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Tutorial: George Romero Zombie Trilogy Collage
Part IV: I see dead, blue people!
There I am again.
Right now, I care about my foreground, which includes the blue zombie group here.
As in some steps before, I flatten the group down to one layer.
And I put another clipping mask on top.
You know how I stand by clipping masks already.
I chose a relatively large brush
189 pixels,
hardness: 100%, opacity & flow slightly reduced as usual.
At the moment, I work mostly by using the opacity jitter.
Because what I try to do is to add more darkness
to make it look like those figures just step out of the dark.
But it looks a bit spongy, so I will try
to use the size jitter as well.
Still too spongy.
So I completely deactivate the opacity jitter
and those hard lines now...
They remind me a bit of ink drawings...
that's exactly the kind of effect I want to have.
I want clear, hard lines with different nuances.
Because later I will work over it with a finer brush
to make it more detailed.
But for indicating the amount of darkness so far, it works pretty well.
It also gives more dimension to the shapes.
I want to have some contrast with the figures in the background.
The background has very shiny colors, I want those here to look a bit more subtle.
Looks good, so I flatten the layers and add another clipping mask
on which I will work again with my "drawing pen".
You know this one already, I used it to make the details on Bub, Stephen, etc.
I take the color picker, I take a tone,
and take on my image with this
to work out the details.
I grant myself more freedom, I'll use more blood
and add things, that were not in my scribble and my original idea.
You see that here already; I also throw in some more green.
Just to fill out the blanks, to give it more character.
Those are ideas that come while you work on it,
to go little further with your stuff.
Also with the hair ( Can I call that an afro? )
and also the face: I experiment, I try out different things
like adding some glow to the eyes, but still make them look dead.
The whole facial expressions,
like adding a beard, etc. I try out things, sometimes draw over parts again if it's not good.
On this comrade I also have the case that his mouth is a simple black hole.
So I thought of adding some teeth, just to see how it works.
I found that much more fierce, so I kept it.
Here I work with bigger lines on lower opacity,
to create a checked pattern. I erased parts again, too.
Because of the light. It's just an indication.
I also cut off the shoulder, to make it more dark.
Like I said, that's the freedom of painting.
I can't say much about that because I don't think much when I do that. It happens on the spur of the moment.
I chose those zombies on the foreground because
I always like the idea about hands.
I found that very interesting about zombie movies in general:
We humans don't like to touch things that are dead.
Things that were alive and are now dead.
That's a natural instinct, you don't want to touch anything dead.
While on the other side, you have the undead who reach out their hands for the living and walk right towards you.
The repulsion behind that imagery is something that always appealed to me somehow.
You can also see that I take the chance
to optimize some of the forms.
Some fingers look very angular, like sausage fingers.
So I use my colors to make that look a little more "clean".
I enter my "corrections" layer again.
Because I have the problem of my clipping mask again, that the contours look not too great.
It's not a big problem since there is so much black in the background
but like here on the fingers or the hair extensions,
I can still correct those little parts.
It's still just a minimal optimisation.
I create another new layer.
For some shadows, because
if I take a look at the right side, where Stephen stands,
I don't like how his pant blends into black. Behind the blue hand, it's too abrupt.
So I take a soft brush again,
use it also here where Bub sits.
Very gently, I add some more depth.
I showed you earlier how to do that.
Here on this area,
I have almost nothing to do as it's black already.
Behind this one here; a little indication.
And of course, to not make Stephen end so abrupt
behind this blue hand, but to create some transition as the darkness basically
"swallows" him from the down. That works much better.
Let's see the general view once more.
I'll lower the opacity a bit
and will also use a soft eraser
to delete some areas
where I think the shadow is too massive.
But it's really just minor adjustments.
To not make those folks look too pale, I enter my "foreground" layer again.
That's the one with the layer mode set to "color".
And I use a soft brush
to add more colored light sources.
I chose green again.
Because as I said, I orientate myself on colors that are already included in my painting.
There's already some green there.
And from the right side, I utilize purple again.
Just as I have it in the background.
Looks kinda good already.
I would even say, from the drawing aspects, that the image is finished!
However, in my last video
I will show you some tricks
to get even more out of this image.
Until then!