mad-eye (![[info]](http://www.insanejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} kierah) wrote,@ 2010-03-28 09:36:00 |
 |
|||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
how to make a harry potter wanted poster.
| Howdy, y'all! It's been ageees since I wrote a tut, so forgive me if I'm a little rusty. Today, we'll be making a Wanted poster for everyone's favorite Harry Potter lunatic, Bellatrix Lestrange! I decided to make this because I'm playing her in a game, and since her PB is not Helena Bonham Carter, I wanted to make my own Wanted poster for her. I probably could have taken a pre-existing Wanted poster and just pasted her face in over HBC's, but where's the fun in that? We'll be using this for reference. The idea here wasn't really to make a poster that replicated the original perfectly - I really could have just pasted in new pictures over HBC's - but it was more to put my own spin on things. I wanted to really make the image my own. Note: In terms of difficulty, I'd rate this intermediate. If you're something of a beginner, some stuff might not make sense to you. Also, I tend to ramble, run on, and generally not make sense. If you're confused, ask! 1. The key to a good poster, especially a HP one, since they're too cool for regular paper and need parchment, is a good texture as a background. I used this amazing texture by Bittbox, and pasted it into a 400 px by 500 px new file. After resizing it a little, I had this:  2. I knew right away that the texture by itself would be too dark for a poster. I wanted to have a nice, light background to put all of my heavy black text and graphics on! So, to that end, I made a Curves layer. Curves is pretty much... The best thing ever, and it's my go-to image adjustment layer. In the RGB channel, my first point was Output 255, Input 172, which I created by taking the white slider at the bottom right of the window and dragging it to the left. My second point was Output 119, Input 42. The curve should look like this. This is our result:  See how it really lightens up the picture while keeping in those neat, grungy stains and textures? That was the idea! 3. Next, I decided to add a Gradient Map. Since the atmosphere of the Harry Potter books and films got progressively darker as the series went on, and Bella herself is a pretty dark character, I added a Black and White Gradient Map. Not only are these things pretty much the best thing ever, they really amp up the contrast and lightness in a way a regular gradient doesn't. I didn't want the image to be completely black and white, though, so, keeping the blending mode on Normal, I lowered the layer opacity to 31%, and got this!  4. Now, to start on what is obviously the coolest part: the text. Any graphic designer can tell you that the best and most awesome part of a design is what text you use, where, and how. Also, the font. :D I didn't want to go around dl'ing a million billion different fonts for this, though, so I took Arial, bolded it, and put it on top at 72 pt. Then, since I wanted it to be a little longer and blockier, I went to Free Transform and messed around with it, stretching it out, making it better, etc. It tells me that it's now at 84.54 pt. This is what I got after some fiddling:  5. Then, I duplicated the layer, rasterized it, and centered it. I moved it up higher on the page, and set about making it all grunge-y. First, I set the opacity to 90%, since I wanted it to look somewhat faded. Then, after looking at our source image again, I noticed that the text up top seemed sort of... Poorly put together. Like someone wasn't paying attention to being neat as they wrote it. Since I'm the do-it-the-ridiculously-hard-way-or-not-a Instead of just skewing a few letters, I thought, what if they didn't print the posters with magic? What if they used big presses and printing machines, like the old-timey ones where you had to use a different stamp for each individual letter? What if they had one big stamp for the word Wanted? And what if that stamp was damaged? (Notice that I overthink things.) So I added a Layer Mask to the image, and zoomed way, way in on my text. Using the Polygonal Lasso Tool, I selected the edge of the beginning of the W, at an angle. Like so:  Then, I deleted it, and did the same to most of the other letters. Now, because I'm a terrible human being, I forgot to screencap this part. Buuut, I did screencap it after the next step! 6. What I did here was, I decided that these letters needed to be grunged up, for serious. So I went into my gigantic freaking brushes collection, and selected two of Vered's brush sets to use: the Scratches and the Tape Scratches. After applying liberally (on the Layer Mask! Always on the Layer Mask!) I got this as my result:  7. Here, I added the line that was under the Wanted text. This part was pretty straightforward - I just used the Rectangular Marquee Tool and filled it in with black. This one I set to 85% opacity, because I knew I wouldn't be using as many grunge erasers on it, and I wanted it to match the fadeyness of the Wanted text. Here, I also cut out a part of the edge to make it look a little skewed, like so:  8. After sneaking a further look at our source image, I noticed that there was some text on the line! Since the image was so small, I couldn't quite make it out (and I was too lazy to google for another one), so I decided that the most likely thing it was saying was 'by the Ministry of Magic', since... It's the Ministry that wants Bellatrix. Right? So I added me some text ('BY THE MINISTRY OF MAGIC' in caps, yes) in Arno Pro and bolded it, at 10 pt. But when I was done, it seemed kind of... Squished. And lonely. :( See?  So I went into the Kerning thingy on my Text palette (this thing) and set it to 400. See, the Kerning makes the space between the individual letters bigger or smaller, according to the number you put in! Since we put in 400, this is our result:  9. This is when I added a Layer Mask to the big black line and grunged it up just a liiiittle. I didn't want to make the text hard to read, but I did want to give the impression of it being faded and such. After a little grunging and fading, I was quite satisfied:  10. Next, we have to add Bella's name! I knew that this was gonna be wicked, and that therefore, I had to choose an equally wicked font. ... So I went with Arial again. Unbolded. Hush! It's a nice, clear, simple font that's easily adjusted. If you want an easy-way-out alternative, go with Capture It, but as for me, I felt like its heavily stenciled look didn't fit in with the image I was going for. There's also Masterplan, but you need to contact the creator to get a complete set, and I'm lazy. Also, using Arial meant that I could customize it with brushes and adjustments to my heart's content. So I used Arial at 60 pt, used the center alignment, and adjusted the Leading. It's the little box right above Kerning, and if you're familiar with CSS, it's basically the line-height option in Photoshop. I set it to 42.01 pt. See how it squishes our text lines?  Ta-da! 11. So, I duplicated the text layer, and turned off the visibility on the bottom one, because I'm a little paranoid about ruining things, and it helps to have a backup. I rasterized the text layer for later purposes, and then put a new layer on top of it. I wanted to add splatters to this text, not just because it's on the source image, but also because I think it's in keeping with the image of Bella - obviously, whoever set the type was so afraid that they got a little sloppy! I loaded up a set of splatter brushes (any set will probably do) and got to work on my new layer. The difficulty in this part was making the splatters look organic and part of the text. I left this layer on 100% so I could see what I was doing clearly, and used a Layer Mask to erase parts of the brushes so that they fit in more neatly with the text shapes. I also did a little erasing, similar to what I did to the Wanted text, to the text layer. After some fiddling and finagling, this is what I had:  Then I merged the layers, so they'd be on the same one and have the same opacity. 12. This part is pretty simple - I used the same Vered brushes from before and grunged up the new text. This is what I got after some more playing around:  13. Now, the next fun part. Bella's mugshots! The PB I was using for her was Teri Hatcher (shut up I don't watch too much Desperate Housewives at all) and so I went a-hunting! My go-to site is DH Central, which has an amazing, amazing image gallery. Also, it's fun to mispronounce all the French words! :D (I really miss the 'Sorties' section, I used to giggle whenever I saw it.) So I found this picture and this picture. Now, you might be wondering why I chose a smiley picture? Simply put, if anyone's going to be grinning like a lunatic in prison, it's Bella. I knew I had to make it scary, sinister, and B&W first, though. So here's what I did: 13a. I pasted my image into a new file so I wouldn't be adding all these new layers to the main image. Then, I added a Curves layer (told you it was my go-to adjustment layer!) and went CRAZY. Well... Not as crazy as I could have gone, but pretty crazy. Working in the RGB channel, I added a point at Output 166, Input 135; then I dragged the black slider at the bottom left over until it was at Output 0, Input 83. Your curve should look like this. See the crazy that ensues?  13b. Next, the all-important Gradient Map layer. This was a Black and White one, on normal. I find these just so useful. It amped up the contrast of the picture even more, see? (Also, if you're wondering why black and white - apparently wizards can't afford color photos? Hmm.) Obsoive how T. Hatch becomes even scarier!  13c. So, I really wanted to make this even scarier. So I alt-clicked on the Make New Layer button, and from the drop-down blending mode menu, I chose Overlay. Then, underneath it, I clicked the little checkbox that says 'fill with Overlay-neutral color'. Your little boxy thing should look like this:  And so, you have your Overlay layer, and then you take the Burn Tool, and... You guessed it! You start burning that Overlay layer like crazy! I did it only over the areas that would make her seem scarier - nose, mouth, and eyes, really, and a little bit on her hair. If you want to make the brights brighter, you can use the Dodge tool instead. See how it's non-destructive? If you want to fix something, you can just Dodge or erase it without damaging your picture underneath it! (Shhh. Let's pretend I didn't forget to screencap this part.) You can pretty much do the same thing to the profile picture, too, which is what I did. 14. Back to the other file! Now that I had my two pictures, I had to go about making a place to put them. Since at this point I just wanted to have a place where I could fit them in, I made a box underneath all the text with the Rectanglar Marquee Tool and filled it with black, and then arranged my pictures inside it. For the second profile picture, I just copied the first one and flipped it horizontally - it's pretty clear that's what they did in the source we're using! Here we go:  15. Since I knew we needed a border on the photos, I added a clipping mask to all of the picture layers so that they would show up only on the black box layer, and added a layer mask to the aforementioned box layer. Then I started to sort of... Eat away at the edges with a brush set that I'm pretty sure I got from here, but I might be wrong. I also moved all the layers up closer to the text, and ended up with this:  16. Time for more text! Sick of it yet, haha? I once again went into the text tool and chose Arial, 11 pt, bold. I added the rest of the text in two lines, and then played around in Free Transform again, dragging down the bottom... Draggy-thing... A little to extend it somewhat, make it a little heavier and a little blurrier. I then did my grungy fadey thing with Vered's brushes, so that I had this when I was done:  17. The next part to add was the *APPROACH WITH EXTREME CAUTION* bit. I'm guessing you can figure out the process, but in any case, I made another box with the Marquee tool, and added the text in the font Kremlin. I'm not quite sure why, I think I just wanted an excuse to use it. I added the asterisks in the font Latha, and grunged up my box a little. I put the box on 90% opacity as well, and ended up with this:  (I nudged the box up a little bit for the next step, though, to give the next text some room.) 18. The next text I added was the 'If you have any information concerning this person...' bit, which I centered and put in three lines. The font I used was Adobe Caslon Pro at 11 pt. And, you guessed it - this, I also grunged up. In the end, I got this:  19. At this point, it's really just adding part after part and doing the same thing to each thing: grunging it up, making it look fadey, and so on. I kept moving different parts around, because I'm never quite satisfied with the placement of things. For the 'REWARD' section, the two pointing hands are Custom Shapes I found under the Custom Shapes Tool; the font of the word REWARD was Rockwell Extra Bold at 18 pt. For the text underneath it, I used Arial again, at 8 pt, and I lowered the Kerning to -80. I ecie to forego the little parts on the bottom left and bottom right, mostly because I was lazy, but also because I couldn't... Tell what they said. I ended up with this:  20. Now, I just added a few finishing touches. I put in a few more splatters in strategic places, and then copy-merged the whole thing. I pasted that on top, and set it to Soft Light, to get a bit more contrast. I added another Black and White Gradient Map, and set that to 20%; I then added a vignette gradient (basically, just a soft round black frame around the edges) and set it to Soft Light. Then, I duplicated the gradient layer to make the effect more pronounced. Finally, I did another copy-merge, pasted it on top, and Sharpened it. I then set that top layer to 18% opacity. Ta-da!  There, my friends, is your finished product! Enjoy! |
