Baugasm™ Series #7 - Design an abstract poster with liquid effect in Photoshop

1. Introduction: Hi everyone. My name is Vasjen Katro. I'm a graphic and web designer. One year ago I started a project called Baugasm where I challenged myself to design a poster for one year and I've been also sharing a few classes here in Skillshare on how I make those posters. Today I designed the poster, day 364, basically is one more day to go and finish the whole project. I wanted to share with you these pretty cool technique where I have created these abstract shapes and abstract gradients and we're going to be working mostly on Adobe Photoshop, but also jumping for few small things in Adobe Illustrator. But yeah, on this class you're going to see how to make all of these posters. Basically, the middle one, the big one, is going to be the one that we're going to start doing from the beginning to the end. But with the same technique, you can apply it and create similar posters like the other ones. So I'm really excited sharing this with you and I'm really excited also to get your feedback and to see what you're going to end up doing. So make sure you see the next videos. I hope you're going to learn how to make some pretty cool stuff like these ones. See you on the next video. Bye. 2. Photoshop gradients: Hey, thanks for joining the class and today we have some really exciting technique for all of you that are new to this Baugasm series. Baugasm means project I started exactly one year ago where I decided to challenge myself and create a poster everyday for almost one year. This class is one of the series and basically today I'm going to show you how you can create some abstract shapes and gradients, and we're going to be working basically and mostly on Photoshop, but I'm going to show you also something on Adobe Illustrator where you can generate some gradients. But basically most of the work is going to be down on Adobe Photoshop. What are we going to do today is something similar to these, like this is yesterday poster, and then this one. I used the technique to create this one, and that one and a few more, also this one. Many of you have asked how I create these. Basically, there is a simple technique how to do that, but the technique is simple but the process and creating the right image to use that technique, it's complicated, and it's more like a trial and error. You have to try a few image and see what works and what doesn't. I'm going to go and jump on Adobe Photoshop. Here, I have the template for today's poster, basically as in all my classes. What I'm going to do now, it's totally experimental. I know what technique I'm going to use, but I don't know how the process is going to end up being in the end of this class. I'm going to do different experiments. I'm going to play with different stuff, so basically you're going to go through the whole journey of every day, how I design the posters. Let's get started. As you can see here on the right, I have a group with this template I use in all the posters and then there is a layer with a color which is the background. I have the background, maybe in this color. Maybe I'm going to make it a little bit darker blue. The idea is that we have to create some experimental gradients. Actually, my first class here in Skillshare is talking about creating some offset gradients in Adobe Illustrator. After this video, I'm going to show you how to make that quickly on Adobe Illustrator again, so that is like a bonus extra technique for this tutorial, but now I'm going to try to experiment and create something in Adobe Photoshop. Let's see what we can end up doing. My focus is going to be on the colors that I really like, which is blue, purple, red, maybe some turquoise, some yellow, maybe I'm going to play also a little bit with red and the orange and yellow. I don't know. It's going to give a fire effect, but also like blue and stuff like that. Let's give it a try and start by making a new layer, Command Shift N, Control Shift N on Windows. Let's make sure that you see those keyboards. Let me try again. Command Shift N. There it is. We have the new layer right here, and what I'm going to do is going to go and grab the Brush Tool, and I'm going to make the Brush Tool feathered one. Select one of those and then you can see the black, I don't know, like stripe on the bottom of the screen where you're going to see the shortcuts that I'm pressing. I will not say all the time those. You can see them below. I just grabbed the brush and now I'm going to select the color. I'm going to go with a blue. I'm going to start with the blue and also keep in mind that I'm going to try a few gradients and have them in different layers because when I'm going to try the technique to create that offset background, sometimes you have to go with different colors. In some of the layers, it's going to dominate the red, in some, it's going to dominate the blue and the purple. We have to have that. But in this case, I'm starting with a new layer and I'm just going to draw with some blue in here. I'm going to maybe grab some more into purple and add some here. Again, let's make it a bit brighter purple. Maybe I'm going to go with the red but I'm more in red into the orange. These are the colors that I'm selecting, you can choose whatever you want, I guess. I'm choosing these colors because they really go well together in way. I'm just going to add minimal part of that turquoise, yellow, blue color and maybe I will add some orange somewhere here and maybe some yellow partly there, and this is the first layer. I'm going to create a new layer. I'm going to hide that and now I'm going to create a different gradient. Maybe this time I'm going to make it with primary color, it's going to be, let's say red. Paint it with this big red and then let's grab some orange, and maybe add some blue or into purple, somewhat there. I have that in different layer. Let's create a new layer, and now I'm going to make a few purple lines like that and maybe some purple in here, maybe some dark blue somewhere there, and maybe some different blue. I want these to look more like organic than more like gradient smooth and all these colors are mixed together. That's why I'm trying to create as many variations of the same color family, let's call it. I'm going to add maybe some dark red in there and maybe yellow just a little bit here. We have these three layers with all these shapes. We can use all three or maybe separate. Well, I'm going to use maybe only this one. I don't know. I'm just experimenting here, but I know what I'm going to do. In this case, I'm just going to maybe duplicate. Let's see how this all merge in a way together. I think I'm going to duplicate the Layer 2, Command J, and then I'm going to right-click and go warp, and maybe do some warping like these, and let's see how that looks. Also, I had a flu and my voice might sound weird. But you have to forgive me about like that. I can't do anything. I'm going to leave also this one in here because it looks good, and this was like a different technique that I just showed you. You could do that and create this stuff. Let's get rid of these. These looks pretty cool actually. If you make this big, this looks pretty nice, but I'm going to still use maybe these one and duplicate it, and then create a Warp Tool again and maybe play a little bit more with that, create something similar. Computer is working like crazy. I don't know if you can hear the noise of the computer. I'm really sorry if that's annoying. It's an old MacBook, so I can't do anything about it right now. This doesn't look that good actually, but I'm just going to keep it here. I'm going to make it a little bit smaller and bring it here. I'm just going quick on this. I hope that you know the basics of Photoshop like Command T, is free transform and just making it smaller. I'm sorry, I'm trying to be as quick as possible with that. I'm going to grab the Eraser Tool and I'm going to delete some part of this. Let's do it with this. I'm just going to leave it here. I have all of these in different layers and we're going to try basically all of them and see how they look. On these video, I showed you how you can create these gradients in Adobe Photoshop and how you can play with the Brush Tool and create these weird-looking mesh gradients. I don't know how to call them. But on the next video, I'm going to show you how you can do basically the same in Adobe Illustrator, and then we're going to jump back in Adobe Photoshop where we're going to create something pretty cool, which is making that liquid shape and maybe then add a few more stuff. This is going to be today's poster. I have to finish it, then maybe add more elements to it. It's going to be cool. See you on the next video. 3. Gradients in Illustrator: Hey, welcome back. So on the previous video, I showed you how we can create a upstart Guardian on Adobe Photoshop. Now I'm going to show you how you can create something similar on Adobe Illustrator. Basically, I have a full tutorial on how to do that. It's here, you can go on Skillshare, and check it out on Baugasm series number 1, it's the first class I did. But I'm just going to go quickly on Adobe Illustrator and create something similar. So I'm just drawing a rectangle. I'm going to remove the stroke and maybe make it dark. All right, let's see if we are on RGB. No, we are not. I'm going to make it darker. Now I'm going to choose the mash tool and add a few random parts. So I'm going to select these with a and make them blue with a, from keyword select these. Make them like that. Maybe some of these here, we're going to make them red. Maybe here we're going to make them orange. Let's add a few more by selecting this one anchor point, this one, this one, this anchor point, and that one, and maybe this one. Let's make them more into purplish blue, all right. So this one here, let's make it like that, maybe let's add one more tool keys somewhere here. All right, and maybe we're going to need to add some more red. Maybe these here and maybe some here. I'm just going quick on these because if you want to learn how to do these, you can go and check that tutorial. But for this case, I'm just showing you a quick way, for those of you that want to experiment more, and maybe because I want to use this on this final product. So I have this one. The way I did this is pretty simple. I don't know if you follow or not, but I just created a rectangle with one color, then I selected the mash tool. With a mash tool, you just click on that rectangle and you add some anchor points. To each anchor point, you can add a different color. Something cool you can do with this right now is that, maybe I'm going to do that so I can use a data. If you go right here on Adobe Illustrator, right-click and you go maybe with a wrinkle tool, and you make the brush with Alt and Shift and then drug there. You can actually create this cool effect in Adobe Illustrator. This is something really nice, but I'm telling you Adobe Illustrator doesn't like this too much. So if you keep doing this for a very long time, it's going to be very slow and you can already hear the noise of my computer, it's going crazy. I'm just going to copy this and then maybe go back to this one and paste it again, the one I copied. I have two copies of these in case I don't want to use the other one. Actually in this one, you can even come right here and have the twill tool, and you can create some crazy mash-ups like that. I'm going to keep this one and then open this one in Photoshop. I like it, how it came up. All right, so on the next video, I'm going to show you how to create that abstract effect in Adobe Photoshop. So this was the Illustrator. I showed you different techniques on how to create this gradient. So see you on the next video. 4. Designing the poster: Hey, welcome back. Here, I'm on Adobe Photoshop. Previously, if you remember, we did these gradients using the brush tool on Adobe Photoshop. Basically, the technique I'm going to use, and the one that you all came here, I guess, is a pretty simple one, it's been on Adobe Photoshop for very long time that I can remember, but it's pretty cool when used properly and you can experiment with it and create anything. Something I have to say is that this technique is pretty simple. You have actually to play a lot in order to get it right. That's why I created so many layers and that's why I have so many options to play one. So if I don't like this one, I can play with the other one or I can edit this and change it later on, and so on and so on. The technique is called Liquify, pretty much I guess you all know it, but I also knew it. I used it for different purpose, so when it came to design, I was like, "Oh, maybe I could use this technique and create some really cool stuff." I have the layer selected, layer 1, and I have this gradient which was on layer 1. Here on Liquify, you have many options, but in this case, I'm going to use the Forward Warp tool and Twirl Clockwise tool. Well, I didn't know the name until now, but all right. I'm going to use this one. Also, keep in mind that you have to have all these options here, 100, density, rate, and pressure to 100, and size, depending on the size of your document, just look at this brush I have right now, maybe around this size. What I'm going to do now with the twirl, was it called? Yeah, it was twirl. With the Twirl tool, I'm just going to apply it over, and this is just going to scatter around the whole thing and make it more liquefied and abstract. Let's try that. More I keep it like this, the more it's spreading the whole thing. Keep in mind that more you play with this, more it's going to lose its details. So I'm just not going to play that much with it, I'm maybe going to stuck somewhere here, and maybe behind. Keep in mind that you also have reconstruct, that you can press that, and then if you play around with this, it goes back to what you had before. You see, you can even do that. I'm just going to go somewhere here and click Okay. Let's see how this looks here. It's look pretty good in a way, but I'm not sure if I want to use this. Let's grab the other one, which was this one. Let's do the same thing to this, Liquify and get the Swirl tool, and Let's see what this can create. I am just keeping it pressed, and it's making these shapes automatically generated. I think here is okay. I don't want to over-exaggerate with this. Maybe it was good if I would have copied that and made a different copy, but I don't like that on background. This came really nice in a way. I'm just going to keep this one in here, and maybe I'm going to play a little bit with this one. I'm going to go again to Liquify, and then just play around a little bit with this tool. Let's leave it here. Well, I'm not pretty sure. This looks really nice, and I think what really works with this technique is having sharp edges, meaning that, let's go back for a moment, you see, this before, had these sharp edges. So when you edit in Liquify, it creates sharp edges as well. If it is a smooth gradient, it keeps it smooth. Depends on how you like it, but for me, this works best and looks better. But I'm really curious to see the gradients I used in Adobe Illustrator. I'm just going to go on Illustrator and grab this. I'm going to use this one because it has sharp edges, and let's see how that looks with some liquify effect. I'm just going to add it in here. It's taking a few. I don't remember if I added a Vector Smart Object or just pixel, but I think if I edit as a smart object, we're going to rasterize it and have it just pixel. I'm sorry, this takes sometimes long because I use really big format for the posters, and I make sure that those are big files because I need also to print them in the end. In case you are doing this and you want to have it for print, I highly recommend that you have a higher resolution and also a big file so you can print it later on and still it's going to look good. This is taking longer than I thought. I'm going to skip here and come back to when it finishes. Sorry for keeping you waiting, here it is. I edited as a smart object, that was bad, so I'm just going to rasterize and have it all pixel. I'm going to go to Filter and Liquify. Basically, I'm going to apply the same thing to this. Let's see how this looks like. I am just going to take a bit of this orange here because I really like it. Maybe I'm just going to go back to this and grab only this part here. Command J, then delete this layer, keep this one. Maybe just play with this one. Let's see what we can do. Also, keep in mind that you can use this tool, let's make it big, and that you can drag things around like that, if you want to extend the orange more or one part of it. Then you can go back and grab the other tool and just add this twill effect and so on. I don't like that purple that much or the brown effect that it got in some parts, but yeah, I'm just maybe going to stick with it here. Let's see how it looks with a dark background. Maybe I'm just going to make it a little bit bigger, bring it somewhere here, and let's make a circle. I'm creating a new layer. Right click, make a circle, and keep it in the middle somewhere here, and then I'm going to create a mask of that on top of the circle. Let's make the circle the same color as the background. Let's drag this and see where it fits best. Maybe somewhere here. I don't know, but let's see how this fits with the other one that we liked. I like only this one we got, but as I mentioned before, the whole process of this, it's like basically, you have to try different stuff and see what works and what doesn't, and try different elements. In this case, it couldn't even be something that you generated as a gradient and made it. It could even be something else that you have designed previously and use it. For example, I'm just going to go on the graphic pack. If I find it, I think I have it somewhere. Graphic pack. You can grab some of this stuff for free, but also, you can purchase and get a few of these elements. I'm just going to go on maybe gradient shapes. Let's see what we have here. This one, this one, maybe this one, let's try this one. This is a PSD file. Let's see how. Select all, copy, and I'm going to go and come here, and then go liquefy and do the same thing to this one as well. Let's see what we can create with this. It's more like you get an image, you add it here. If you like it, then you keep it. Otherwise, try something else. Don't get stuck with it. I don't like this as well. I'm going to go maybe to the same folder, but let's get this abstract. No. I don't remember where. I think it's painting. I have a few stuff here. Maybe some of this. I'm going to just drag it here. Make it smaller. I'm just going to rasterize it. Filter, liquefy, and we're going to apply the same thing. Let's see what we can create. This is cool actually. Come on. Depends where you want to stop, where you like it, and just stop there. Maybe I'm going to select some of these part here and crop it, but let's see how that looks like with the other part of the background. I'm just going to zoom this up, and make it bigger, and just bring some part of it here. I'm not sure. I'm still not really sure if this is the right one, but I'm maybe going to select some of this and have it as a separate object. Duplicate. Let's see how long that looks. Looks not that bad, but I really do like this one, what I created here. What basically I'm going to do right now is I'm going to duplicate this, bring it here, and then go to liquefy again, and I'm going to double liquefy this, in order to get some different shape from what I have. Maybe this is good. Let's see. Maybe just not that much. Maybe make it bigger. Maybe I'm going to add it on the background. Let's see how it fits with the other part. Just grab some of it here, duplicate. Let's see if it makes it. I like where this is going. I hope you understood something on the liquefy. You can go and play around with whatever you want, but this is basically the technique. This is basically what you can do and you can even use different images and create your own stuff like not exactly the gradients that are used. You can even get an image from the Internet or something that you really like, of a flower or something, and just do the liquefy effect, and it's going to look good. You have to play with it. As you saw, you have to play a lot with the liquefy effect and you have to create different gradients, I guess, different shapes, until you get to the point that you are like, "This is pretty cool and I really like this one." In my case, I'm still not happy with it. I'm going to play a little bit more, but let's see on the next video where I'm going to add some more stuff to this poster and get it as much as finished as possible. See you on the next video. 5. Adding more stuff: Hey, welcome back. Previously we touched some of really important stuff in Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, and again, a really unique tool on Adobe Photoshop, the Liquify. Basically we ended up doing this one. We have a few layers in here, actually, they're not that bad. They are really good. I like some of them. But definitely I would have to play more with this and create some stuff. The reason why I'm recording this and the reason why I'm making this class is basically to show you the whole process of how I go and create the posters as well. But the same time, I want to show you a few techniques that you can play around and create your own unique stuff. I highly encourage you to use the technique and the tool, but come up with something of your own and something that you really feel and give your own touch to it. In this case, I like these. I think this is more into the style I have. Maybe in stuff that I've been designing for the past year for the biogas project. I like this and I'm going to stick with this. But basically this is nearly done, but I think it needs a few more stuff. I'm going to go into right now and create and add a few more elements to the whole thing. Maybe I'm going to change a little bit of the background may get a bit purple more into this purple, but slightly darker. We still have that sharp edge around here. But again, maybe I'm going to change also the color of text and have it may be white. Maybe not. Maybe going to leave it here and make that background just a little bit darker over here. Let's try this again. Let's leave it white for now. Maybe I'm going to add a background, creating new layer and let's add a rectangle. I want to try also like a white background to it, but let's see how it looks. Let's see the white background. I don't know. I like this text. I like also this one, but I think it needs maybe somewhere here. It goes to the edge of it. Maybe have that dark purple we had, purple blue in the beginning. I like this. But let's bring it down to the edge so it feels more like a square somewhere there and make it wider here. In another class, I also have showed you these technique where using the brush, you can make the brush big, and go to normal, dissolve and select the color you want. In this case, I'm going to select these purple here. Then you can just draw like that. But then you can grab these tool and then select part of it. Then delete that part and keep the one. I'm going to bring these on top of that, maybe just here and see how. I like this. Fades that white in some parts. Maybe, let's give a gradient into this. Let's get the gradient from purple to maybe some red. Let's see how that looks like. It's not that bad. I'm just going to leave it somewhere here. That purple looks too much I think on the background. Liked it here where it was before. I'm going to leave it here and change this one to that color. I'm sorry. I don't know if you're interested on doing this and seeing the whole thing right now. But basically, what I had to show you, I already did, but I'm still playing with this. I still think it's important for all of you to watch this because this is a process I go every day while doing the posters. I think it's really important that you see this if it is of any interest of you. It's difficult to come up with the final thing. But you have to play until you get to the point that you are happy with it. I'm just going to keep playing with this and see what I can do. Matching of this two colors right now. I think what it needs is like a different color just to be there in order to create some, I don't know, like contrast in way. Maybe we can add some smaller. I created a new layer. Just going to make the brush really small like five, let's say. I'm going to get the white and maybe draw some lines somewhere. Maybe make it a little bit smaller. I'm just going to draw some lines around here. I do this quite often with the lines. I don't know if you're bored seeing these. But I like to have these small dots around the poster it gives more like a space filling and there's noise and grain to it. This comes from the love of grain I have from photography. But it's that dust that sticks on the posters usually and I like that. You know what is pretty cool, because you can even liquify this one. If you have everything in one layer, you can go to filter then liquify and then you can't see nothing, but just maybe play a little bit around. Maybe later you're going to see something. Let's see what we did. We created these weird shapes. But I like them because they feel like they're part of the design right now. That's what I wanted. Maybe there is also an element, a symmetric element needed to it, I'm not pretty sure, but usually I go with just a straight line or diagonal line. Maybe this is too small. I'm going to make it a little bit bigger, maybe five pixels. Let's see how that looks. But maybe change the color. I'm not pretty not sure if that's the right one. Maybe somewhere let's make it red and see how that looks like. Purple not red. I'm just going to go back. Something else you can do is you can even add typography to this and play around. But basically, I'm going to stop right now here because I don't want to make this tutorial even more boring. This class has been quite long now. I think the part that I wanted really to show you, the technique I already did. I'm really excited to see what you guys going to end up doing. I am going to end up these video here. But on the next video I'm just going to play a little bit more around with this because I'm not totally happy, but I don't want to waste your time. On the next video, I'm just going to explain you and show you what I did. Thanks for following, and see you on the next video, and let's wrap this up. 6. Finalizing : Hey. Welcome back. As you can see, this is the final thing I did. I added some text to it, I like the typography mixed with this liquefied effect. I think it goes pretty good together. I don't know what you think. I pretty much like it. I know that there could be some more work added to it. Probably I'm going to retouch it a bit later and add some more stuff to it, but I'm really happy with it. I hope that you learn something. I hope that you learn the technique, and I'm really excited to see what you're going to end up doing. As always, I really encourage you to try different stuff, use the techniques, maybe even combined the whole classes I have and create your own stuff and come up with something unique. I also want to see what you want to learn and maybe I'm really planning to continue doing some more classes. So I'm really curious to see what you want to learn. Maybe you can go on one of my posters I have on Instagram and select that and tell me which one you like to make a tutorial next. I also highly encourage you to submit your projects here so we can also altogether talk and give you some feedback, and maybe talking about it just makes it better, and you can even learn or even if you are stuck on something, just let me know. Like you can add a comment and stuff like that. So this was fun. I really enjoyed this hour doing these. I don't know how long it has been, but yeah, I hope you learned something and I'm really curious to see you what you're going to do. So see you on the next class. Thank you.