4.6 Making the Skull Spear

Hello and welcome to lesson 12 of creating a fantasy book cover. So in this lesson we're going to basically trying to finish off our main character by adding a skull to top of his spear, some feathers, as well as making a little bit of a headdress for his hat. Okay so let's get right into it. So first before we do that, I think we need to desaturate him slightly because the red in the clothes and the skin's a bit to bright, so I'm gonna desaturate it slightly. So, above the character layer, which this one here, the actual, how much work we've done, we've got that visible and it looks kind of strange. And I didn't adjust my layer, just going to be a hue and saturation. Lower down the saturation slightly. Not much, just a little tad, so maybe minus 20. You can actually just go to red as well, and take that out a little bit more. So that if we do that so take the red down to about there. Okay, back to hue and saturation. You can bring that back up and then we're not really affecting the skin as much. So something like that. I thinking his face is a bit too bright, I'm gonna darken that a little bit so naturally, I'm gonna add a number levels adjustment or maybe let's try curves. So let's do that, and instead, slow down the mid-tones a little bit and then maybe some highlights. Something like that maybe. A little bit darker down on the bottom. So something like that. Also another technique if you didn't know this is a really good technique to use. This little arrow here, the hand and the arrows, if you click on that and you get this little pointer. Now if you click on a certain color or certain tone then click it and then go down or up. It'll actually darken that tone, see what I mean? So if I try again, let's try with the green. So it looks like that, green and you can darken it. So it's basically Basically it's really good tools to use. It's like selective toning. So you can even see it on the actual diagram when we actually change a tone, you can see what part of the diagram is being lifted up. So obviously this is a histogram here of this levels is all of our tones in our scenes. We've got highlights down here in the right hand side and we've got the blacks on the left hand side. So whites and blacks basically. So by doing this you select a certain black or a certain white and then you increase it by going up and down. It's a pretty cool technique to use and it works really well in certain areas, especially on this guy here, it looks really good. So I'm thinking of trying to get his face down a little bit more. There we go. Add a little bit more shadow to his face. That's cool. I'm happy with that. It's a real good technique to use so there we go. So let me catch you up the headdress to him and also the spear. First, I'm thinking the spear is a bit too white so we need to see why that is. Obviously you can see that edge there's far too bright. So I don't think it's the curves. Okay, so I think we're gonna have to do this manually. So go down to your character layer. Right-click and say edit contents. That's if you still kept it a smart object, if you haven't don't worry just do the exact same what I'm going to in this new file. Just do it to the image you got into your scene. So edit contents, so what we're gonna do is just even a bit to the spear. Now you could go through this taking out each little bit. But I'm thinking it looks actually okay. It's not too bad, we just want to lower it down a little bit. So let's add in a adjustment layer. Let's try exposure. Attach it to the character. Now let's play with these settings a minute. So gamma correction, let's bring down the gamma correction a little bit. Let's bring down the exposure, not too much. Offset, let's play around with the offset. Try and get rid of that highlight. So something like that, maybe gamma up a little bit more. Exposure as well. I'm thinking that's a good option. Let's have a look, turn off and on. So it looks good, but I think it's a bit too harsh. Let's bring the passe down and then let's bring it up until it disappears. So that's pretty much gone there. Can't really tell. So I'm actually gonna invert the mask and then just apply it to the spear. Okay, he's in white you know. Here you go, maybe done here as well on this section. Anywhere that's bright basically. Okay, I'm happy with that. To click Save, File > Save. Go back to our main image. So now the only little highlight on here now is actually going to be the curves so let's have a look. That's the curve's there, you see? So let's get rid of that. So on the mask, I'm just gonna mask out the spear. Okay, so now that we've done that let's actually make the spear a bit smaller so we can actually add our dragon skull to it. So, in the new open layer or actually on the other layer, depends on whether you add the small object or not, I'm actually going to select around the spear like I've done here. Just hit Ctrl+T and try and drag it down just to make it a little bit smaller something around there. Okay and just hit file save, go back to our main image. You can see it's shorter now for the man now. And then let's bring in the actual score we're gonna be using it's called fossils 0126. So a few ways to get this out from the background and cut it out. Now obviously the usual ways, there's the pen tool, the magic wand, there's the channels way. But we're gonna use a new technique in the Photoshop CC. Now if you don't have this technique or Photoshop CC, I don't believe it's in Photoshop CS6, then just obviously use the other ways to do this. Use the pen tool or a little quick magic wand tool, okay? So what we're going to be using is going to Select > Focus area. Now this will try and, basically what this does is it takes out the blurry parts of the image and reveals the sharpened parts of the image. So because the skull is in focus. The blurry background gets cut out. That's a really good technique to use, really good tool. It only works for some images, but on this one, as you can see, it does work. Okay, so, for the actual intersection, we're actually going to actually do that by hand using the refine edge tool and the the pen tool, so go for fine edge first. I wanna soften the areas on the outside to bring down the shift edge to such a way to the minus 100%. Contrast up a little bit about five. Feather and smooth up a little bit as well and that will make a nice smooth edge for us. Click OK. Now I'm going to get rid of that little spot there. So that makes a mask first And just with a black brush, hard round, just get rid of that spot there, as you can see. Okay, so now for the teeth, be a little bit tricky. Let's try a Magnetic Lasso, so try this Magnetic Lasso and see if we can get this to work. So let's go around here. So there, didn't do too well on that one. It's looking pretty good, at the moment. So, I'm clicking at the top of the turf and at bottom, to create the point,cuz otherwise, it just goes all funny. It shouldn't take too long. All right, now that I doubt we need it too precise anyway because we're going to be losing a lot of this. In terms of the spear's going to go through it and it's gonna be up in the top of the spear and it's not very big as well in our image. Sometimes you have to sacrifice the details of small objects in our scene because we'll have to do that. So I have to fill in here, Fill > Edit > Fill > Black and start again. Yeah, because of course when it's far back, you're not gonna see it, so you don't have to worry too much about it. Do that again there. Try not to let go of your mouse space, it's very difficult. So there, there, there, nearly there. And there we go. Okay, so Edit > Fill with black. And there's our teeth cut out. So it's pretty good job there. Especially from a distance, that will look good. Okay, so let's resize this, so Ctrl+T. Shift+Alt, let's attach it to the top of our spear. So it depends on how big you want it. Maybe you want it a bit big, so maybe bigger than that. Or a bit smaller. I reckon there is fine. Zoom in. So we're gonna try to make this a bit more yellow because it's a bit red at the moment. So actually go to adjustment layers, go to color balance. Touch it to the skull add a bit yellow in there. And it's the highlights, again out of a yellow it highlights yellower so it fits in a lot better. Something like that. Okay, so now we're gonna actually put the spear going through the underneath the skull and out the top. To do that just we're gonna pass it down on the spear so you can actually see where the tip of the spear comes through. And then what we're going to be doing on the mask of the skull. Just get your pencil and get around the spearhead. So there, there, it makes bit of a jagged edge there. And on the mask, it's Edit > Fill > Black. Make sure on the selection to make selection right-click. Feather radius, it has a feather radius of about one. Just make it a bit softer. Edit > Fill again to black and that's coming through. For the pasty, you can see that's where the edge of the spear comes through. Start at the bottom, just basically cut out this section here, so that goes through. So, hard round. A bit smaller, just go over the skull area here about there. Okay, so once you've done that. I think on the shadows on a howitzer of way too severe on this image of the skull. So lets do the same what we did to the characters. Go to Image > Adjustments > Shadows and Highlights. I might do a good job from the get go. Yeah it took away quite a bit of shadow. But let's play with it a little bit. So, shadow work, let's bring up the shadows. Quite a lot on the tone. We don't want too bright, the white, it's bleached skull. So, radius, bring up the radius slightly. That's a bit more detail. Highlights, bring down the highlights, not too much. The tone a little bit. The radius as well. Add a bit of midtones. That's looking a lot better than it did. So let's take off the preview. As you can see quite dark. And the preview of on a little bit more shadow where it was done. Bring it back to life. Okay, that looks good. Now where the actual point of our spear is coming through. We need to make sure that the shadow looks good so let's add a layer above, change it to soft light, black brush, lower opacity and flow. And just try and add a few shadows around where the spear enters. Okay, so also try and get some shadow work just on the right hand side of the skull as well. So over here, as you can see, the soft light it does actually make the saturation come quite harsh on it. So what we might wanna do make a new layer, then go to Edit, 50% gray. Add that layer to it, soft light. And try some burn techniques. Maybe shadows might work a little bit better. So you still just saturating the image. So let's delete that. Make a new layer. Let's try just a straight black. Try to add some shadows to this. I'm gonna zoom in a little bit. Down here, the point comes out, add a little bit of shadow there. That looks a little better. So zoom out so it looks okay from a distance. Thinking it needs some shadow behind it as well. Let's change the layer so they multiply as well. That's always the best way to do it with shadows. Let's add a little bit behind, okay. So that looks a little bit better like that. Let's add some to the spear as well because obviously there'd be quite a lot of shadow on the spear. Go into our character, make a new layer above all these layer adjustments we've got. Patch it and then let's add a shadow to our spear. So let's get a brush, soft round. Let's do the right-hand side of the spear and just shadow that up a little bit. Especially underneath, where it's connecting to the mouth as well. That will definitely have some shadow work. Something like that. Maybe a bit too much at the bottom. Just keep it to the top there. Now to get the skull looking a bit more shadowed on the right-hand side of its face, because obviously the sun's going to be coming from the left-hand side of the scene. So what we're gonna do is add an exposure layer cuz any shadow we add to this, I'll show you, with just a gradient black. It adds a shadow but it's not a very clear shadow. It looks a bit dull so actually we're gonna use exposure layer instead [INAUDIBLE]. So down here exposure, attach it and this bring down the exposure, bring out the gamma correction. Through the gamma correction you can make it still sharp but With a shadow, if that makes sense. So we still get some contrast in lines but it's still got a good shadow on there. So let's go with something like that. Invert the mask, Ctrl+I, and with the gradient with the white just to try to bring a bit of shadow in, as we can see, to his face. Something like that zoom out. So if you think it's a bit too much just bring opacity down. Okay one last touch I'm gonna rasterize the skull. I'm just gonna add a little bit of a blotches using the dot tool. Just this area here looks a bit too saturated and bit to brown. Just gonna add a little bit of highlight in there. And that is good to go. Okay, so that's the end of this lesson, so in the next lesson we're gonna be adding the headdress to our character and adding some horns. So please join the next lesson to continue this course.