www.gregorlouden.com Showcase 2010

This particular piece was part of a personal project which is still very much on-going.Originally starting out as an experiment to see how well different forms of media can work together, the eventual aim is now to take the project into animation.

Combining photographic elements with traditional hand drawnimages can be a challenge but with a little help from photoshop,the results can come out quite well. Over the next few pages, I’lltry and show you the process that I went through in order to createthis composition.

Workthrough

www.gregorlouden.com Showcase 2010

01

09

02

04

Workthrough

03

05 06

07 08

So, I started by scanning the original drawing into photoshop. Remember, the larger the better! I never scan in an image any smaller than 200 Resolution. 300 is best.

Then I duplicated the layer. I done this by clicking the layer called "Background" and dragging it to the ‘new layer’ icon(circled) at the bottom of the layer window.

What I wanted to do here was to get rid of all the white areas so that all I was left with was the black lines from the drawing. This was done by destaturating the image and increasing the tone by using the curves option.

Finally, I created two new layers. Filled one with white and one with a light shade of blue. I renamed these layers ‘white backing’ and ‘blue backing’. I dragged both of these layers under the "line art" layer.

Working on the ‘line art’ layer, I used the Eraser Tool to get rid of any unnecessary lines or marks. This was just to help the lines to be more clear.

Now I was ready to add colour to the visual.

By holding down command and clicking on the channels pallete, I was able to select all the white areas of the illustration.

After inverting the selection(to select the black areas), I created a new layer.

I then-whilst making sure I was working on the new layer-filled the selected areas with black. I named this layer “line art”.

Working on this layer, I then filled it with black which ensures that the colour is temporarily hidden.

I selected white, selected the paint brush tool, and started painting in the areas I wanted.

It was then just a matter of repeating this process for all the colours I wanted to add. If the colour I was adding was too close to white, I would then use the light blue backing layer.

www.gregorlouden.com Showcase 2010

10

18

11

13

Workthrough

12

14 15

16 17

I created a fill layer for each colour for the figure. This is done by clicking on the icon above.

The colour picker box was thenrevealed. After selecting the desired colour, I then clicked on OK.

I then renamed this layer as the section I wanted to colour, In this instance, it was ‘skint-tone’.

If at any stage I wanted to change one of the colours, then it was just a matter of double clicking on the fill layer and reselecting an alternative colour.

Now I had all my colours,it was now important to start making the illustration come to life.

It was now time to create the shadows on the figure. Like beforewhere I added the flat colours, I clicked on the icon above. Only this time, I clicked on hue/saturation.

www.gregorlouden.com Showcase 2010

19

27

20

22

Workthrough

21

23 24

25 26

I moved the saturation slider to the right and the lightness to the left.This can always be re-adjusted later on.

Then I had to clip this layer to the appropriate colour layer by creating a clipping mask(hold down “alt” and hover the cursor between both layers the click).

I could then add the shadows by filling the layer with black, selecting white, selecting the paint brush, lowering the opacity and then painting in the areas desired. This takes a bit of practice.

Adding the highlights is almost an identical process to adding the shadows. Only this time, after selecting the hue/saturation fill layer, you must move the stauration to the left and the lightness to the right.

I now had my figure pretty much complete. It was now a matter of adding the photograph to the background. I’d had this one in mind from the beginning which I had taken in Philadelphia.

Once I had added it to the background, I duplicated the layer.I made sure that the layer with the figure(now flattened to one layer) was between them both.

On the duplicate layer of the photograph, I then masked out everything in the photograph except the street light. This helped to give the impression that the figure was within the photograph.

Using the same process for rendering that I’d used on the figure, I added a few objects to the background to add to the chaos of it all.

And there it is. This process takes a bit of patience and practice but it can produce some pretty cool resultsif you’re willing to invest a little bit of time.