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Tutorial: George Romero Zombie Trilogy Collage
Part I: Outlines & Basic colors
Hey everybody,
I'm Tobias from zeichenblick.de
and todays tutorial
is about a motive I created
for the zombie trilogy of George Romero.
Well, at the time when it still was a trilogy.
I started with a pencil sketch
which I scanned.
As you can see, we have motives from Night,
Dawn and Day of the Dead.
And... well, this sketch is already pretty detailed.
Which gives me enough information so that I know in which direction I want to go with it.
I already retraced my outlines in photoshop.
You can see them here.
Pretty simple, I use a so-called "inking brush"
which is a custom creation: 4 pixels,
hardness 100%, opacity & flow also 100%
and in the brush settings
I set the size jitter to "pen pressure".
So when I work with my tablet,
I can easily create gentle lines and hard strokes.
That gives you already some opportunities
to draw up the characteristics, e.g. the eyes.
I created another layer,
in which I filled out all the black areas.
Same brush, just different size.
This gives some kind of comic look to the image.
For me, this is the starting basis
to add the first few color tones to the image.
For that, I create a new layer, called "background color".
And I start pretty simple with a plain-colored brush
to fill out the regions.
I chose a light purple tone. Because I don't plan
to color the figures realistic. Instead,
I have something in mind in the style of
movie posters in the 60s & 70s.
They often had flashy colors, etc.
You can see, I use the outline layer on top
to gear myself on the contours.
I'll speed that up a little bit now.
I do the same for the zombies in the foreground, here I chose a light blue.
I want to point out
that all those different elements
all lay on separate layers.
Meaning: 1 Layer only with blue for the foreground,
1 layer in purple, that's the background
and between that, 2 other layers:
One in orange for Stephen, that's the zombie on the right,
and one for Bub, which you can see on the left, in green.
I had to redo some areas here,
where I used too much green. I had to
erase the color and paint the area on the background layer.
Now, I'll clean up my layer palette a bit.
I combined the outlines & black areas into one layer.
And I copy it so that I have 4 versions of it.
I create a new layer group called "night",
of course, for "Night of the living dead",
which includes the purple layer of the girl in the back.
In this group, I want the purple layer
and on top of it, as clipping mask, as you see here,
the outlines. So that they are all together.
Again, I create another group
for Stephen. I basically work from the back to the front.
He also gets a copy of the outlines on top.
Next one is Bub.
He also gets his own group.
With a clipping mask for the outlines as well.
And last, another group for the foreground.
Here I include my blue zombies with the last copy of the outline layer as clipping mask.
So.
I see, I still have one outline layer on the down
but it's missing some black. Which is why
I create another layer beneath it.
I call it "black".
Here, by hand,
I fill in the missing black areas.
Should maybe use a bigger brush... yepp.
Like this.
And now I have a pretty nice pop art motive.
One general hint:
Never forget to save! You never know what'll happen!
When I look at it, there is something I don't like:
This orange lower right corner.
Which is why I will use the lasso tool
to simply cut out that part on the orange layer.
If I look at the whole image, it just looks better that way.
Since I have created separate groups for every object,
I can work very comfortable on every single one of them.
For instance, in the "night" group, I create
a new clipping mask layer for the details.
It lays under the outline cut mask but over the basic color layer, of course.
With the pipette tool,
I take one darker and one lighter color tone
than the one I already have on this purple layer.
I will use a very soft brush now.
So: hardness: 0%. I also lower the density and flow a bit.
And in the brush settings,
I go to "other dynamics", "opacity jitter" set to pen pressure.
This one's a bit too large, this one looks fine.
When I start to work with the darker tone here
you can see how I try to create some shadings.
I'm still experimenting a bit which opacity setting works best.
I think a darker color might also work better.
Yeah, looks better already.
And that's the way I will work around all the contours.
For the chin area, I will use a slightly finer brush.
Or here on the mouth.
It's not so much about drawing up the details yet.
It's more about giving a rough idea
of where there is more light or shadow,
to shape things a bit more plastically.
Later, when I really want to draw in the details, this will become a big help to me.
So.
I now use the lighter color tone.
Simply to raise the contrast of the image,
to show where I have more light and more dark areas.
And I do exactly the same in the group which I created for Stephen.
It's the exact same brush that I use, the same settings.
The only difference is that with the pipette, I chose a darker orange tone
which slightly descends into brown.
And the brighter tone has a light yellowness.
But that arises out of the base color. I always try to choose some sort of middle tone.
And for Bub, the same in green.
He also gets his highlights and
shady parts to his mix.
And for me, this is what makes the base
to later carry out the "real" coloring.
It's also the reason why I created separate groups with clipping masks,
because that way, when I add the colors,
I can focus on working out the shadings
without having to worry of drawing out of the borders.
Because the clipping mask, in what you see right now,
is set for the foreground layer which contains only the blue color
which means I'm not able to overcross, as long as I work within a cut mask.
And that makes work definitely easier for me.
Well, clipping masks are really a good thing.
I like clipping masks a lot.
I would even go as far to say:
I love clipping masks.
Seriously though: Clipping masks offer you a lot of opportunities.
Let's look at the image so far. It already gives a nice idea of depth.
And if you look at the layer palette, here:
This is the color layer.
And these are the outlines.
It's really just those 2 clipping masks over one solid colored layer.
Per group, that is.
Let's save again, you never know what will happen!
And that's it so far.
I now zoom in on the image
because I noticed that Bub has a green area here.
I erase that. And I do that only on the plain green layer.
Because all the clipping masks disappear automatically, I don't need to bother with them.
I do this because I noticed that in fact,
since there is this purple zombie girl in the background,
one would normally see here on this space between hand and head,
not green but purple. Therefor, I delete this part.
So, careful on the corner...
It's also important for me to show you in real time speed.
And now, I enter into the "night" layer.
I deactived both clipping masks so I only see the base color.
And with this one, I draw on the same layer...
Oops, the opacity needs to be set higher, of course.
Also have to deactivate the jitter again.
Like I said, I fill in the whole thing with plain purple.
You can see the impression it gives already.
And, now I will...
Whoops, that was too close.
Now I will pick again...
the brush I used when drawing the shades.
The soft brush.
And I will enter with the darker tone, because
Bub causes a little shadow towards the girl in the background.
By designing this a little darker, it also gives a little more depth.
And I save again, because you can never know what's happening!