Realistic Character Design - Photo Manipulation, Concept Art, Photoshop Tools and Digital Cosplay

1. Introduction to Realistic Concept Art: no way realistic. All photographic concept art is a technique that, as the name suggests, tries to get a sense off realism to character creation. And it's done mostly through photo manipulation, taking elements off costume, clothing, texture and fabric from various image sources and gluing them all together. If you're working on a film or TV pitch, may be working in the fashion industry, looking to get an idea of how a future cons play design might look. This technique is a style of concept art that stands out from the rest. Traditional illustration work is able to capture costume design, of course, but it's still going to be limited by its two dimensionality. This technique pushes things to a place that is far more believable, giving clients the ability to have a better visual representation of the character or characters they want to bring the life. It's a type of style that requires not only a different approach to design. It also requires a certain level off patience and persistence. It's not a case of just layering in brush strokes. We've got to learn how to manipulate photographic pieces and make them work for us. So this tutorial is going to cover. The basic tools will be using an out software, some principles of art and design. How to search for the right image is what I thought process has to be. And finally, we'll cover a project I created from start to finish, bringing to life a to D illustrated character into a three D world. This is a technique that is going to take some time to develop, so if you're up for the challenge, let's get started. 2. Basic Tools: So let's start going over the basic tools. Now. I'm going to be using affinity photo for this particular project. But if you're using Photoshopped, the same tools are going to be there as well. They're just going to be in slightly different locations for a couple of them. But everything that we're using here in this software is going to be available in Photoshopped as well. So if you're new to photo shop or affinity photo, this is going to work regardless of which program you're using. If you're already familiar with the software, then by all means, feel free to skip over this part of the lecture. But let's just take a look now at the basic tools that we're going to be using for this project. Okay, the first tool that we have is simply the move tour. It's pretty straightforward. It moves things around. If you select your layout, you can use that tool to move things around and position them however you need to. So whenever you paste in a new image rate new part of an image, it will create its own layer, and you can then move that layer around. However, you need to with that tool, so pretty simple so far. But what if we want to move these layers around? What if we pasted something in and we want it to be below what we've already got on the screen? So it's pretty straightforward. Well, we have to do is grab that life from the lie a palette and move it below. And the more images that we paste in, the more layers are going to get created and the more things we can move around. So we've got a lot of flexibility without positioning. The next thing, we're going to look at his color, so you'll notice in the top right hand corner. We've got this big color wheel here of all the colors in the rainbow and although lights and shades in between so we can either manually pick whatever we need to, or we can use a tool called the eyedropper. The our driver is going to be soupy useful because we can actually pinpoint on a specific pixel on the canvas. So when we select that to weaken, hover about any particular pixel that we won't end, select its color. But calls are not going to be very much use to us without rushes, and we've got an assortment of brushes available to us. Most photo editing programs have an array of brushes for us to choose from and the ability to create our own brushes as well. For what we will be doing, We're going to be sticking to pretty simple brushes here, but you've got a whole range of brushes here available that have all sorts of textures, and you've got all these settings up the top, which l A. To modify them to whatever your needs are. So you've got, of course, the controls for the size of the brush, their the capacity you've got things like how soft and hard you want to make the brushes, that you've got a whole range of options available to you to suit whatever it is you're doing, whether it's editing or just plain old illustration as well. So we got a lot of choices here, So if we create a new life for ourselves and just painting a couple of rough structure, we can see this nice texture brush here. But we're going to be keeping it relatively simple for what we're doing. We don't need anything that's too heavily textured, so the next tool is the last suitable, and this is going to be very useful for helping us cut out particular parts of an image. So if we select this tool here, we will see a couple of options at the top that appear. But we only want the 1st 1 at the moment. If we just draw this around on their screen, what we'll get is a Siris of little fleshy dots that start appearing. This is what's known as a selection. We can either do it free handed, or we've also got the option to do straight lines as well. We've got an additional setting here called Feather, which we will go over in a second. But first, let's just cut out this fear using the less suitable Well, just get around it here, it concedes, bringing up our selection, those flesh adults. And if we cut and paste this, we're going to find that the spear is now on a brain new lie up. So this fear is now on its own individual layout, separate from the other two shapes, but the selection is still there. So what do we do? well, we go to select up the top and de select or simply hit commode or control de on our keyboard. Now we mentioned the feather option a moment ago. So what is that? Well, when feather is set to zero, the selections that we make, I'm going to have a very high edged. If we increase the feathering here, it's actually going to soften the edge. So let's now go around this sphere again with that feathering increased and see what happens, as you can see the part off this fear that we've taken out as a very, very soft edge to it. So let's do an example with the high edge as well. So we sent it down to zero, and we're just cut out. A wage from this sphere is well, and you can see the difference see in the two pieces, so that's outlast suitable Now, the next tool we have is called the filter all along the flood to whichever you prefer, and this is just going to fill an empty layer with color. So at the moment we've got a pretty boring white background. So if we were to create a new lap and select our fill it'll and select a hideously green color. Here we can feel it into my things Look, at least somewhat better. And if we selected the wrong color, we can just simply change it and fill it in again. So again, pretty straightforward. So the next time we have is the eraser tool. And as you can imagine, it raises things. It's pretty straightforward as well. We've got all the same settings that we have with their brushes. We can change the size at the top There, we've got the capacity. You've got the heart of this settings. We can even change the type of a raise up. Aziz. Well, if we go to the brushes pelt that we saw earlier, we can actually change out a razor to match whatever our brushes and thats useful for consistency purposes. So we've got similar options here for a razor that we have without brush. Now, the next option we have is called the pencil. Now the pencil has a couple of different uses within Photoshopped and affinity photo, but we're going to specifically use it for selection purposes. We're gonna consider this a somewhat more advanced version off. L less suitable. It's going to give us far more precision. What we can do is that we can use this pen tool to actually draw around specific shapes and then use that shape to bring up a selection. So whatever shape we create, we just click around and either straight or curved lines and then go all the way back to the beginning and then at the top there will have an option for selection. And as you can see, a selection now resembles the shape that we've just created. So this is super useful. If we want a very specific shape that we have to cut out, raise the tools and the less you tools, they're gonna have the uses. But if we need a very defined shape, this is the tool, the use. The next tool is called the Blur. It'll and as you can imagine again, it does what it's named after. It blows things. So let's take a look at this sphere. We've got a nice shops, fear on the left. Here, let's just blow this thing up and again. We have similar settings to what we have without brushes. We've got out capacities. We've got Ah, hardness. Here we can change the brush again like we can with the Raisa. So it's not gonna be something will use too often. But it's gonna be handy for us. Toe have just in case. Now the next tool that will go that is actually two tools within one. They're called the Dodge and the Burn. Till now, these are tools which can be easily misused and in my opinion, should be used very sparingly. What they do is that they can either lighten or darken the pixels. Often image dodge will lighten the pixels and burn will darken them. So if we choose Dodge first and again, we'll use our sphere. Is the example here. And if we start brushing over the light areas, you can see what happens to the image. Now there are three settings for both of these brushes that target either the mid tones of the image, the highlights or the shadows, and each of those settings are going to give you slightly different results. So if we change the image up here to highlights, it's going to target the brightest areas of the image and make them even brighter. And if we switch it to shadows. It's going to target the darker areas, and the reverse is going to be true for Bird. So if we switch over to buy, it's currently set to talk the midterm. So let's just point over this right now. As you can see, it's really only talking this middle gray areas here. Now we can change the settings as well up here if we want to just target the highlights and make them dark up. Weaken. Do that as well. It's got to be very tempting to use thes tools quite a lot, but we'll go into a bit of detail later as to why we should use them sparingly now. The last two we have is called the Chlorine tool, and this is going to be one of the most useful tools available to us because it's going to be able to copy and paint in areas of an existing image. When you hear about magazines, photo shopping out wrinkles and moles, and things like that from people skin, this is the tool they use. So what you do is that you nominate a specific area off the photograph that you want to duplicate using the old key. And what will happen is that you can now point in that nominated area over the top of your image. So it's very useful for things like skin blemishes and restoring old photographs were going to use it specifically for filling in missing parts of an image. And just like our other tools, we have the options to either soften or harden the brush the same options as some of our other tools. So that's just the run down off the basics that we're going to using for our project. 3. Transform Tools: the next item told to be using are transforming tools. We're going to use Thies to manipulate the shape off the images that we bring into our document. In fact, we've got the mesh tool, which brings up an option that allows us to manipulate our photograph. So if we grab these little boxes here, the corners, we can shift things around and distort things that how we need them. This tool is gonna be great in shifting images to suit a certain form in perspective. We can either minute like the entire liar once we've selected the Mr Or We can use outlast , suitable mask off a portion of our image and manipulate that part only. So if we select this little bit of a corner here of their sphere weekend, mask it off from the rest of the image and then just play around with the shape and form as we need it to. So it's a very powerful tool that's gonna be very hopeful for what we're doing. So that's the option for that tool. In photo now over in photo shop, it's in a little bit of a different area, So if we switch over to photo shop. What we have to do is go to edit, go all the way down to transform and then selectable, and we will get the same options. And just like in photo, we can manipulate things to our desired results. We've also got another way we can do this way if we hit control T or Command T. If you're using a Mac and then look for the little icon right at the top there with a little arch and hit that. So those are two methods for bringing up the walk toe in photo shop Now the other transformation, told that we're going to be using in these two programs, is called the Liquefied. Now, in Final, it's called the liquefy purse seiner. It's got this icon at the top there, and what we'll get is a tool which pushes pixels. Now the default option. There is really the anyone we need to worry about. We've got a whole bunch of other options here on the right hand side. We've got the ability to show the Meshal not we can change the size off the brushes. We can change the hardness capacity. We really don't have to do too much to this, though, because all we really interested in is pushing the pixels. So let's just stop pushing some of these pictures in without sphere, and you might say just how powerful this tool is. We are shaping our forms here in ways that the walked all cart. So it's almost a more sophisticated version off the walk tall. We could make far subtler and far more refined changes in shape than eating the walk. Talking do so that's where it is in photo. Now, if we switch over to photo shop, it's in a slightly different area. If we got to filter will see an option there for liquefy. So if we select that, we will get the same tools. And just like photo, the default is the push option. And, of course, on the right hand side, we've got a variety of different options available to us. We got the brush size, we got the pressure. We got the mesh options as well, so they're pretty much identical in terms off function. So when we start doing a character concepts, these are going to be the two primary tools that we're going to be using for manipulating our images 4. Filters, Adjustments and Blending Modes: Let's discuss filters. Now. Filters are fix that we can apply to our images, and they're very useful and there are a lot of them there available to us. So you might say this option up the top here, inside yourself. Well, that's where I get them filters. I just scroll down to whichever filter I knee and select whichever one I want. So if we select out Gordon Blow here is an example. Yes, we've got controls here over what we can do with this particular image. But the problem being is that once we apply that to the image, it's permanent, and this is not what we want. We want to retain as much control as possible threat out process here. And so we've got an option actually available where we can actually apply filters that don't damage the image that little I can. I just pressed on the last part will bring up an option for a gorge in blood that's going to preserve the image that it's being applied to so I can create my blood effect exactly as I did before. But if you see here in the layers palette now, I can untech that filter and show that the original image has not been harmed. And the beauty is because none of this has been applied to the image. We can go back and make changes to it. So if we go to fellowship will notice there is no option for a live filter. So what we have to do is choose the layer that we want to apply the filter to right click and select Convert to Smart Object. We can then go up to the filters option at the top there and then scroll down to Gordon Blur to bring up its options box. And that's going to apply the same type of life filtering that is in photo. So if we want to make out image, ridiculously blood, weaken, do so and then come back later and change it if need be. And as you can see, the filter is on its own separate layer connected to the original image. So it blows air going to be one of our primary filters that we use. The other one is going to be noise. Noise is going at a little bit of grain, 20 images, and this is actually going to help us blend things together a bit more photographs have a little bit of grain, so noise is going to give us the illusion that we're looking at something that is far more photographic in nature. But it's also something that has to be used in a very careful in salt away. We don't want too much noise in, otherwise it's going to risk ruining the image. But as long as we've got out live filter, see that we can go to any time. We've got a lot more control over how much noise we put into it, and it's going to go for any of these. Other thought is here as well, so those are our filters now. The next thing we have to look at what's called adjustment less adjustment layers are going to act in a very similar weight of filters. They allows to manipulate things like the tone, the color of the saturation levels of the image. So let's look at the 1st 1 that we're going to be using, and that's curves. Curves is going to adjust the light and dark values, as you can see in this little option boxy. We've got these sliders that we can move around and adjust eternal values off the image. We can make things really bright. We can make things a lot darker if we need to. We can go some way in the middle so we can play around with this as much as we need whilst simultaneously preserving the underlying image. Now what you might notice he differently from the live filters is that the curves images actually on its own layer entirely. It's not actually applying itself to our shapes, and we can prove this by putting an hour green background. You can see here. If we turn this on and off. It's affecting everything underneath it and not just the shapes. So in affinity photo, it's quite simple. We just take that layer and drag it on top of that shapes. And as you can see, it's not affecting out green background anymore. So if you only want an adjustment layer to affect a specific part, you have to link it to that layer. Now in federal shop will have a similar icon in the layers palette that will create its own adjustment layer, but we have to attach it differently. So we got a similar adjustment box, as you can see, but I just need to add in a green Becker and here, just to make sure I got something behind shapes. Now, if we try to do what we did in affinity photo with our adjustment lay here, it's not going to work, so we have to link this to the shapes in a different way. What we actually have to do is to select the adjustment layer, hold shift and select the shape layer as well, and then hover your mouse over the line that divides the two and hold bolt until the icon changes and then simply click on the border and you can see how there's now a little arrow in the adjustment layer, saying it's linked to the layer below. And if we need to change things, we just simply click on the little curves icon. So that's the curves adjustment land out. The other adjustment that we're going to be using primarily is the hate. It's L adjustment layer, and this is going to affect the color, the amount of color in the image, as well as the tonal variation off the color as well. So we can shift these levels along here and alter things like the saturation, how much color we want in there, whether or not we wanted to be completely great, we can change the colors. As you can see out, Cuba is completely different to what it was previously, as well as the tonal variation off those colors. And just like before we have to do is drag this on top of the layer that we want to apply it to, and it's ready to go. So there's air at two men. There's now the next thing we have to talk about our mosques, mosques are going to act in a similar way to the adjustment layers and filters and that they're going to protect the image from damage. We apply out razor toe image. We're going to destroy it. There is no way we can get this back unless we click up. Doing that's going to be a real pain for us. So we got this little icon here on air last part that's actually going to protect our image from destruction. This is our masks, so if we apply this to our lion, we can actually erase parts of the image without destroying it. But the best tool for this is actually going to be a brush is not our races. If we change the colors up here in our color palette to be but black and whites, what we gotta find is we're going to be able to paint in and out the image as much as we want. So if we select our mosque later and then change the color to black, what you're going to notice is that we can raise the mask without actually doing any hard to the image. If we turn off the mask here, you'll see that the image is still active underneath. And if we want to bring that shape back, all have to do is switch our brush toe white and paint the mask back in. So they were going to be some things we can erase and some things that we want to keep in. This is going to be a useful tool for that Now. The next thing will cover our blending options, which is going to blend one layer into another. If you see this little cog icon here in the last poet, it will bring up our blending options, and what they actually do is they can remove specific values out of our image and have them blend into the layer below. So I want to get rid of only the dark areas of my shapes. I can adjust the slide is and make that happen and weaken. Do the exact same thing for outline of values as well, and we can also adjust the areas in between two We need to, and if we use the other side, we can actually bring forth a specific tonal value from the layer beneath. We've got regular blending modes that will cover in the second, but these are far more events, tools and it really good for writing purposes. So that's how we do it in photo. But infighter shop, it's a little bit different. We double click belair to bring up the blending options in their layer styles and down below. We have our sliders here, which are going to do a similar thing. The only difference is we actually have to hold ALTs to split out arrow sliders to get a nice, gradual transition from one tone to the next and again, we have options to blend the layer that we're using all blend from the layer below. So there's a quite advanced planning rights. But we have got regular blending minds as well on our layers. So blending laser actually pretty fun because we could get a whole range of really cool results. If we have a look at the top of out last party, he we've got some options available to us. This is normal at the moment is 100%. These are layer modes, so we just got to play around with ease for a little bit. So we will create a new lab and we're going to flood the area with a green collar. Now, if we click on number will get a whole range of options here for stuff we scroll. There were going to get a variety of results from these different learning about it. Some of them are going to affect darker values of the image. Some are going to affect the lighter areas. Some are going to affect areas in between. There's a lot of variety here, and we can actually control. It's a bit more if we feel that a particular blend, but it looks a little too strong. We can actually got to out capacity option and reduced its intensity and were not just confined to fields and textures for these modes. We can literally blend any two images together. So if we want to duplicate the shapes that we've got here and see what we can get with their different values, the same multiply value, you can really start to see just what these blending modes could do. So those are gonna be all the tools and options that we will be using. So let's now move on to the fundamentals off this photo manipulation process. 5. Parts, Form and Positioning: Okay, let's go over a couple of our principles. First and foremost, this is going to help us with the creation off our photo manipulated images. So we're going to be using an awful lot of layers in our process here. And those letters are not only going to have to work as a team to produce the specific areas of costume for a character, they're going to have to sit upon three dimensional forms in order to give the illusion that what we're looking at is realistic. These groups of images that we're going to stitch together and merge in a Frankenstein like Wait, I'm going to be called out parts. These parts are going to represent the major costumes, sections or their character. The hardest part we're going to come across is making these parts look as if that's sitting over three dimensional forms. It's not going to matter too much. How will we have blended out parts together if they don't feel as if they're sitting correctly on that character? So number that how will you know the tools that we've gone over? It doesn't matter if you know these software programs inside out. If the parts that we create, do not feel as if they are sitting on that shoulder or sitting on that head or sitting on that leg properly. Then the illusion is going to be broken. And we want to try to retain the illusion as much as possible that we're looking at something realistic. So the costume parts that we create have to it he to the surface. If our object is rounded, we need to use the tools available to us to manipulate out parts in a way so they feel as if they could over and around the object. And that goes for something that's boxing or more cylindrical in shape and structure. So let's take a look at a previous artwork that I've done to see what all this means. The first thing we need to do is just to observe the image and take notice of how the clothing on the existing images currently sitting on the model take notice here of how this swimsuit wraps around from the front to the back, it feels like it's curving around her body. Notice how the top of the swimsuit follows the contours offer breast and also take note of where the strikers how it's going up in over around her neck. This is the first thing that we have to do without based image before we do any type of manipulation, where we have to figure out how the existing clothing is sitting on her body and how to replicate that. So if we have a look at the finished artwork, take note of how everything feels as if it's wrapping around as it should. If we overlay some guys here, we can see a lot better costume parts feel as if they are wrapping around her body. But it's not just her body that we have to concern ourselves with its whatever the clothing comes into contact with. So, for instance, her skirt is interacting with her new, which is slightly raced. So whatever manipulation that we make, that skirt has to take into account that not only is it going to be wrapping around somewhat to her leg that's resting. It's got to take into account the leg that's raised also, so that's going to affect things also. So not only do we have to worry about costume parts fitting around the figure, we also have to take into consideration what other areas off form they might be coming into contact with. The other issue we're going to come across with this type of artistic construction is the overall position off the model's body. We don't necessarily have the luxury of a blank canvas where we can put anything down the pencil. We are somewhat restricted in terms of how we can construct their things. So it knowing what position that Armel that label that torso is in is going to be vital to out process and it to weaken, used to help. I just with this is actually one that we can use in figure drawing as well. We're going to use a simple pencil to help us. Most pencils or pens will have some type of graphical strike that walk wrapped around the surface, So what we can do with that strutting is use it as a real life across contour line. We can lean, tilts and face the pencil in a way that best represents the position of the body part. We're trying to build on top up. So if we're struggling with figuring out the position off where this forum is, we can use that graphical stripe as a bit of a guide to figure out where, exactly in three D space that arm is sitting in, what position and direction out costume parts need to follow. So if we're ever not sure what position a body partisan, this is going to be a very useful tool. 6. Manipulation Demo and Lighting: all right, let's do a manipulation example. We're going to put some texture on the cylinder at the ND, so we're just going to bring in a canvas texture that was just picked off the Internet. I am gonna overlay he and drop the opacity a little bit just so we can see what's happening behind now. Normally, what happens when people start doing this for the first time without crunching compress the image to fit the contours of the shape as best they can? But the truth is, there not really adhere to the forms at all. They're just cutting out a cylinder shape, texture, and we can cut out that showed by bringing up the layout selection or we have to do is hold Ault over the lion click, and it will bring up its selection, which means we can now cut out the outline shape. Now, if we don't like this, we're going to delete the part off that selection, so we need to invert it. So if we go to command I or control, I have your on windows that will now select everything outside of that shape. So if we do that and hit, delete will be left with eight cylinder shape texture. And if we grab our eraser brush and increase its size, we can delete this in a part of their texture. So it looks as if we've got a label on the can. So that's our first example. Now let's try doing this again, but we're going to use instead the mesh tool to wrap out texture around the can. We can't shrink this texture image similar to what we did before and drop the opacity, of course, but now we are going to use the mess chul to walk this around. So we're going to grab these little bullies here and to start bending things down to try and match the curvature or their Silna and this can is a very good example to practice with , because we've got these nicely defined curved lives which are wrapping around the surface of the can, which are acting is positioning Marcus for us. So these are the type of landmarks that we should be looking out for when we start applying pieces of costume overall figure all items of clothing that our models, where in our foundation images are going to have certain landmarks like this that help us wrap these images around the surfaces. So this is what we've gotta look out for. So let's compare the two images now. And, as you can see, the one that we've just done using the walk Tall feels as if it's wrapping around this service a lot more. And that's because all the grains are following in that curve direction. The original one feels completely flat in comparison. This is what we've got to aim for, so whether it is cylinder shapes or square up boxier shapes or rounded spherical shapes, we have to get these images in textures, looking as if they are sitting and wrapping around these objects. So the last thing we have to look at is lighting. Lighting is going to be the other key factor to bring our characters to life. If we've got an underlying image and the lighting is coming from a specific direction, that we have to ensure that all of our parts, all their costume pieces, are matching the source of lighting if we don't take into account where the lights coming from and making sure that all of these parts have the same lighting direction. It's going to throw illusion off. So let's go back to that artwork that we showed earlier and much like we did with the clothing we first want to establish where our lining sources coming from. So in this image it's quite easy to decipher that the light is coming from the left hand side and as such, it's affecting. All of these areas offer body. You can also tell with the shadow below which direction and lighting is coming from. And once we've established that, we can then start to plan and think about out lighting as we start our construction process . So if we look at the finished rendered image here, you can see that all the parts that have been put in here are matching the lighting direction. We've got the cape off the top here. We've got the gauntlet. We've got two areas on her skirt. We've got areas on her boots. We've even got the sword, which is getting hit by the same light as well. So there are two things we have to keep in mind as we are constructing our concept up. First, we have formed and second is lighting. So with that out of the way, it's now time to create a character from scratch. We're going to take an original character illustration that I've done and bring her to life , so let's go through the full process. 7. Base Image and 'Frankensteining': Okay, So what you're going to see now is about 14 hours of footage chopped down into just a little under two hours. So this is not a quick process by any means and is really going to require eight level persistence and patience if you want to achieve the desired result, because we're dealing with trying to replicate realism the time we spend and the details that we put down are going to matter. So as you can see, we've got our character in the top left hand corner. Her name is Jane, our Shoes. A roguish, fun loving pirate character, although she prefers the term court set as it sounds more elegant. And this is the stock images that I've chosen to use is out based. Now take note of how the stock image caution resembles the stall of a character illustration. When looking for foundational images and stock images for our body, we want to try and find something that has costume that closely resembles the shape and design of our character design. This is going to make the process a lot easier for us. Yes, we can use foundational figure images that don't look like our character, but it's going to add a lot more working that isn't really needed. So when searching for your stock images, try and find images that match the character that you're trying to bring to life. Now this image is good. No, but her left hand is holding an extra weapon that our character, Jana doesn't have. So I've got to Option C. I can either replace the gun with another weapon, or I can get rid of that arm entirely and replace it with a different arm. And the second option is what I ultimately end up going with. We've got a second stock image here from the same Siri's that has the models are in a different position on her hip. So this is ultimately the image that I'm going to use to replace her arm. It really isn't a name for this process of replacing body parts, but I like to refer to it as Frankenstein. We're taking a little bits and pieces off head and arm and leg in mashing them all together to create a new human being. What we have to make sure that is, as we're putting these body parts to get up we have to make sure they are matching the position of out foundation image. So as you can see, the position and angle of our new arm will fit pretty naturally into place of the existing one. You'll usually be able to tell pretty quickly if something looks off. So if that's the case, it means the new body part doesn't fit. You are better off searching for a part that looks right then one that kind of works. So with the own place, I've still got the issue off the existing arm being seen underneath. For now, I'm simply going to create a new layer below that nuance and use our brush and eyedropper tool to paint over that foundational image. Roughly, this is just a temporary mosque, just so we don't see the existing arm. So the figures in place we've got the arm that's being changed now. What we have to do next is that in some guidelines we talked about in the lecture looking for directional landmarks on our foundation image, and that's on creating now a Siris of guidelines that I can come back to again and again to make sure everything I'm doing is positioned correctly. If there isn't an item of clothing to follow around, we could just stick to drawing basic shapes on top of their figure cylinders, boxes, spheres, whichever shape best matches the body part so that the last thing I have to work out is my lighting sorts. Now there are actually two sources of light in this stock image, and you can tell this because if we look at the ground, we can see there are two shadows going in opposite directions. You can also tell this because there are two highlights on the nose. So we've got a nice, even lighting situation all around, and it's going to give us a lot of flexibility. So that's the basics. Lastly, to make things a little bit easier for myself, I'm going to group the directional guides and the lighting source together and going to do this by simply clicking on the group lion icon on the latest pellet. So that's our first step complete 8. Essence Of The Character: this stage off the process is pretty straightforward. I'm simply doing a rough paint over about foundational figure. This is just going to be a simple sketch in order to get the ball rolling for us in order to get an idea of where ultimately we have to go. This whole process took about 90 minutes in total to complete. Now there are two reasons why we want to do this first. The first is it gives you an idea what the end result is going to look like. The second is it starts to give you an idea off what actually does and doesn't work without original character here. What we're going to find in this process is there's going to be situations where the illustrated character or the two dimensional character that we are trying to adapt into three D is wearing a costume that doesn't look all that practical, doesn't look all that believable. It might have designs and shapes that simply don't work in real life or don't have any real logic to them. So this initial paint job is really about working out how close we can remain true to the original costume design. We're not always going to get it 100%. The reality is not every animated character or comic book character or concept design is going to translate all that willing to three dimensions. And if we are trying to replicate something, realistically, there are sometimes going to have to be compromises that are going to be made. So this over paint is really about figuring out exactly what out limitations up. But we also have to make sure we are still capturing the essence off the character. If someone comes to you wanting a realistic concept of a sketch, they've illustrated, we as the designers have to have the goal in our mind of remaining true to that character as much as we can. So we have to look for the most identifiable features off that character, what their main characteristics are and adapt them in a more believable real world setting . So, for instance, if you were to create a more realistic version of a comic book character like Batman, you would, of course, have a look at the College of Designs and say to yourself, Well, we need to capture the cow, the cape, the big bat logo on the chest and build your desires based around those core characteristics. If you're doing Superman, of course, would be the blue tights in Red Cape for our original character, Jana. Here she's got a blue and black color scheme. She's got a leg brace. She's got a split skirt, some armor and, of course, a Warhammer. So when we have those core characteristics in mind, we can develop Amel three D interpretation accordingly. So whatever the character is, you're trying to bring to life. Figure out his or her most identifiable features and then make sure you adapt them in the best way you can. We need to think a bit more realistically, so it's good to reference all sorts off armor or sorts of fabrics or sorts of costume designs to get a better idea of how things actually work. A lot of what you're seeing now is just a little bit of trial and error. This is the perfect time to test what shapes and forms are. Costume pieces may look like when they are complete. The truth, however, is all of what you're seeing being painted right now will completely disappear. Eventually, as we start layering in our photographic elements over the top. But don't ignore this part of our construction you're going to find if you just dive headfirst into stitching pieces off, photographed together, you're going to West time. And that's because you won't have a proper understanding of where all these pieces are meant to be going. It's going to be very tempting to just jump in, but it's important to late some type of costume foundation for ourselves. Even if we are not all that great at drawing, you don't have to go to the extent that I am in this video by placing in all the shadows and folds and lighting sources, you don't need to be a master draftsman. If you only painting simple, flat shapes that is going to be significantly better than having nothing. They're all so avoid skipping this part of our process. The more we construct a series of checklists for ourselves, the easier things become for us in the future because it means we have control over what it is we are creating, and when we have control, it means we know how to fix mistakes. So if we develop a concept and we screw up along white. We can simply revert to our checklist and see where we went wrong and fix the era. This is going to reduce all sorts of frustration for ourselves. It's going to make our time far more efficient, and it's going to make everything on what smoother as well. So as you can see, I've got a pretty solid foundation in place to start my construction process. And on top of that, we've got a pretty accurate representation off their original character, too. So with this completed, let's move on to the next part of video, where we're going to talk about grouping out images together. 9. Layer Group Hierarchy: an important aspect off this creation process is actually going to be grouping images together. The reason we do this is because we need to establish a hierarchy for our costume parts. We need to ensure that each costume part is laid in the correct way. So that means, for instance, that the group of images that creates the head is sitting on top off the group of images that creates the sword. We need to develop a real world logic to these groups. So if you're wearing a jacket, for instance, obviously it's sitting above your shirt, so L layer groupings have to reflect that same logic. So we're going to have to figure out their process exactly which parts of our costumes are overlapping other parts of the costume. So if we look at the belt, we can see it sitting above this skirt in the torso as it would in real life. So we need to apply a real world logic to out layer groupings. And it's not just the costume on the body. We've got the cape here in the background, which is sitting behind everything, so in a layered context that's not just going to sit behind all the other costume pieces. It's going to sit behind the figure as well, so that Cape Group is going to be positioned lower in our hierarchy than other costume groups. But we also have to think about exactly what we're grouping together. The best thing for us to do is to identify the most logical areas of different. So if we take a look at the shoulder armor here, we've got essentially three pieces that make up that shoulder armor. So in my mind, I'm thinking that is a different enough area from the arm underneath. So I would take those three segments and consider that as group number one, whatever pieces are photograph that I stitched together, I will put in that group. The of course would then be group number two, So an outlier hierarchy, the shoulder Armour group is going to sit above whatever images were used to create the armed group. So what we have is a serious of overlapping. If we don't organize our costume layers into a logical hierarchy, it's just going to make life awfully difficult for us. We're going to waste time, and we're going to get awfully frustrated because we won't be able to locate a specific piece of image that we need to change, so this is going to make, like a hell of a lot easier for us. 10. Photographic Assets: right now, it's time to start adding and photographic elements. So what we actually have to do first and foremost is know how to search for images. And that's going to sound a little strange, because surely it's just a case of going into a search engine clicking on some images, and they're just downloading some. But there's a little bit more we have to do here. We have to get specific sometimes in the type of images that we need. So let's start with a skirt area of our character and head on over to an image search engine, and we just got to talkin skirt first and foremost and see the results that we get. And as you can see, we get a huge range of colors, shapes and sizes. But we need to find one that is tailored a little bit Mawr towards what our characters design is. So we've got a character with a short split skirts, so all we need do is just scroll down and try and find an image that best resembles that shape, and we've got one here Now. The title of this particular dress is a double split maxi dress, so if we got to our search engine and now type in that as an option, we're going to get images that are more tailored towards that style of dress so we can do this for all out costume areas. And it's a good idea to download several variations of that style of costume or clothing to give us some choices to work with. So we've got here the choice that we're using for this skirt. But we have to flip this around because it's not really coming from the same direction as what our character design is, so we just need to flip that around now. The first area that we're going to start manipulating is going to be the front area of our character skirt and this part of this reference in which here is actually going to be the piece that we're going to use its got to lying sources, which is going to be very useful because it's going to roughly match the lighting position off our character Now, obviously the length of this skirt on this reference image, he is significantly longer than it is in their characters that we just have to play around with manipulating the length off this part. So if it's nicely and seamlessly without characters design, so we're going to cut this segment or photograph out, and we're going to paste it into our artwork. One area that's actually gonna help really sell l illusion folds in the clothing. Now this skirt he, in this particular instance, has a nice pitch, too. It's a loose piece of fabric will have that type of fold when the corners are being pinned to something. We don't necessarily have to be 100% accurate with the folds that we create in our character. But it's a good idea to analyze how folds actually working clothing to get a more believable results. So now I'm going to start manipulating this piece to adhere more to the shape that would put down in out over paint foundations. And I'm using both the Mestel and the transform tool to do this. And it's really just a case of playing around and trying to see how best we can make things fit, and it's going to take a little bit of trial and area. You may actually have to paste in the image multiple times to try to get it right because the more we start to manipulate the original image, the more degraded the image becomes. So it's a little bit of trial and error, but eventually you will get a feel for it. And once we have captured the type of shape that we are looking for, we can come in with the razor brush and just start refining. The age is a bit more. We don't necessarily have to worry too much about adding a layer mask on this skim ege you can if you want, but it's not necessary in this particular case. So we've got a nice shape going for a series of foundation and we've got under ice fold here, which is going to simulate the skirt being pinned to the belt underneath. But it's not the right time and it's not the right color, of course. So now it's time to start adding in some adjustment lives. We're going to put in out curves later to bring out more of the light and values off this skirt, and this part is just going to be a bit of trial and error. I'm just playing around with the curve settings here to try to find what a decent mid value gray is, and that's a pretty decent result to continue working with. But it's great, obviously, and we need to make this a sort of blue teal color, so we're going to use our blending modes on your layers palette here. To make that alteration, we first have to select the late contents. Now we can either select allowed contents by hovering over the layer that we want and clicking on our mouse. Or, alternatively, got to select on their menu at the top and click selection from Laugh. And that's going to bring up the selection off that layers content. So what I do now is create a new layoff, and what we're going to do is flood that lay up with a blue green car. And, as you can see because we've got that selection active, it's only going to feel color within that selection, and we got the talk to our blending modes weaken, select the blending by which actually gives us the best results. And in this case, it's stuff like so this is beginning about first group. As you can see, we've got the photographic element that we've manipulated. We've got the colorful blending into it, and on top of that, we've got the curves adjustment layer. So this is our first group, and this is the process that we want to be using for all the other costume elements. So we've got this tank top that we're going to use for the foundations offer torso now. The issue we are going to face is that we're going to come across photographic elements that were trying to blend together that have different sources of lighting. So this is why it's super important that we have our curves adjustment layers. This is going to help us match the lighting situation for the various photographic parts that we start importing. So if you have two different photographic pieces that you need to blend together in most together into one part of a costume and they've got different lighting sources, we have the tools to be able to match them 11. Duplicating Techniques: all right, we're going to start work on the shoulder arm apart, so we've got a pretty decent image here that resembles somewhat the parts that we've already put down in our foundation over pain. It's got a similar lighting direction, although it's significantly stronger on one side than it is on the other side will have to adjust that later on. But we don't necessarily have to worry too much about matching the lighting exactly at this stage, we just have to get a rough approximation in as best we can. So it don't obsessed too much at this early development. There's nothing that we can't fix at a later point, and that's going to ring true for any part that we bring in in any part of this process. So I've pasted the arm apiece in what I'm going to do with this piece is actually start using the liquefied options in order to start refining and reforming the shape. Now this piece of image that we've got at the moment is not too bad, but we don't necessarily want to just put this on out character. The more we reshape these parts, the more unique things start to look, and that's really what we want for a character. We want our character to stand out and look unique. So I pushed these pixels around to get a bit of a different shape to what's originally there. And now I'm actually going to cut this top piece out, and the reason I'm doing that is because it's going to be a lot easier breaking down this shoulder armor into specific parts. This will allow me a greater range of manipulation capabilities. So right now I'm thinking to myself that this is an OK starting point, but I want this piece of armor to actually look a little four. So I'm using the clone tool to pointing some areas that aren't currently they. So as we mentioned in the lecture part off the tutorial, we nominate a specific area, often image using the old key, and now, whatever we painted with the brush will essentially copy in paint that nominated area. And that's how we can start to reshape these pieces of photograph. The clientele is going to be a very powerful tool for us because it's going to help fill in areas that are missing. It's essentially a more sophisticated version off copy and paste. So it's gonna be something that we're going to be using for not just bring shaping certain areas of costume, but it's also going to be used for getting rid of areas as well. There are elements of photograph that might have scratches or dirt or some type of marking on them. We don't necessarily have to dismiss that photographing element because we've got a way to fix or repair it. So I'm thinking to myself, the shoulder armor is starting to take shape, but I'm really not 100% happy with it. It's probably a little too cylindrical and needs to be a little bit more spiritual Now we can use the clone tool to try and do that, but we're actually going to do a little bit of a short cut. I'm going to duplicate the peace and just rotated ever so slightly, and what that is going to do is going to make this piece of armor feel as if it's far more spherical in its shape. Before was much more cylindrical. Now it feels a lot more rounded. Then we have to do is just start toe raise the parts around it and blend the images together. And as you can see, the more we erased out of that duplicated image, the more the two images start to blend together and create a unified four. And once we're satisfied with that show, we can start to develop it further if we so wish. So we've got a couple of different ways to duplicate and copy and paste images, and that is something that we are going to do a lot off. And as we can see as we skip to the torso area, I've essentially done the same thing, pasted in two of the same image and then just walked in, manipulated one in a slightly different position. So slowly but surely, we are starting toe. Adding photographic elements now has to be said. Most of these pieces are just going toe act as placeholders in a similar way that we had to do an under painting first just to get a feel off the direction that we're heading in. We are essentially doing a similar thing here with these initial photographic elements. I like to think of this process as being in three stages. We have out under painting that we did earlier and this is the second stage of that process , which is our photographic foundations, and the third stage is going to be the final details and rendering, so those are the main steps involved. 12. Completing The Foundations: this video is going to finish off the second stage of construction process. We're going to get the rest of our initial photographic elements in now. These liver shin guards that I've used would actually probably be shaped almost exactly like this in real life if there was strapped around somebody's leg. But we're going to give us a little bit of creative license. We don't have to add heat to real world logic 100%. So it's going to be perfectly fine if we make things look as if they adhere to the body a little bit more than what they wouldn't. Real life realism is going to be important, but it's also important that we are not a slave to it as well. We're looking for the illusion of reality, not necessarily reality itself. Now let's just take notes off what I'm doing here. I want to get rid of these. Seems now. I could use the clone tool, of course, but I'm actually just going to use a piece of this existing image similar to what we did before with shoulder armor. Weaken Do the same thing here with this shin guard. We have the advantage with this particular part in that we don't actually have to do too much to its overall shape. So all we need to do is cut. A piece out there is close enough to that part that we want to get rid of copy and paste it over the top and then just blended in without razor brush. Now, the next part is going to focus on the start of the leg. Brace that we've got this stock image here that has this nice strap that is wrapping around this models like So we're going to use this. However, we're going to run into a little bit of a problem. We move the piece over the leg. We're gonna find out very quickly that the perspective of this is off the way this trap was going around the leg of their stock image model is the opposite to where it needs to go for our character. So you might say to yourself, Well, let's just turn around, let's rotate it, and that will fix the problem. But the problem will have, then, is that Al lighting direction is near change. So what can we do about that? Well, we can actually fix this rather easily. If we right click and click, transform and go to flip horizontal, that's going to flip the image in the opposite direction. And all of a sudden there, strapped now looks far more form fitting to our characters leg. So these little tricks that you can use to actually make photographic elements fit in ways that they weren't originally met, too. So that's the beauty off the tools we have. We conflict things around. We can make mirror images, we can rotate things. We have a lot of control at our disposal. I just started to put some hair in now to get the rough shape again. This is just going to be a rough indication of what the finished result is going to be. His hair is far too bright and a little unnatural, so it's a good idea to actually reduce the intensity over those colors. And that's what we have. Our height SL slide is going on and speaking of calls, we actually don't want things to write. We want a certain level of great own mixed amid the color scheme, so try and avoid punching the saturation levels on our hatred So sliders all the way up. So we've got a rough condition for a hair in. She's got a braid there. So now we've got to start thinking about what we're going to do for her arms and legs. Now I've got an image here. We've actually got a little bit more freedom here than what we have with other costume parts. This is because we don't necessarily have to source body image references that match exactly the body part that out character needs. So as you can see, the source image for these legs has only one strong light source and is positioned in the wrong direction whilst we know our character is positioned in the opposite direction and has too strong lighting sources. So we could either spend time looking for that perfect source image that matches everything . 100%. We could just make do with what we have because their character, Jane, has this skirt and these leggings, we can kind of get away just using one of these pieces on one side, making sure that it matches the overall shape and form off the foundational leg underneath and then simply flipped their remaining source image around and do the same thing, and that's going to be good enough for a purpose. We don't necessarily need to be an expert on anatomy. It is certainly going to help. There's no denying that, but close enough is going to be good enough in this situation. That doesn't necessarily mean we'd be sloppy with this. However, if there's a lot of skin showing than it is probably going to be far more beneficial to actually try and source a body part that matches the one that we need. So the arm image that I've sourced resembles the positioning off the arm that we put in our foundations. So there are going to be times when we can use this shortcut and they're gonna be times where we have no choice but to find the correct image. That's something that we are just going to have to judge for ourselves so the foundations are coming along. But what I'm going to do next is do a head replacement. Now in my mind that my delusions of grandeur One day this character will star in a big Hollywood blockbuster movie. So we're going to cast the role of Jana now and I'm going to use the actress Lily James. I think she has the right type of look which matches my initial illustration sketch. So she is going to be our casting choice for this particular concept. Now head replacement is pretty straightforward. You just have to match it as best you can to the size off the original stock image. So it's not too difficult where it can get a little bit challenging is that the head doesn't always necessarily fit the body type that you're putting it on so you can measure everything up perfectly with the head below. But for some strange reason, the replacement it just doesn't seem to work. So you might have to actually increase or decrease the size of the replacement head a little bit. Just so it fits on the body a bit better. So I'm just putting in the last major costume landmarks the belt and just paying special attention here how I've tried to indicate how I'm wrapping this built around that torso. The feeling off form is our ultimate goal with this entire process. If we don't get that right, the believability is going to be significantly reduced. We need to feel like the belt is wrapping around to her back, that the shoulder armor is sitting on top of her arms, that she's wearing boots that she's wearing. Gorlitz, that she's holding that hammer. This is what our goal has to be. So this is out rough foundations that are completed. Now we've got a better idea than what we previously had without initial paint job rebuilding more and more information as we're going along. So the next part of the process is going to be the refinement stage. This is going to be the longest section about character development, so let's get the hard work started. 13. Form and Shadow Colour: now this is where the real work is actually going to begin. It's going to take several hours to develop these individual areas. We started big and now we are working small. We head out underlying painting that we put in as a rough guide for ourselves. We've put in some rough photographic elements as well. So now we are working smaller and just focusing on these individual areas. And as you can see, I'm working on the shoulder armor first and on layering in some nice gold trimming for the alma. Now, the thing that we have to remember as we start layering in things like trimming and things like seems and studs and whatever other items that were going toe add to these parts is that they themselves have formas. Well, the big mistake that I've seen people do before is that they tend to overlay things like this and make them look as if they are painted on, not necessarily like they are actually sitting upon these costumes structures. So we really have to think in three dimensions. As you can see, I'm actually painting over the top of these gold trimmings here, and that's because it's just going to be easy in this case to feel in some of the gaps. To added some of the form to these gold trims. Sometimes it's just gonna be significantly easy up painting things in that missing. Yes, we can search for hours trying to find the right gold trim that fits exactly over this piece of armor. But in some cases we're never going to find exactly what we need. So the next best thing is to just fill in what we don't have without paintbrush. We can use our clone tool in l duplication techniques, of course, but in some instances it's just going to be easier for us to paint things in. And that's where having an understanding off some artistic principles, like form and lighting, is going to be very beneficial. So study up on the subject matters because it's going to make the artwork concepts that you creating a lot more believable. You can really get the sense that this gold trimming around this part of the costume is really wrapping around her arm to the back. That's the feeling we need to capture. We have to feel as if all these parts, all of these surfaces that are on top of each other are working in unison and flowing around to the other side. We have to imagine that there is another side that, and that's going to help us with construction. If we don't think about the three dimensionality off our figure or the costume parts that were working on, everything is going to stop looking flat. So this gold trimming is working pretty well. And as you can see on putting in the shadows now and because each of these segments of armor separated from each other there go to cost, there aren't shut it. So we've got to have multiple layers of shadow. He and they have to be positioned correctly in our layers palette. This is going to give us far more control than if we just put one shadow layer in. So there's a good chance that you're going tohave a group of images creating a costume part that's going to have multiple layers of shudder with it and that shadow layer we want to set to multiply and are blending boats that's just gonna make things look a bit more natural. Although I have made a mistake take note off the color wheel at the top. I've got it set to 100% black. There is no color pigment in that whatsoever. And that's actually something we want to avoid. You might actually be out the seat, he in the shadows that are on the skin. The shadow just feels a little bit lifeless, just a little bit dull, and that's because we've got no color in there. It's just flat black. So what we want to do, actually, is at a little bit of color to that, we need to select a shadow color that is in the same color range off what that shadow is coming into contact with. So in this instance, the shadow on the skin. I should have made a darkish red color instead of just flat black. So we've built upon our shoulders. It's looking pretty okay, for the most part, so let's move on to the next area 14. Torso Design & Happy Accidents: Okay, so I decided to replace the head again because the one that I've put in r really James just wasn't actually fitting quite right. The lighting sources actually coming more from the top, then from either of the side. So it's just gonna be too much work in that instance trying to match the lighting. So you're going to come across situations like that way, an image that you really like is just going to be too difficult to try to manipulate. It's not that you can't spend the time and it and make changes accordingly. If you understand how liking works, then of course you can change. It is just going to take time, and we really want an efficient working process for ourselves. So we are going to have to make judgments about what images are actually worth spending time on. We can't necessarily be married to a particular source image, especially if we're doing a piece for a client. If we're doing our own stuff, then it's not too much of an issue we can spend as long as we need on it. But if someone's commissioned us to do a concept piece for their character, Or maybe you're doing something for a film production or a costume designer. Then we have to have an efficient method for ourselves in order to get things done in a timely manner. This entire piece took about 14.5 hours in total, so about two solar days worth of work. And if we want to impress the client, we want to get out, work over to them as quick as possible. So look for the image sources that are going to make your work float far more efficient. Now I'm working on this top part of the armor, and I know as I'm actually working on this right away that it's not really working for whatever reason, to shape the form. Nothing is actually working to world in my mind is on creating this, but I'm sort of pressing ahead to see whether I can still make this work or whether or not it was simply just a bad design choice in the first place. And that's all just part of the creation process. When we start layering down things, we start to see what is and isn't working and where the problem starts will rise. So My initial idea for this part of the costume was that it was going to act in a similar way to American football shoulder pads. At least that was the initial idea. But I'm realising as this is coming together that it's just not working for this particular character, and that's just all part of the creation process. The initial ideas that we put down really make their way all the way to the Finch design, and that's why we put these rough photographic elements down first. We don't want to spend hours on something and then realize it's just not working. So it's just a matter of taking things one step at a time and figuring it out as we go along. There's what I call on our harm moment where you suddenly realize something is working and that's the best money because it means you can move on to the next area. So as you can see, I've actually abandoned that that top part of the torso and I just moved down to the ABS area. Now I've got this really cool piece of leather armor that I'm going to use as the foundation, and I'm not gonna kick this looking like this exactly. You'll see in a moment I'll start painting things in, but it's a very good starting point for us. We want these photographic elements toe act as starting points for us, too. Bill. A couple this part has nice balance lighting for it. So when we come in later on and refine the shadows and lighting, this piece is not going to give us too many problems. If we source images that have a really brightened, harsh light and really dark shadows, it's going to mean more work for us. So the best type of images that we can try and source or ones that have a nice even lighting situation, the more control that we have, the better the result is going to be. Photo manipulation does have its limits. If we're just drawing with paper and pencil, we can draw whatever shape we want in whatever lighting condition that we want. We have a lot of control there, but in this situation we don't necessarily have the same freedoms available to us. So we need to do all we can in order to gain as much control as possible over these limitations that we have. So as you can see, I'm saying to repaint over areas off the torso section that I've put in, and this is kind of what we want to do. We want to take these existing images and reshape them. And that's part of the fun of the processes putting these photographic elements in and manipulating them and seeing what other shapes we can come up with, taking these photographic foundations and then seeing exactly what we can do to them. So don't just limit yourself to the photographic pieces that you putting, see what you can actually do to them. I've got the hottest ole adjustment layer up for this part. And, as you can see, as I start changing the color values, we've got a little bit by happy accident that has it could. The original idea I was going to have is to put some type of leather armor section over her breast area. But the way the torso piece blends in now looks pretty natural. So it sometimes you get these strokes of fortune way. You put these two images together and you realize you don't actually have to do a lot to whereas before, I wasn't 100% sure how I was going to tackle the breast on the area. But since I've added in that torso piece, it's sort of filled in the blanks itself. So a good stroke of fortune in this case, And it also means less work for us to, because it's looking complete now. It's also giving me a better idea of where to go for the side parts, the black side areas, whereas before I was thinking of maybe some type of satin corset texture, I'm now thinking more in terms of weather. So that torso addition, which merged into that breast area that was already there, has now influenced the creative choices are making for the side part of her torso. So it's all starting to come together. They're going to be these moments where you start to see the finish line where things just start falling into place and what that's going to do actually is it's going to spare you on a lot more. It's going to make you work faster because up until this stage there's still a lot of rough things going on. We're not 100% sure exactly where it is. We're going to be going the initial foundations or something toe work with, but they don't really paint the entire picture. But there is that certain point that you reach where it just suddenly seems to make sense. But there's not gonna be a hard and fast point as to when that happens. Whatever creative process it is, whether it's figure drawing, portrait, painting, jewellery, making music or, in this case, photo manipulation is all about working out what the construction actually is. So, for instance, here, as you can see, I'm trying out some stitches to see that's going toe work. And ultimately I decided, No, that's not going to work. It's just too much there. It's not really going to add anything to the desired. So it's not just about forms and lighting and shadow. It's about feeling as well, all right, that torso is looking pretty good, so let's move on to the next part 15. Shadow and 3D Development: Okay, This video part is gonna focus mostly on developing shadow areas. And that's because everything's still looking a little bit flat at the moment. We've got these three dimensional parts, which are all sort of sitting and interacting with each other, but they're just kind of sitting there. They're not really feeling as if they are on top of each other, that they are overlapping each other. So building those shadows is now going to help us with that three dimensionality. You're much better off building the shadows first than worrying about the light. The lighting is something that we can worry about later on. It's important we get some sense of three dimensionality in as soon as we can. Otherwise, we run the risk of getting lost, so developed the shadows as early as possible. So I'm painting in the shadows on the leg, and we've actually got this really fortunate situation here with this part of the skirt. This came from the original stock image as you remember, and the way it's sitting there at the moment card works. I don't feel like I have to do too much to this part of the skirt, and it's going to be fortunate because it means less work for us. You also it might notice in the color palette up the top there that my shadow that I'm painting with has a little bit of red in it this time. So I've corrected that mistake from before. But this part of this skirt needs to be worked on a bit as well. Our original concept art had the character with this skirt that was a bit tourney and shredded, and it's thes type of details that are really going to make our concept at Pop. We don't want things looking to clean and smooth. We want some texture week, once a roughness, some dirt. We want a few stains here and there. We want toe, make these characters look as if they have worn these costumes before. All that comes when we start to detail things now we don't want to overdo. It is well, we don't want to be applying to many textures, too many filters because it's just going to end up killing the image, so we're going to have to find a balance. But that's really something that should be coming closer towards the end at the moment. I'm just working on developing the three dimensionality of our character. The shadows are really starting to bring things to life. We really start to get a sense that this tool built that she's wearing is actually sitting over the skirt sitting on top of that torso area, that her skirt this overlaying her legs so she's starting to take shape. Now I've brought in a section of built from a pirate stock image that I found. It was a really fortunate piece of costume to find, and sometimes that's just going to be three luck, and sometimes it comes through what we search for with their images. I simply talked in part girl into a stock image website and got a whole bunch of results Now some of them, of course, were wildly different. But many of them, of course, had similar characteristics because we associate certain attributes to a pirate, so knowing the background of your character is going to be important when we start searching for are stock images and image sources. So whether your character is a soldier or a ninja or in this case, a pirate, we want to look for photographic assets that relate to those terms were not bound to them, of course, but it's going to give us something to work with. Now. You might be able to see just how much adding those shutters in has developed a character. She's starting to feel a lot more alive because we've got these components of her costume, which are interacting in ways that they should be in real life. So the shadows have really going along white into helping develop her three dimensionality . 16. Guides and Details: all right. Things are coming together, but it's also a few areas that are starting to look a bit loose and a bit messy. So it's going to be important as we develop out character to clean up what we originally put down. That initial painting sketch that was put down earlier is now becoming a little bit cumbersome. It's just so sticking out there, and it's really affecting how I'm viewing the overall image of the moment. So the best thing that do is that when we start to develop these parts more and they start to become a bit more realistic looking, a good thing to do is to start erasing some of those earlier foundations. This clinic process is going to make things far more manageable. It's going to help us visualize things a lot better, and it's just going to look a lot clean it too. Eventually, our goals to get rid of that underlying foundational sketch entirely, and the more photographic elements we start to overlay onto an image, the less useful that sketch starts to become, so eventually we're going to get rid of it. So when things start taking shape when we start adding, in our photographic pieces, when we start putting in our shadows, think about cleaning up as you're going along. Now I've overlaid my guides again because I haven't really checked any of the perspective for a while. And as you can see, we've got some issues here with this leg. The strap is not really fitting to the shape that it needs to, and neither is the legging as well. So I've screwed up a little bit here, but not to the point where things are going to be completely ruined and I have to start from scratch. I just have to use the liquefied tools to just nudge things a little bit to match the curvature off the leg a lot better. And if any issues arise from doing that, I can simply paint areas back in like I'm doing now. So that's a really good example as to why you should be referring to guides and why you need to paint them in. Just because we think we've got things position correctly doesn't mean we actually do have them positioned correctly. So this is why guides are very important for us. You don't necessarily need to have um on what time? You just need to turn them on and off every so often just to make sure things are lining up correctly. We don't want to get to the stage where we think we've got things right and then done this Beautiful finished our work only to realize then that the body part or question piece isn't really sitting in the right place. So I'm developing a bit more of shading and a little bit more off the rough textures for the skirt, and some seems on her underwear. And that's another thing that we have to consider. Clothing has stitches. It has seems it has pieces of fabric which are being joined together in some way. Those are the little details that we have to think about. They're really going to add a little bit more dimension to your character, a little bit more believability. So when you start sourcing your images, just take note of how the costume or how the clothing is constructed. Take a look at where the seams where are the stitches? What's actually joining these pieces of fabric or pieces of costume or armor together? Those little details are going to matter. It's going to elevate your characters, design in your characters, believability to the next level. And I'm doing that now by adding additional studs or rivets into her breastplate area. It gives off the illusion that it's all one piece of material that is joining together with the black leather parts of the site. We're starting to get a cohesiveness to everything in these areas. Have formers well. Seems, for instance, haven't almost mountain and valley like quality to them. They sort of raise up and dip down into a valley and then up and over into a hill again. And so these highlights and then painting over the top are trying to indicate that in just those few brush strikes has really pushed this now to being something that looks far more three dimensional. So these are the little details that really do matter. If you're going to push your character designs to this level, you're going to have to invest the time into understanding how these areas work. So I brought up the original illustrations sketch of my character just to see how things were going, and it's clear that I've made the blue color on her skirt a little to duck in a little too green, so I just have to make a few alterations there. And, of course, I said earlier that we went a little bit of great college you now mix to make it a little bit more believable. But I probably overdid it a little bit too much in this case, so just bringing a little bit of the couple back, and that's the beauty of those adjustment layers. We can alter things as much as we need to until we get it just right. So I've kind of just made the decision to fill in the top part off her breastplate area, just with black leather just to match the leather side panels on her torso. But I know that I'm putting this in that I'm still not 100% convinced this is what I want to do. In the end, things are coming together nicely 17. Hair: on two. Developing the head of hair could be a little bit of eight lifesaver for us. In some instances, if we've got a character with significantly long hair, there's a good chance it's going to flow over the character shoulder in some way, shape or form. So what that means is we won't have to develop every single part of the upper shoulder area of the costume because it means some level off the hair is going to be overlapping it, and that's going to be a huge time sober. And that's also going to remain true for any area of costume that is going to be covered. We don't have to develop every single thing exactly. We only need to develop the parts that are actually going to be seen. So if we got a character with long hair, we can actually design her hair in a way so that it actually saves us some time. So I'm looking at gender at the moment and I'm thinking to myself, she's got this braid on the side that I like, but it seems just a bit too stiff and tight, so I'm thinking that it might be a better idea to make that area of the hair a little bit looser in its design and construction. So I've got another image here of Lily, and I just got to cut out the piece of a hair that I want, and that's the thing that is not necessary. But it's kind of beneficial if we're trying to Frank and so on pieces of person together. We want to try to use images off that person. If we start trying to melt too many different types of body parts and facial areas together , it's just going to end up becoming a bit of a jumble. Miss. We want consistency, and that's certainly going to help. Well, they're hair is a little bit different. We can kind of get away with just putting on any old type of hair style. It just has to fit really the position of the head and the shape of the head as well. Everyone's heads are gonna be slightly different in shape. Some people have more squarish heads, some of more rounded, some more heart shape. So whatever type of hair style digital wig. If you want to think of it that way, we want to put on our character. We just have to adapt it to the shape of whoever scholar it is were dealing with. So I'm just sort of playing around with this side of hair at the moment and trying out different positions for the parades. And it's not really working. And I'm not 100% sure at this point in time, whether or not I want to keep the braids. But going back to when we talked about bringing the characters to life, capturing the essence, I do feel like that braid is an important aspect to the character, so I'm going to have to figure out what to do with this. At a certain point, I just end up trying a different image. In fact, it's the original Hey to this replacement head. For some strange reason, I didn't look at closely enough because looking at it now I'm thinking OK, it's actually might work. So sometimes you can over think things and you'll see in a moment I actually go back to the original source image and just use that hair because it's the best option. It's just a matter of re coloring it and changing the values on it, so it's the right shade that I'm looking for now. The other thing we are more than likely going to have to do is actually paint in strains of hair, and this is going to require a little bit of knowledge of how hair is actually constructed and how it flows. The thing we have to know about hair is that it's going to be affected by two things. Gravity and the body structures that it comes into contact with. So it's forever going to be pulled down. But if it ever comes into contact with the shoulder, it's going to rise up in either over or rise up behind the shoulder. It's going to actually form the shape of whatever part of the body it comes into Contact with is not such an issue with shorter hairstyles, short hair styles are not going to be affected by gravity. They're simply going to and he to the shape of the person's skull a lot more. But, um, OK, gravity is going to play a huge pot, so I've been sort of messing around with this hair for wall. It's sort of coming together, but ultimately, as I said, a moment ago. I just end up going back to the original image here and just using that here because, for whatever reason, it didn't occur to me that this was actually good enough. So it's just a matter of adjusting the tonal in color values, too, through the original illustration, bit more so the hair is looking a lump in India. 18. Repainting Large Areas: All right, So now I move on to the Goerlitz. Think pieces I've got There was always just going to be a temporary fix until I found a piece of gauntlet costume that I actually liked. And this one is fitting quite nicely in terms of shape in positioning. So I'm not going to do too much in terms of manipulating this part. But it has got a lot of details and patterns that are embedded in it that I don't actually want. They are pretty cool designs, but it's a bit too Celtic and not quite suited to our character. So it's just gonna be a lot easier painting this stuff out now. Of course, I could use the clone tool, but I'm actually gonna paint this out because what's the title is one of the most powerful tools that we have in our disposal for something like this, where we've got a lot of little details that we have to get rid off. It can become a little bit time consuming using that, So this is an instance where even though we've got a large area to cover up, it's just going to be easy up to paint this out there. Up until this point, I've been primarily using soft brushes for whatever it is I've been painting in. But because we've got a sort of leathery texture that we have to paint over, it's going to be a lot better for us to use something that has a little bit of a texture to it. But before I do that, I actually noticed that original placement of the arm is a little bit off. It's just a little too far out from where her body is. And it was something that was bugging me for the longest period of time. Something about the, um, just wasn't sitting correctly, and that's anything you'll figure out along the way. You'll get halfway through the project and you'll see Okay, I need to just slightly bring that arm in a little bit or rotate that head a little more. As long as we have the specific layer groups for each of our body parts, each of our costume pieces, we're going to be able to make these slight adjustments. So if something is looking slightly off, for whatever reason, just trying moving things around a little bit and see what the results are, you might actually find that even if you're not adhering exactly to the initial body foundation, that slight movement hero there gives you a much more natural result. So we get these paradoxes occasionally when we think we remind everything correctly, and sometimes we have only to find out that well, if we actually move this part here or there a little bit more than what it should, it actually gives us a better result. So it's not too dissimilar from the issue that we faced with head replacement. It's all about what looks good. So if we have to cheat a little bit, that's perfectly fine. As long as it looks right, that's all that matters. So I'm actually going in and adding additional layers of shadow now to the hair to start making that popper's, we'll start bringing some dimensionality inform and fixing up the leg to There are some issues from pointing that we have to fix up just starting to work on the lighting and shadow. Just this left hand side just needs a little bit more work because it's curving away from that right hand side lighting source. It's only gonna pick up a little bit of the lighting source on the left hand side, just cleaning up things with the legging, the texture here. I'm still not 100% sure at this stage. If I like it, it's a little bit different, and that's because we don't really want our characters toe have everything matching 100%. If she's a pirate character, it's unlikely that she is going to be wearing something that's lucky uniform. So I imagine she's dressed herself in just whatever she confined, although she still has stall and likes to match things. 19. Boots And Leg Brace: right. So I put the legs off long enough. So it's time to start developing these duckling downing getting into it, and you might find yourself doing this occasionally, where some part just looks a bit too difficult. And so you'll do everything else and keep putting off that part. But eventually you got to tackle it. Sometimes you just intuitively know that certain parts they're going to be a little bit of a pain to deal with. But just take it one step at a time and eventually you'll get there. Yeah, I got this gold paced off put in this gold trimming, and I'm just going to do a little bit of a short cut again. I'm going to just duplicate this pot and flip it round. That's just another shortcut for us. We can take this duplicated piece that we flipped and start manipulating the pixels to suit this area off the Shin God, and you'd be surprised how often you can get away with that. Some parts we are going to have to find a different peaceful, but other times we can get away with duplicating certain sections and repeating them in other areas. In fact, you might find there are times where you just take one small piece of a photographic image . Repeat that duplication several times and then stitch it'll together for whatever the pot is you're creating. And then what you could do is take that piece you've just created from all these duplications and what but round two, however you need it to be. So maybe doing some type of gold trim like I am here, or perhaps some type of lace trimming on a coat or jacket or a cape. Sometimes we can make a small piece of image go over white. We can duplicate it as much as we need to to get to the length we needed to be and then use it for whatever its purposes. And you'll see I'm duplicating that first part again on the left boot, taking it over to the right so we got this old treats that we could get away with. So I'm moving on to the leg. Bryce Neil, because we've neglected that quarter bit. So I've downloaded a couple of different styles and examples to trial out and see what exactly works and what doesn't. And the thing I'm noticing about this first attempt is that it just looks far too thick. It looks far too heavy for a character to be wearing. This just feels a little bit better, just a little bit thinner and also looks a little older as well, the other one, probably a bit too modern. Its design Sorry again. We've got out characters that might be from a particular time period. We have to think about well, what are the materials that they might be wearing? If we're designing a medieval character, they're not gonna be wearing more clothing, and we can do certain things to the costumes. Of course, we can't age things up. We can add scratches and dents and scrapes and everything toe out armor and 12 fabrics. So take note of where they from and when they from. So I'm rotating the leg brace around, and it fits quite nicely. There's still a little bit of work to do, and I'll probably end up changing the strap around it, but it fits quite well, so we're fortunate with this piece that we don't have to do a hell of a lot to it, and it's got a little bit of rust a little bit of wear and tear, which gives it a hospital texture. Lubin of Character City makes it look like she's being wearing this for several years. So it's those little things that give personality to character. It makes someone ask, Well, who is she? What has she done? Why is she wearing that leg braces it because she's injured? Or is it because she just wears it for an esthetic reason? Maybe it's just to intimidate people who knows, as long as it gets people asking. Now I need to increase the size and shape off the knee part on the left hand side because I've made it way too small and I need to make it far more even to its right hand side. So I'm getting is a combination off, duplicating the image below and using the client tool to fill in the gaps and shape it. We want to think about being a bit like sculptors in this instance that we are sort of molding these two images together into one almost like Clay. I suppose Digital clien away, So these need parts of coming together, but I'm gonna put some gold trim eventually as you'll see. But in the meantime, I decided as I was going along, that I'm not happy with the shade and the color off the leggings, so you'll see me play around a bit with the different lifestyles to see what effect that I can get. The original character illustration. The leggings are more or less identical in color to the blue parts in her skirt and torso. But I'm thinking to myself, even if I've got the textures, that it's still going to look a little too uniformed. So ultimately, I decided to keep the texture zine and just change the color to eight dark up blue green value. And I think that looks a little bit better. So going back to duplication, you can see I have copy and pasted that small section. All the middle Bryson have just filled in the areas that are missing until it looks like it's joining to that up a connection point. That is a pretty good example of how we use duplication methods to fill in areas that are not there. This method is great, not just for what we're doing here for help on this, but it's also a good, full restoring photographs. If you've got an old photograph and it's got stains and tears in it, you could actually repair it by duplicating clean areas of the photograph. So you'd be surprised how well you could restore all photographs using duplication techniques. Copy pasting the cloning tools. We've got a bunch of other tools that we actually haven't touched in this tutorial that can also help as well. So photo editing programs offers a range of tools and arrange a very powerful tools that could help create photographic elements that aren't even there. So one area I've for gotten a little bit about is the actual boots. Now I kind of like how these boots are in the original foundation image. So I'm actually just going to use these. They work perfectly fine. They suit out character, so there's really not much that I need to actually do to these. I just have to blend them into action guards, although there is that little modification there, so it's not exactly the same. But it's good enough for this purpose. Unless, of course, you get a client who specifically needs the shoes to look a certain way and so that's just going to require a bit more work. People image searching. But in this guise, it's perfectly fine. So adding in the cost shutter for the leg brace, it's here that I decide I'm going to match the strep that's going around the shin and calf muscle of the leg. Brace to the one that's wrapping around the thought. Just to have it a bit more uniformed, you might say. I tried a simple color correction first, and that really didn't work. So it's better to do the extra work here and just get this looking right. So now putting the gold trimming around the top of the knee pad and I'm thinking to myself , I might be able to get away with only doing one here, and that's great if we could do that. So let's see if it works and what do you know? What kind of does? So we're going to go with that little bit of modification and warping needed, but overall it still works. It's just a matter off changing a few things here in there, fixing the lighting up so it suits that particular part of the body, adding in a couple of different textures. Just a differentiated a little bit. We don't want them looking identical, just different enough so that the legs in the leg, Bryce looking pretty complete. Let's move on to the next section. 20. Belt Design and Arm Wraps: okay, we've got to fix the buildup. I was originally thinking about just leaving it as it currently is, but it's just a little too un interesting. And the one thing we don't want to do is leave areas looking as if they haven't been worked on all they haven't been finished. If we have all these other costume pieces that had all these characteristics to them, these seems in studs and scratches and what not? And then all of a sudden, we've got this piece that just seems to be sitting there and isn't really designed or integrated in an interesting way. It's really going to stick out like a sore thumb. It's going to look as if it's unfinished, and the last thing we want to do is have something that looks a Ziff. It's incomplete, so I always think about what more can you do? What more can you add to this? That's going to help unify all with everything else until the belt sits nicely around her waist. Its position pretty well, and the lighting direction is pretty good as well, so we're not gonna have to do too much to this. We've already liked it a little bit without curves. Adjustment layer. So a pretty good pace to work with some adjustments with adding in some shadow and curving off the edges a little bit. But overall it works pretty well, and so I'm going to duplicate this part and record around the outside. Now we're going to have the fortunate situation of having the hand sitting on top of the built, so that's going to cover some of the issues that may arise if it wasn't there, if the hand wasn't there, we have to play around a bit with the title range and the logic situation. But for the most part, we can get away with how is currently sitting and some just let the hand take the focus off it. And again, you can see this wraps around to her back quite nicely. The top of photographic elements are really the best months because they really help sell the illusion. You can see it there with the strap on the gauntlet as well. It feels as if it's wrapping around that wrist. It's all these little details that we put in that are going to combine to get up to create the whole. And if we've done our job correctly, people aren't going to notice. People are just going to intuitively say to themselves, Old, That just looks right. Nothing about that seems to stand out, and that's kind of what we want, really. We don't necessarily want things to stand out. We want things to look, how they should be looking. And by that we want people to feel as if they're looking at something that has been created in real life, that it's an actual costume that someone has spent time and money on. If we've done our job right, they won't even notice that we've cloned several areas that we've duplicated various parts that we've painted stuff in well, simply just accepted. And that's the ultimate goal. So I'm bringing in some wraps around the arms, and my initial idea was to actually have them is brown colors. My idea for them was to sort of match the brown tones of the belts and embrace. But having seen the color that I've actually brought in, I'm realizing that Oh, actually, this matches her hair reasonably well. So again, another one of these happy accidents that could happen. Sometimes you have a different idea, and you put some type of design element in that. All of a sudden gives you a new perspective and some new ideas. And it's one of these cases where I think, Why did I think of that earlier? Of course, this makes sense. We need to add a little bit more red in here. Just a little bit of a red accent is just making this pop a little more. And it's those sort of things that you'll put into your designs sent to the client. And then they'll come back and say, Oh, I can't believe you thought of this. This was was brilliant. You're a genius and you just take the credit for it. Of course, little did I know the truth that you pasted in something by accident, only to discover that, oh, this this actually works. It's all part of the process and all part of the fun does it really starts to generate new ideas. That's the Bruins off those type of happy accidents is that they get the creative juices flowing in a different white. All of a sudden, what you had before doesn't seem like such a good idea able. So I've got to work on the right side. Gorlitz and I'm not actually going to put in a photographic element. I'm just going toe straight out. Paint this in. So it's a concern flooding the area. That selection pot is a starting base and he's got a point or the work in. This is why those cases were. It's like I don't have the right hand side version of that gauntlet that we used in the left hand side. I could spend hours trying to find a right hand side image in the right position of a similar goal it, But I really just run the risk of wasting time. Sometimes it's just really going to be easier painting the damn thing it. But I am taking notes from the left hand side gauntlet and thinking about Well, how is that going to look on the right hand side and with that arm positioned how it is, how is that going to affect things? So it's a little bit of guesswork involved here, but we just have to get close enough. We've got the fortune here that most of the torso is obscuring that wrist and there's also going to be some shadowing to which is going to further conceal it. So just like the hand on the belts, they're going to be other things that take the focus off it. So this is pretty much close to the finish line Now. The majority of that character is complete. Now. We just got a few things like accessories, some touches here and there to complete and, of course, adding the back running. So let's head to the finish line. 21. Accessories : time for the accessories. We're going to start with the bag. First reason she's got a bag is because in my mind she's not only a pirate, but she actually has some medical training as well. So I theorized that she's going to have some type of medical equipment with her at all times, So this is a fairly modern bag, but it has a nice texture in a sort of old fashioned quality to it. A little bit of where it's hair looks as if it might have been thrown around for years and years, something that made being passed down from one generation to the next. So it's a really good fit. The main problem is we've got this strapped that we have to get rid of from the front part here. So this is going to be a combination off cloning and painting. There's enough image here toe work with. We could paint this out, but I kind of like how this texture looks and I think it's going to be a little bit difficult trying to replicate that with the brush and then paint in the rest. We need to put in that little gap we have to pay in the edge. We have to define that as well, so not too difficult. It's more just about figuring out what the best approach is going to be, which is the best tool to use for this particular situation. And they're going to be times when you think a certain tool is going to be the correct one . But then you see the results, and it turns out that it's not really as satisfying as it could be. So we have these options. Painting is probably going to be the more difficult off the tools because you are going to need to know a lot more artistic principles in terms of values, in terms of color in terms of form. That's something that takes a little time to learn. It's not something you can necessarily pick up overnight, so it coining is a great way to get certain parts in. But if we get stuck and we have to paint, then we are going to have to a learn some principles off from the middles off illustration piety techniques to get the right result. So learn this up declines all duplicating. That's only going to get you so far as we've already seen. Sometimes painting is going to be the better option. So the alterations to the bag is done. Now it's time to move on to the Warhammer. Unfortunately, missed out on some of the recording here by accident. So I apologize in advance. No, I'm using just a pretty standard sledgehammer at the moment for our foundations here. And I've had to pay special attention to the respective off the sledgehammer source image because she needs to be hauling it in a very specific position. She's holding it towards her head, which means we need to see the bottom off that sledgehammer. And this is where we can use that pencil concepts that we talked about earlier in the lecture where we can take that pencil and figure out where the position all that Hammond needs to be in what direction our source image needs to be shot from. The more we know about the type of image that we need, the more specific we can get when we start searching for our photographic elements. But again, sometimes you're just going to have to paint something in the top of the hammer. For instance, I couldn't find an image that resembled the type of hammer that I created in the original illustration, so the only option was painting. All I had to do was make sure that I was following the same directional path as the existing hammerhead. Unfortunately here, I neglected to actually record figure off the creation or then you have ahead. But I have tried to show how it's sitting along the same directional plane as the original have ahead. So things are really starting to come together. And I'm finally thinking about, Well, where are the improvements I need to stop making in terms of lighting, because that's really going to be the last part that we address. There's still quite a bit of cleanup lifts, quite a few things that I have to fill in if you straight fragments here and there that I have to take care off in few parts that color or tonal adjustments here and there. But we have very much on our way to the finish line, and this is the best feeling at this stage because you've put in alot this work. This is something like 12 12.5 hours off work that's gone into this and the results is starting to come together. Finally, you go through several stages through the creation process, sticking that this just is never going toe work. This thing that I'm sort of stitching together as best I can is just never going to come to completion. It's just going to forever be this hodgepodge of pizzas that are never going to minute into a collective whole, and then at some point it just seems to emerge all that work. All that time it's being spent into trying to get these textures of these shadows. And these calls correct is finally turning into something. And as I was mentioning earlier, the moment you get that ah ha moment where you suddenly see where it's finally heading, it really spurs you on. You might spend the first four or five hours just sort of working out exactly what path my going to take you. Is this actually going toe work, trialling things out, throwing ideas out, putting your ideas in, and sometimes it doesn't work. Sometimes you are going to have to spend that extra half in the hour fixing that, um, up fixing that piece of costume up just to get it right just to get it looking like this, if it meshes with everything else around it and when you work through that point, you eventually get to this point now where you can stop really putting in these finer details to push that design even further. At this stage, with everything more or less in its place, I'm starting to think to myself What, exactly how about mists? And the thing that I realized that I missed at this stage was the shadow under the right side shoulder but trying to get to obsessive as well. You're not going to capture everything, exactly. It's asking too much of yourself to try and do that. We're not gonna get every highlight. Correct. We're not gonna get every shadow, every bump, every crease. It's just far too difficult, so it don't put that much pressure on yourself. So I'm onto the hair strands, and that is usually the last thing I end up doing. In this case, we've got a few little areas that we still have to clean up, so let's get onto that bit now and finish this off 22. Final Cutout: Alright, it's time to cut the background image up now. Prior to this, I had all of the original foundations that I put down in its own folder and actually emerged that fold together. Now we no longer need it. But the reason I haven't deleted this merch group is actually because there are small fragments off those original concept pieces that are actually still showing through. And you can see here is I'm turning on and off the layers just where those gaps are actually showing through. So I could do one of two things in this situation. I can either spend the time and fill in all those gaps by painting the moment. Or I can simply just keep the parts of that concept group that I need underneath. And that's ultimately what I end up doing now. I could probably just erase things, but I actually and go to use the pen tal he because it's ain't more precise method of extraction, and they're going to be some areas I have to cut around very carefully. This part that I'm doing now, I don't actually have to be this precise for this particular image, so this is more just a demonstration as to how you go about cutting an image out. Precisely now, to get the shapes that we want for our pencil or you have to do is click a new point, hold that click and then dragged the path to the desired could shape. If you want to stop that curvature and create just simply a straight line or you have to do in affinity, photo is simply to click on the most active point Watson Photo shop. We actually have to hold Ault and click on that active point, and that's effectively going to start your path from scratch. And then, once you've joined your part together, got to selection at the top Quick, select and then simply delete the part of the background that we no longer need. You have created a mask for that underlying concept, just in case something goes wrong. So this is the time where mosques are really going to start to come into play. We created all these parts of costume and figure into their own separate groups, but they're going to be pixel fragments that are present throughout these parts throughout all these groups, and it's going to be significantly easier for us to simply apply a layer mask to these groups and delete these loose fragments that it is trying to figure out. Well, where is this little bit of fragment coming from? Exactly if we know roughly where that fragment is, which group it's in. We don't have to bother trying to figure out which photographic part within that group is causing us the trouble. So it masks are going to be our main cleanup toe. All right, she's cut out. For the most part, we've got a few areas here and there that need a few touch ups, and then it's just a matter of putting the background. 23. Touchups and Lighting Adjustments: on to the final detail ing got this cool starring that we've gotta put on her. You know, we could source, um, scars, of course, but it's just gonna be easy in this case, painting it on this is really the stage of the process where you start thinking about Is there anything else I can actually do? I've done all this work. It's come together nicely. Do I need to? Any things like blood stains or dirt markings or scratches or dents in the Armagh? Maybe chips in the paint, scratches on the weaponry, that sort of thing. And it's those type of little details that people are really going to appreciate if you've got a client and they've sent you a brief saying, Okay, I've got this type of character. I need them to look a certain way. I need to have the image be a certain field. If you go that extra mile, they are going to want to work with you again because I'll see that you care about those little details. You want us to do what you simply took it upon yourself to do that little bit extra and again say themselves. Wow, this person really took this much further than I imagined. So we want to well, them. So I'm starting to clean up. You can say I've got the mask layer around the whole shoulder armour group. So, as I said in the last video, this is where the masks really come into play. You can tell they're all these straight fragments of pixel and bits of shadow that are just sticking out here. And that's another reason why we cut out that background image, because it gives us an idea where the strike fragments are and we don't want them looking here for when we put out background in. Now we've got a finger that we have to fix up so we could either pine it in. But I'm just going to actually copy the middle finger. Duplicate that and just use that as a replacement for the index targets closing off. No one's going to notice, and that's just case of blending in all the other areas so we can reuse body parts as well if we need to. So I'm using the blending options near on the hair to try to bring a little bit of the shadow from underneath to the surface. I've got a layer of red paints over her hair set to the color blending mode, but it's just a bit too flat, and these adjustments are going to help make the dark areas look a bit more natural. So we are onto the lighting fixes now, and this is going to take a little bit of thinking about where our light source is coming from. Overall, it's not too bad at the moment, but it's about analyzing our services and thinking about, well, what's really going to come into contact with light. We've got two light sources, of course, So we're going to get a pretty even lighting all round for out costume. And for a character now, the blending mode. I've got set to lighten on this lie up, but you might have to play around a little bit to see which lighting setting is going to work the best. It's all going to depend really on just where you want to take the lighting off your character, we could actually, if we really wanted to changed the lighting significantly of its character, make darker areas look far more in shadow than what they currently up, change the mood entirely at in a new curves adjustment. Laugh where you could significantly change the whole tonal values of the image pushed all highlights all the way up in the shadows all the way to black. If you really wanted to, for this instance, just trying to keep it as even as possible. And I'm only working on the lighting at the moment shortly. All end up creating a new life in the shadows. We want to keep these separate again because it's all about control. If we put out highlights and shadows on the same layout, it's just going to make things far more difficult than it needs to be. I recommend studying about light internal values. It's really going to be beneficial for not just what I'm doing here, but for art in general. In top of illustration work, you need to know how light works in order to replicate it as accurately as you can. So now we're moving on to probably the most important area off lighting, and that's the face. So I'm starting to lighten up. The air is on her left hand side a little more because if you reference the original stock image. The lighting on the models left hand side is a little bit right up, so I'm making Janus faced a little brighter on this side, and specifically, I'm targeting the bony in areas of the face. Those areas of the fights are going to protrude more, and I'm going to subsequently capture him or the light so on to the shadows. And obviously we want to be looking for the areas that I'm not going to be affected by the light. And because we've got two light sources, they are somewhat canceling or softening our shadows a bit. They're not millions. Harsh is what they would be if there was only one main light source or if we had one of the light sources being less intense. But because they're off about equal intensity, the shadows aren't nearly as strong. Learning how what works is going to make your characters look better so very much recommend studying up on it. So after 40 hours off painting and cloning and copying and pasting and everything else in between, we finally finished out character. Well, that's left to do is the background and varmint 24. Final Composition: time for the environment. Now, before we start doing anything with the background, we actually have to figure out where exactly our character is standing in three D space. So we've actually got some useful markers on our original stock image that are gonna help guide us with this. And it's the shadows on the floor we've got to shadow see representing two different lighting sources. But that actually going to help double as perspective markets. If we drag a couple of line see in the same direction is thes diagonal shadows. We're going to get the horizon point, or at least a rough approximation of where the horizon point is. So if we know approximately where the horizon point is, we can start layering in backer and images for our environment that match that perspective . Now. I've already got some of the components that I want to stitch together for the background environment. Now it's not going to match the perspective that the character is stared again. Exactly. It is going to be close enough, however, as we mentioned earlier, it's about feeling correct. As long as nothing looks out of place, then you can get away with it now I'm doing a full bodied image here, so you are going to have to take into account the perspective the character is standing in . However, if you're doing a 3/4 version of the character, maybe from the knees up, you don't really have to worry too much about getting the perspective right. In that instance, it's just going to be too much work involved trying to work out well, Where exactly is this character standing in three dimensional space? The focus is always going to be on the character first anyway. So if it's not a full body shot, you don't have to worry about being that technical with your background environments. The thing we do need to do, however, whether it's full bodied or a 3/4 is we need to add a sense of depth to the environment. So you might notice that I've got one of the live filters active for the castle, and it's a blur filter. And that's because if we were taking a photograph of someone in real life, the focus would be on the person and background would become blood. Now what the depth of field is is going to change depending on what the camera settings are , of course. But again, that's technical information that we don't really need. We just need to simulated as best we can. All we really need to do is to ensure the image becomes sharp up. The closer it comes to the foreground and character. So that's why I got separate. Blood fills is for the castle image and for the rocks she's standing on. The rocks are going to be crispy because it's closer to our hypothetical camera. So I'm doing a scar replacement, and I'm thinking to myself, the light source we've got in my mind looks as if it would soon overcast day. So that's the type of sky that I've gone for. And then it's just a case of blending it in and adding its own blur filter as well and making sure that the blur in the sky it's just a little more intense than the castle because the clouds up going to be slightly further away. So the further things go back into space, the blurry things are going to become so now I'm adding in the noise filter and you may see that it's actually being applied to a new group called Full Body. And that's because I've taken a lot of their other groups and put them into this new full body group, which means that adding this noise filter or any other thought or adjustment is now going to affect the entire body. And I'm going to do this type of background as well. This a little bit of noise and we don't need a lot of it is just going to help blend things together. It's going to make it look formal photographic, as we mentioned earlier in the lecture. Photographs have a little bit of going to them, and this is a really good simulation that's going to help unify everything. And from there it's just trying out some subtle color and lodging variations. And eventually you get to the point where you sit back and you say I think this is about done and the only thing left then is sending it to the client that you've been working for and crossing your fingers and hoping that they really like it, because the whole time you're thinking to yourself when you're working for someone, are they actually going to like this thing? of putting all this time and effort into it, and you're never 100% certain. If this is exactly what they want or we can do is just do the best we can put all the effort into it and then hopefully one day after you've sent it, they send you a follow up email thanking you and saying Let's do another one.