Other Hologram - a Photoshop Project - COMPLETE

No not a real one but the name for a piece of work im making atm

The image will consist of a character for an ongoing project of mine appearing as a hologram tying back her hair whilst standing atop of of an holographic emitting cube. This will also be a great excuse to experiment with layer opacity and rendering properties

I'm throwing everything I've learnt from studying my favourite artist into this and hopefully come the end of it all i'll have something worthy of filling that annoying 2ft space on my studio wall next to my window.

First up the artwork, I need to design the character in pose, the holographic outfit and the cube rendering her. the coffee table will come after the perspective of the cube is made.



first up is the cube. designing this will aid me in getting the perspective right for the character to sit atop, being a central focal point of the image I can use it to build the vanishing points for the rest of the table it sits on.



I'll often sketch conversations between characters in my work to help re-enforce my ideas at the time + it amuses me for 10 mins

Next up is the character herself, normally I design characters in a full static portrait implementing ideas in sketch form until im happy with the final thing, that normally takes time so im going to build the character and her dress with paper layers using my lightbox, its like photoshop outside of photoshop (yo dawg..etc)



once each page is scanned in i can dump the images atop of one another and change thier properties to Multiply to allow whites to become transparant. With her and the cube made i can make a quick mock up in PS to help me evolve the idea some more.



Looking ok so far albiet rougher then a badgers arse.

back to the sketch pad, however now we make the final clean design and make whatever adjustments before scanning in and photoshopping for real.

the original idea was that the entire hologram would be made with each layer having a different level of opacity, the initial test did not go well as it ended up looking a little messy and hard to distinguish, the solution was to make the character herself a a near solid object with both the front and rear layers of the dress at around 35%, the front layer would be set to a multiply allowing sections where each layer overlaps to show as a darker colour, enhancing the depth of the design.



basic flat colours and eyes are done, things are looking up.

tomorow i'll focus on sorting out the hair, im not looking forward to the amount of work im going to have to throw into it however theres a lot of it and it needs to get done.

 

Its been a pretty eventful day today so I've spent the day planning how im going to overcome the nightmmare that is going to be our chars hair

I managed to get an hour over lunch to sit down with one of choco's emission books and study how he does his hair. I dont think im gonna get it as good as he does but he does have a 15 year jump start on me.


Stunning isnt it?

I know that he uses multiply layers to build the depth but i couldnt figure out how, I initially thought that each layer was built as vectors (which kinda scared me as I've tried this before and it takes an eternity to do right) but then i looked closer and discovered that he's simply freehanding the hair strands. It also looks like he's using a diff brush set to the default in photoshop, perhaps its how his tablet thats setup differenty, who knows? i gotta experiment.

Ive come to the conclusion that he builds it using 4 layers,

Base: the base layer is the actual hair itself and is used as an active mask for working on the later layers.

Shadow: darker then the base the shadow layer is the deepest point of depth.

Midtones: ligher then the base it shows where the light is and acts as a base for the final top layer

Highlight: direct hairshine, from what i can make out it has an outer glow property assigned to it with a colour dodge blend.

rather then mess with the original I decided to experiment on the mock up I made lastnight.



not bad for a rough attempt with little care gone into the brush strokes. I shall start building the 4 layers tonight, should hopefully have then done by tomorow.

***EDIT***

Dark layer complete, 3 to go, I was tinking with some of the advanced brush properties and discovered an dynanic opacity setting that can be combined with the existing brush, the results were marvelous, cant wait to crack on with the other 2 tomorow



you'll notice in the layers window that some of the layers have arrows pointing to another layer, this is called STACKING, to put it bluntly it makes the master layer a stencil meaning when I airbrush the dark layer the visible colour only shows in the area's marked in the base.

 

Nice work gunsmith

 

ta Hg

this morning was an F-bomb moment, 3 layers done and my system has a hissyfit and locks. bit of lunch and 2 episodes of TNG later and I was in the mood to carry on.



Done!

with the hair complete its time to finish the char and start on the skin job, skin shading will be very 2 tone with some minor differences in colour, havent quite figured out what im going to do with the dress, i'll figure something out as im getting to it.

 

I'm impressed. Looking good.

 

DUDE, you got some serious skillz, I will be watching this intently +rep.

 

Skin job complete, was actually quite difficult to do but awesomeness prevails!



there is a few subtle colour variations in the shading to make it look a lot less flat, i did initially create a pen outline of the shadow but found it to be too hard an edge, in the end i just free handed it with a soft brush.

I need to think what im going to do regarding the dress, and i really am out of ideas atm, perhaps i should take a break and instead focus on cleaning up the eyes, eyes are the most important part of the face and convey the character in the piece.

gotta really take my time on them, but at the resolution im working at ive plenty of room for detail

good thing i gotta lot of HDD space this is already nomming 153mb and im nowhere near finished

 

Veeery Nice!

And I'm sorry to do this, but someone has to say it - BOOBIES!

 

AHAHAHA That's awesome, with filename and everything

Will running delay my death?

 

remember the scene in jurrasic park where the lawyer runs into the bathroom?

 

Oh God

 

right now ive stopped pissing myself laughing, lets sort those eyes.

first off, we bin the old ones, they were only a temporary thing, im going to show you how we doing them right and do them like ninjas

next we paint out some new ones, im not too fussed about the wonky line on the left, you'll see why in a min, we make a new layer UNDER the eye and we fill it with our base colour (you will see why in a bit) subtle eye lash detail is then added to give more depth, it only takes a 1 pixel brush to make a difference



now we paint in the details of the eye, remember the Iris isnt a little dot in the middle, the eye has a concave depth as well so we need to take that into account when painting, once the details are painted select the layer and run a multiply gradient from the top of the eye, this adds the shadow and helps balance out the detail you just painted in



once thats done we're ready for the finishing touch, eyes reflect light sources and we need to take that into account, make a new layer and paint your reflections in white, then adjust the layer properties and add an outer glow to it, change the glow colour to white and change its blend properties to VIVID COLOUR, this creates a high contrast burning of any colour the glow comes into contact with resulting in a more natural looking lightsource as opposed to some shitty white spot.



now comes the fun part, say come the end of it all your not happy with the colour, SIMPLES! select the layer with the base eye colour on and tap CTRL-U tick the colourise box and drag away, you can change the colour of the eye to whatever you want in a few seconds as opposed to making a brand new eye.



I just noticed the one eye is a tad wonky, i'll fix that up later.

 

needs more cameltoe

 

Love the eyes, I so want a wallpaper of this when it's done .

 

needs more work but im sure i can sort something out before i finish it all

 

character complete for now, when the final thing is complete I'll most likley fiddle with all the colours and opacities some more.

 

Looks seriously good man.

 

SHEEESH!
Those are SERIOUS skills, Gunny.
Have some rep.

 

holy ****. good work boy!

obligatory rep added!