his hair so to fix that really quickly, we don't have to go into the masks or anything like that. Make a new layer above it, and then it will automatically attach it because it's underneath our levels attachment. Get a brush. Set to his hair color, Alt, and then click on his hair, and I get a soft brush, soft brush and that should just go over the side like that. Go to multiply and lower down the opacity to 0. Bring it up until you think it's gone. There you go, pretty simple trick just to get rid of the white halo. Okay, so that's good to me. So now let's get back to our texture. Let's turn it on. Okay, so there's many ways to do this. So as I said, you could use displacement maps, which is a really good technique which makes it like wrap around the edges of our character. That will be good for us. In this case because we're gonna be using so many textures over and over again they would not be sufficient for our time. So a different way of doing that is just gonna be using the warp tool. So we're gonna be placing it right here, make a bit smaller. So maybe like that, and then we're going to warp the edges, so let's do the best we can so we can edge, edit, sorry. Transform it and warp, let's try just to wrap around the edges slightly as best you can, so like this okay. That might be where the nose is. That'll be good. Okay, so when you've done that we're going to change the layer style to multiply. But click the tick first. If you want to actually affect the warp again and be able to change it, you have to change it into a smart object but we're not going to do that. Cuz we've added so many textures to that we're gonna be not wasting time on doing things which we don't need to be doing. It's all about making your time as useful as possible. So I need to redo that there and that looks fine. Ok, tick, tick. And change the layer style to not multiply. Now the reason why we added the mask, not just like you know attach it to the character is that with the mask we can actually go past the boundaries of our character. Like it's the white brush. Hit hard round. I'd actually go past the warrior. So if I needed to create like an indent or like a rivet like a. See here where these holes are. If I needed to extend it slightly just to make it look a little bit more realistic with the rock coming round I can do that like so. The holes. If they need to be a bit more widespread, I could do that. That makes them a little bit more bumpy, as well. A bit more character to it. So over here, okay, so something like that. Already, it looks a lot better on the edge of his arm. It looks a bit more realistic cuz it's jutting out of his skin. Same again, over here. A little bit of the circle there. Not too much. We'll have to zoom in a bit to get a bit more control on it. To do that whatever you think is the best way. So maybe here, that circle there jutting out and just cuts off immediately. So yeah, that's good. So something like that, bit more circular, bit bumpy over here. Maybe here, a bit there. Of course because it's a multiply it is gonna be affecting the background as well so make sure you don't do it too much. Only in places where it works. So something like that, maybe down here. Okay. Okay, let's see what that looks like. It looks pretty good. Okay, so what we're gonna be doing to this is obviously I have to mask out where his skirt is, or whatever it is, a kilt, I don't know what it is. Or Lorica. That's an ancient term. I rub that on the mask. Okay, a black brush, and then just get rid of that. Would affect his clothes there, or his spear. So we're gonna have to get rid of it on his spear, too. So get rid of it on the spear, the bottom. His hand is gonna be a bit tricky. So you might have to just get a pencil and then go around his hand as best you can, not worried too much, I'm sure you can do a bit more remotely after but let's just go around his hand quickly. It will obviously be on his hand but, the part where his skirt is will not. That skirt is not very flattering, but you get the idea. Okay, so something like that, join that up. Bit more grace there. Okay, so that's that, and then make selection. And invert selection, Ctrl+Shift+I. And on the mask we can actually just use the black now and just get rid of that. And it'll still be affecting his skin, but not this Kilt thing. Okay. So as well, you can see on the side of his foot there, comes down too much. Okay, but we do on the inside of where his skin is, you can see where that skin is. So, make sure you put it back on this section here. It's a bit short so we can actually go back to our image and just warp down this section a bit. Or even just clone stamp it if you don't wanna affect where our selection is and that'll do exactly the same. Like so. Bit easier there. Okay, now zoom out. That's looking pretty good. It's a bit dark though, at the moment. Let's go through the different layer selections, adjustment layers so we can see what is best for us. So I've got on my mouse, I've got a scroll wheel, so it's pretty easy just to go through them like this. And see what will look the best for us. Darker color's pretty good. We can use multiple versions of these just on different layers so they make a different impact. So that's strange looking. So I'm thinking multiply for this one. I'm actually gonna increase the contrast a little bit. We also need to get rid of the spear as well, on the design on the actual texture, so let's get a brush a similar height and width to the spear, and just hold Shift on your keyboard, hit once at the top and once at the bottom. Make sure it's on black. And that will get rid of it. Of course, it has done a little bit on the side of his skin, so we need to make sure that it's not doing that. So on his fingers, and on this little center here. >> Okay, might little bit refining so make the brush a bit smaller Okay and add it back in. Okay, that looks good. So, let's just see what we can do with the levels adjustments. So Ctrl+L. Come on L, and let's just play around with this a little bit. Make it a little bit more like skin tone. You don't want it too dark, especially this first layer. So, yeah, it's a little bit more realistic up there. I say realistic. It's a perforated person, but you get the idea. But something like that would be nice. Okay so now we need define some features because at the moment as you can see we've lost basically all of the shadow corner in the abs on his chest, and also his arm as well. It's just live like it's one texture you need to tell where the edges are. Just need to make sure we get rid of that so let's zoom in, you'll see this texture here is gonna pass his arm. So we can even go on the mask. Or just go on the spot healing brush. Or the clean stamp. Let's try the clean stamp again. Let's texture here. On my keyboard I'm going to click on that texture. Soft round and then just add it to that. Make the opacity lower. Let's try and get rid of that so it joins up with his arm nicely. Zoom out. Little bit lesser now, a little bit more refined. Think I'm gonna add another texture to top of this. I might actually just mask this section out, it's not the best part of this texture. So I just get rid of that entirely, maybe use the pencil again to make it a bit more refined selection. So something like that. We can actually just go past his arm so somewhere right there. Let's get rid of all that. I'm just gonna make sure to get rid of all that. There you go. Okay, so now his arms a bit more defined. I think underneath him as well there's a little highlight underneath need to get rid of that. Okay, I think it might be just his ass, his skin underneath. That's fine. Okay, so again we need to refine this edge here as well so I'm gonna lower the opacity down to quite low and just go over this area, getting rid of that pit there, and underneath there where they don't join up. Okay, so something like that, maybe reveal it back just where the arm is so it makes it a bit more sharpened on the edge. Like that. Okay so we defined that arm now a little bit more. Now on his fingers, that doesn't look good too, so we need to get rid of that. We'll add another texture to that section just to make it a bit more realistic. And to make sure the texture flows. Okay, so we need to bring back the texture on his neck. Okay, something like that. Okay, that looks good. So now we could add in a number of textures. So I'm bringing in someone else, so we've got this one, as well, we could use. So we can actually just leave it up. And we take different sections from it while working. So if I leave it here, let me just randomly pick so for his arm or his shoulder, let's pick this section here. Okay, and I'm just gonna copy and past so Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V. Now let's just put that on his shoulder. Okay, zoom in a bit. Okay let's change some more apply, and let's just see what looks best. Well actually gonna bring this up again, same as I did to the rest, something like that and bring out shadows, bring those holes back in and highlights as well. So like that looks good. Let's actually invert the mask on this. Let's rename it to shoulder, just so we don't get lost. And this, hold Alt on my keyboard, click on the mask, and it'll actually invert the mask for us. So I can actually select that arm. We'll just draw it back in, basically with our brush. So, something like that, looks good. Okay, that's good. So it's good that it's smaller for the shoulder between the arm. 'Cuz the arm is obviously closer to us, so we would see it a bit bigger. So it doesn't make actual sense by doing it smaller on the shoulder. Okay, so let's just rub out using a hard brush. Get rid of some of those edges. Also with the hard brush, it reveal some of the edges to make it a bit more bumpy. Git rid of that white edge, like that. Okay, so that looks good. Got a good shoulder there. So on his face, that's also one of the issues as well. To get rid of some of that, let's bring back his eyes and all that. So on the mask we used before, on this rock texture, let's just completely get rid of his face features. We're gonna add this separately, like we did with the arm, shoulder. So the neck, here. Get rid of all that for now. Make it a bit softer on his neck, 'cuz we have to do that later. Okay, like that. Okay. Okay. So now we should fix this hand, as well. So let's get a [INAUDIBLE] his hand. So again, something quite similar to this section here would be good. Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V. Like that. Place it on his hand. Okay, and then just zoom in a little bit. I'm going to use the warp here. If you want to use that as a smart object you can. It will retain some of the qualities equal this hand. Okay, so now we've go that. We can actually just start working it now so let's zoom in a little bit. Let's go to edit, transform and then warp. What we're gonna do is change the layer solid to exclusion so basically it makes it transparent. You can see through it so you can actually see where the edges of the hand are. Makes it a bit easier for us, so just bend it around to the edges of our hand don't always have to click on the point, you have to click on the actual shape as well. Then spin it around, make sure you got the finger in there. Okay. So that looks good. Click the tick. Okay, I'm gonna actually rasterize that, don't need the warp anymore, so it's okay. So Ctrl+L, we got the levels so bring out the mid-tones. Bring down the shadows. Bring out the highlights, I already know that's going to work, even [INAUDIBLE] some exclusion, but let's get it to multiply. A bit more maybe, so just a bit more of the mid-tones in there. It's a bit too dark. Bit more highlights as well, and that looks good. Invert the mask. So hit alt on your keyboard and click on the mask. Zoom in. Now we can actually do it a bit more closely. So the white brush is [INAUDIBLE] filler of course. On the hand. We're gonna add in some shadows later on in the next lesson. In between the fingers and under the hand as well. Maybe a bit more evident on its skin. It's gotta be a bit over here. It's a bit soft where the hand reaches the neck, so let's go back to this layer here. This texture. It left a bit more evident. Spawn the white brush, just trim around the shape of the fingers. Overlay between the two of them to make it a bit more obvious that they're fingers. So that's a bit better. Okay that looks really good so that's it actually for this lesson. So we've finished completing our perforated man and we just need to on the next lesson continue adding some moss, some more perforation to his face and skull work and stuff like that. So please join me on the next lesson to continue this course.