The Doll Forum

OK, here we go again. I was attempting to simulate the art of "The Simpsons" from one of my photoshop books, when I stumbled upon a technique for pop art that I thought looked pretty good. So, I thought I'd share it here. First, I began with this image of Candy with her new Do. Using the new layer icon at the bottom of the layers pallette, I make two new blank layers and fill the middle one with white, (Ctrl/Delete, with the default colors selected). Then click the eye icon by the white layer to hide it for now Now, using the dreaded pen tool, I made a path down one side of Candy's image, then I held down the Ctrl key and clicked anywhere on the canvas so I can start a new path without losing the one I just created,(note, the pen tool needs to set on paths, and add selection on the tool settings bar at the top). You can turn the visibility of the white layer on to check your progress as you go. Now I made paths for all the edges I want in the final image, making sure to connect up the paths so there aren't any gaps, this is important for when you get to the coloring phase. When you think you have all the lines you need, turn the visibility of the white layer back on, I will do the nose and the pupils of her eyes later using a slightly different technique. Grab your brush tool,(B), select a hard round brush about 5 pixels in size, with the line art layer selected, press Enter, to make a stroke on all the paths in the image. Grab the pen tool, right click and select delete path. Grab your brush tool, and in the brush settings window, set the brush tip shape as shown Then set the shape dynamics as shown Hide the top two layers for now, and using the pen tool, make a path along the shaded side of the nose, repeat this process for the bottom of the nose, and the nostrils, Ctrl/Click each seperate path to keep them apart, then right click on the canvas and select stroke path, make sure the simulate pressure box is checked and black is your foreground color Right click, and select delete path after you make the stroke. Hide the white layer and zoom in close to the eyes, grab the eliptical marquee tool, (M, hold shift/M to toggle between the rectangle and the eliptical), place the cursor over the center of the pupil and hold Shift/Alt and draw out from the center until you match the size of the pupil. With black as the foreground color, press Alt/Delete to fill the selection with black, press Ctrl/D to deselect. Repeat this process for the other pupil Un-hide the white layer, now we're ready to start the coloring Press Ctrl/E to merge the top two layers, then make a new layer above the background layer and fill it with a bright blue color,(no reason, just 'cause). Grab the magic wand tool, (W), this is where it's important to not have any gaps in the line art as the magic wand would select areas you don't want otherwise, click in the area outside the main image, press delete to reveal the blue background Make a new layer and name it something like skin, select your skin color, (I usually hide the two layers above the background and use the eyedropper tool, (I) and take a sample of the doll's actual skin color), select the line art layer, grab the magic wand again, set to add selection, (up in the tools settings bar up top again), and click in the areas of skin. Then Click Alt/Delete to fill the selected areas with the skin color. Click Ctrl/D to deselect Repeat this process for all the different colors in the image, (it's not neccessary to make a new layer for each color, I just find it easier to touch up if I need to), the eyebrows and eyeshadow areas I just fill with black. Once I've filled all the colors, I selected all the layers except the bottom two by clicking the top one, holding the Shift key, and selecting the layer above the blue layer and clicking Ctrl/E to merge them into a single layer which I named Art. Now, I want to make some shadows to give the image some depth. Make a new layer, and name it shadows or something. Grab the pen tool again and make a series of closed paths. Right click the pen tool on the canvas and select fill path, set the opacity at around 20%, (you can vary that setting to make the shadows deeper or lighter as needed. Right Click, and select delete path when you're finished. I made a series of random shapes on the hair, and some on the dress and along some of the edges and under her chin then ran a gradient on the blue layer, and threw in the half tone effect like the previous tutorial to get this final result. Well, there it is, Hope it's something someone can use. Thanks for your time, B~M

That's very cool B-M how long did that take you to you?

Dollarhyde wrote:That's very cool B-M how long did that take you to you?

Couldn't say with that one as I had to copy the screen on every step to make the tutorial, so, it took quite a long time. So in an effort to answer your question, I ran one this morning to see how long it would take. This image took me about 35 minutes to pull off: To be fair though, the original pic I used for this one doesn't have a lot of small details so the edges I needed to trace where minimal. The amount of time needed is going be determined somewhat by that variable. The key here of course, is learning to use the pen tool, which is tricky.

Well what took you 35 minutes probably would have taken several hours for me... great job

I've been struggling with tryin' to come up with a way to capture semi transparent materials, (who's girls like to wear that huh? ), so I have been experimentin' with different techniques for that. Here are a few examples of my attempts, First, here's Rojo's Jamie as she appeared in a recent "Living Dolls" adventure: Then, I fiddled around with tryin' to capture sheer colored fabric, here's Candy in her pink peek-a-boo: And, here's one of Chloe in her black lace disgrace I did this evening: It' a work in progress, and I'll probably tinker with it some more later, just thought I'd throw what I have so far atcha to see how I'm doing. Thank's for listening, B~M

Way beyond me, I didn't even understand the terms used in your lesson, I assume it's directed it at the folks who already know the advanced features of whatever photo program you're using.

I think I'll just sit back and enjoy your efforts.

All wonderful; thanks! But this is my favorite...

hanuman37 wrote:All wonderful; thanks! But this is my favorite...

That one's my fav too Han. Here I tried to capture more of the semi transparencies and other details in the nightie she's wearing. Like I said, it's a work in progress

I borrowed Candy to test a pseudo halftone convertor I'm working on in Blender.. Came out pretty nice

Excellent work; thanks for sharing!

Fusen Shinro wrote:I borrowed Candy to test a pseudo halftone convertor I'm working on in Blender.. Came out pretty nice

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Yes Indeed it did! An interesting effect. I too have Blender, but was never able to get anywhere with it, (even bought a "Dummies" book). Here's one of that pic of Candy I did this evening using a technique I developed myself in Photoshop using components from other techniques I got out of books and internet tutorials that I combined to come up with the method I now use in the Cover Doll comic feature Kharn and I produce.

b-man wrote:Yes Indeed it did! An interesting effect. I too have Blender, but was never able to get anywhere with it, (even bought a "Dummies" book). Here's one of that pic of Candy I did this evening using a technique I developed myself in Photoshop using components from other techniques I got out of books and internet tutorials that I combined to come up with the method I now use in the Cover Doll comic feature Kharn and I produce.

Yeah, an automated process like this is never going to match hand tweaked stuff. It does however have the advantage of only having 10 controls (well at least until I think of another way to improve it!). Speaking of which, I've improved the black cut off so it adds a slight blur to smooth the edges and lets you mix a variable amount of the original shade back in rather than having to be solid black.
So now I can go from this: To this in less than a minute Basically everything works by adjusting the V channel in HSV colour space. The level controls just set the point at which the V value is replaced with the dot patterns. I'm using features that aren't in a released version of Blender yet though - it's a nightly build from about a week ago..
Blender is one of those apps you have to learn to use though, it's not one to just play around pressing buttons to see what happens.

Hi. I really like the pseudo halftone convertor you are working on in Blender.
Also, in Photoshop Elements I like using the posterize filter, poster edges filter and watercolor filter. They are fairly easy to use and can create good effects.
When I first started using the Photoshop Elements filters, I was using Tiff images and most of the filters would not work! I discovered I needed to convert the Tiff images from 16 bit to 8 bit in order for Photoshop Elements to allow me to use all the filters. I could not work out how to do this in Photoshop Elements, but it was easy for me to convert them with the Nikon Capture NX2 program I am familiar with. With this program, I just had to resave the image with the 'Save As' command to select the 8 bit option. I hope this is of any use to people who are having the same problem I had.