Digital Creations: Concept Art Objects & Effects with Photoshop

1. 1 equipmentetc: First of all, the computer I'm using is just in my Mac. But this lesson should apply to a PC or Mac. So no worries. There just want to let everyone know what I was using. Um, I also got a wake on into his three is my pin tablet. Something like this is really a must. When I first started digital art a very long time ago, I decided I didn't need one of these and I actually used a touch pad on my laptop. And it's just not at all the say of these. These air must. It simulates the traditional experience of creating are much better. There's a sensitivity with how much pressure you push on the pad, and there's really no substitutes. I would strongly strongly recommend one of these in this particular model has worked well for May for a very long time and finally amusing photo shop CC. But none of the the things will be doing in photo shopper particularly unique to this version, so feel free to use whatever version you like. I think the work tool might be the only relatively new invention that I use from time to time. I think that comes back to photo shop CS or something. So any recent, reasonably new version of photo shop should work just fine for what will be using. So we're gonna look at some very basic photo shop stuff. Ah, the first thing is image size and resolution. Um, I like Teoh. Do 300 dp isa standard. Just always want to make sure you have more resolution than you need. That way you don't end up with anything too small. It's your finished product. I also wanted to include the shapes and set ups of the main brushes that I'll be using. So here they are. I have one for sketching, one for painting and one that I use with the smudge tool for blending. So here they are. This isn't hugely important, so certainly feel free to use whatever works for you. But I just wanted to include what I'll be using 2. Rendering Metal 1: to start things off, we'll do some simple exercises for rendering realistic metal textures. You know, just setting up my basic document. I like to work on a ah middle gray background canvas. And I usually start by making simple silhouette shapes for exercises like this. And we're just going to do a few very basic ones a sphere cylinder and then kind of Ah, curved tube shape. Um, but basic, uh, you know, three dimensional lighting principles will apply. Will have, ah, highlight a course shadow and some reflected light to make these objects seem round and ah , three dimensional. Uh, the 1st 2 shapes I did with the simple, uh, what's the oval and rectangle Marquis shapes. But for this one, I'm I'm actually using a path And then, uh, just sending a stroke on that path. And you do that by dragging ah, path down Teoh to the stroke path icon. I'm just like that. It'll apply the brush your using to the past. So that's how I made that curvy shape on the right side and just spacing things out a little bit here so that they'll fit the page. But don't worry too much about how to make these particular shapes were mostly focusing on rendering here. And here's a look at the color I'm using its ah, very slightly green but nearly nearly neutral grey shape and, um, the chalk brush that I use that that should be available for download here if you'd like to use this brush, Um, I should also mention that I have the brush mode in color dodge, and this is important because it makes the color more saturated and a lot brighter with each brushstroke. Ah, and that's kind of key to giving this a metal feel. Metal has a different luster than any other materials like skin, for example, or would and you really wanted to get very shiny. And it's, ah, it's brightest highlight. So that's Ah, that's what I'm doing here. That's what makes it convincingly metal just like that, that's already pretty believable. I'm switching to the smudge tool just to blend this out a little bit, but I don't want to kill a lot of that nice textured look because that's ultimately what what makes it seem realistic that that kind of grainy, ah layered texture that metal objects have, and I'm generalizing a bit because there's there are all kinds of different metal, and they can all look differently. But the type of metal that I use in my artwork most recently is kind of, Ah, a manmade machine look that you can use for any kind of vehicles or or ah or whatever any kind of man made metal object. Um, so now that I've got my my main values in place, I'm adding another light source and still painting in color dodge mode so that this gets very bright. But just putting an edge light along the top here just to give that a little more three dimensionality. And, uh, I think that's very effective. It looks very three dimensional and Spirit KAL. So let's move on to this simple cylinder. This is actually a lot easier because it's it's. I guess you'd only have to worry about the light working in ah, in one plane. Unlike the sphere, it's just going to, ah, wrap around in one direction. So I started by holding down the shift key just to make Cem perfectly vertical lines. But now I'm going more freehand justo lay in those values and again, um, core highlight and then a little reflected light near the dark edge and a little more blending and already that it looks pretty much like a metal pipe. So the simple, simple lighting techniques get you 90% of the way there, and then we'll go over some detail ing to give these even more realism. But these basic principles just highlight core shadow and reflected light. Um, that that does the trick, and I just doing some subtle color and saturation adjustments so that that reflected light looks just a little bit different than the the main light source. Similar principles for the, uh, the curved sail under here, um, just a little more challenging now that it's, ah, curved shape. But the same basic thing in the color dodge mode will do a nice job of taking you from a very low value to that high, shiny highlight without many brushstrokes. So it's It's a nice way to control the way the tone builds up, and it usually gets you to a very metallic effect without you having to change colors or do do any sampling of colors on your page. You can just stick with one color and that brush mode will will do the rest for you and you end up with a nice metallic look. So a little more hue saturation adjustment. Just Teoh change the way that reflected light looks versus the main light. And there we go, just flipping the canvas a little bit just to get a fresh look at things. I'll do that from time to time. Just Teoh. Make it look fresh in your eyes and adding some edge lighting to the cylindrical shapes as well. And ah, that was really at a lot of realism. And it's It's so easy. Same thing on the curved cylinder here, and, um, feel free to stop here. But, uh, we'll take this to the next level. In the next lesson, Teoh, add some details to give this even more realism. 3. Rendering Metal 2 - Adding Interest: next, we will take our rendering exercise to the next level by adding a few details to make thes metal objects seem even more realistic. And to start with, I'm gonna group thes layers that I've been working with here and ah, merge those into a ah emerged group. So I'm just working on a single merged layer now, and we're just gonna add in some scratches here feature that always seems to be at home and metal that it can make it look a little bit older, but just makes it look a lot more realistic. And, um, I usually like to be kind of restrained with this effect, but you can You can go nuts on this at as many stress scratches and imperfections as you like. And they really had some character to your metal and really make them seem tangible in the viewers eyes so similar effects across all three shapes here. I've still got my brush in the color dodge mode and I'm using that same nearly flat gray but slightly green color and just adding some little small lines. I got my brush it about 20% flow and 20% opacity, but feel free to adjust that. It's good when you're scratches have varying levels of intensity. Um, just to give that some nice surface realism and next up, we're gonna add some metal. Seems kind of make these look like objects that were machine together by human hands. So starting, just making ah, dark line using that core shadow color kind of curving around this sphere and make sure toe make that ellipse match the contour of the sphere correctly, or it'll look weird. So I'm being kind of slow and careful with that. But basically just making it seem like different plates of metal were, ah, welded together or ah, riveted together. That's a great way to add detail to any metal surface, especially if it's looking a little flat or boring. That's that's a really nice wayto to give it some punch. So, um, yeah, same kind of thing on these cylindrical shapes. Just some little seems where where the joints would come together. Now that we have our dark lines in place, I'm just gonna go along the dark line and add a little highlight just to make it seem like there's ah, slight raised edge there, that is catching some light. I've even got some scratches. Coming off of those seams would make sense if those seam edges air sticking up a little than maybe they got a little more beat up than the rest of this object. Um, and, uh, we're really starting to get to a nice level of realism on these these objects just with ease, extremely simple tricks. And ah, of course, that this can apply Teoh virtually any any metal man made object that you may encounter in your illustration work. Next up, I'm going to create some rivets, and I just start by adding a little dark spot, kind of a shadow, and then a very tiny white highlight. And if if you can even fit in a little reflected light even better, But once we have one rivet made, all we have to do is switch to the clone stamp tool, and, um, we can repeat the rivet over and over. There we go have just sampled it by holding down the altar key. And just like that, we can repeat this rivet as many times as we need, um, again, A good a good, less A good trick to have but exercise some restraint because you can really get carried away. It makes you feel kind of kind of good when you can just rock and roll with all these rivets all over the place. But it can start to look a little overdone if you're not a little bit restrained with it. Next, we're gonna add Cem rolled edges, basically little metal threading that you'll see on a pipe that can screw into some kind of ah socket or, ah, really, that this effect can look cool, even if it doesn't have a specific engineering type purpose. But I've added a small cylinder basically going across, and I'm doing the same lighting scheme with a highlight in a reflected light. And then I'm simply repeating this and then merging and then repeating that emerging again so you can see those layers being copied. I'm doing that by holding down. I'm using the Arrow tool, which is V on your keyboard shortcuts and holding down Ault and shift and just moving it. And that creates a copy, and, uh, then you just just manipulated to fit. The shapes, however, fits with the the object you're trying to render and just like that. These look like engineered pipes and have cool details going on. So I hope that helps some Some neat interest we can add to our metal objects. 4. Rendering Wood: that we will learn some simple would rendering exercises. And I'm going to start by making another silhouette shape similares we did with our metal exercise and I'm picking a dark, fairly saturated brown color is the base just Teoh make it seem like the natural warm tones that we see in wood grain. And I've started a new layer and I'm just making some kind of random vertical marks because what we're gonna do is apply a motion blur to this. And, um, it's a very quick, easy way to make something look like wood grain. So just making Cem fairly random marks that have varying values and coldness to make this seem more random, set your motion blur on an angle of negative 90. And I'm repeating that layer copying and merging a few times. And, ah, just like that, we've got some vertical striations that you'd expect to see in wood grain, and, uh, it looks pretty good, but we need to give this a little more attention before it starts looking like believable. Would eso I'm adding Cem? Cem seems similar to what we did in the metal exercise and a little bit of highlight to make these look like individual planks. And, ah, wood grain is something you can very easily use a photo texture for. But, uh, often, it's easier to just ah, just add in some painting on your own. So that's why I thought this would be a valuable thing to include in this lesson. Just after all, the whole point is teaching you all these little little quick tricks to have in your your bag of, ah, magic tools you have his Ah, is a concept artist or an illustrator. Things you could make your work look much better without a whole lot of effort because after all of your time is valuable and and how you, ah, how you can make a living is is how how quick and efficient you can be. So this is ah, an awfully easy way to make some some would very quickly and very easily so, um, making these planks a little bit varied from board to board no to look like in real life and, uh, just just wanted to make that subtle effect. You can see I painted back a little bit with the history brush to kind of come back, Teoh to an earlier state. Um, some more seem work in just details to try and bring this all together. But once you have that, that would grain effect. With the motion blur, 90% of the work is done, and and the rest is just, ah adding in some details toe to make it a little more interesting and painterly, but seems and little imperfections like scratches and those little curvy parts I was smudging into the wood grain. Those all go a long way, Teoh help the effect. But, um, you know, you should be a keen observer of even the most minor thing going on with household objects like wood planks, cause, uh, it can all come in handy when when you have toe have to render that is an artist. So just a little more blending here to make these little curvy knots in the wood see more realistic. But, uh, this one's just about there. Just a few more, uh, detail moves to do. But, uh, that's the basic idea, making these little edges pop and making the scratches and imperfections a little more pronounced around the seams because presumably they are, ah, raised up in getting getting beat up more than the rest of the flat would would in real life. But that's the basic idea. This looks like an old floor, possibly an old fence, and ah, that that kind of thing is something you're called upon to render frequently is Ah is a concept artist, so just a little bit of color adjustment, and I think this one is about done. 5. Rendering Jewels & Glass Containers: in this US, and we will learn to render jewels and glass containers. So I started. I've already got some silhouettes here. The one on the left will be a simple, oval shaped Jewell. And the one on the right will be kind of ah, magic potion, Glass container. So, um, I'm starting budgets, painting in some blue tones, and I'm deliberately making it lightest, uh, near kind of the bottom third of this, and I'm leaving a darker towards the top. And if if you've taken my other digital painting course where we paint the human face, um, it's a similar technique to how I paint eyes you wanted to seam deep and like it has some dimension and not a flat object. And, um, we accomplish that by making this bottom third part the brightest part of the shape, and then later will put a very bright highlight on the top third. In this, ah has a really dramatic effect of making the light seem to bounce around inside of this object on it. It's a really interesting effect. So once I have those tones in place, I'm just sort of smudging that around a little bit and uh, brightening that up just a little bit more so that it wasn't too dark and a little more refinement. But after we have that in place, I'm creating a new layer for our highlight and up near the top third kind of on the opposite edge. I'll start laying that in just with pure white and, um, make it about, ah, 100% bright. And I'm sort of adding a little more light, curving around the contour just to make it kind of match that oval shape and then blending that out just a little bit. Uh, and just like that, this is already looking like a pretty believable Jewell. It looks, looks translucent and clear, but but still has a lot of really brilliant color and seems very, very deep and interesting. So just re sizing this highlight. That's why it's always good to have that on a separate layer so that you can make those adjustments very easily on adding a little bit of highlight to the other side with glass or metal objects, for that matter. Honestly, the more light sources the better to an extent, because these objects are so shiny that that they catch light from just about anywhere. Um, obviously could probably go too far with that and make it a little confusing. But, um, feel free to experiment with that as many as you need and just adding on some scratches here just to make the surface of this glassy Jewell seem a little more realistic. And, uh, at some of bright ones, too, that that edge lighting to that's always a nice trick toe. Really Give it some extra realism. So I think that's about it. That's how we do a simple Jewell. And, uh, I know it seems like a strange thing Teoh to be offering, but this principle can be applied to all kinds of things. You could have some kind of futuristic robot that has, ah, power source that looks like this or any kind of weapon that might have a magic jewell inside. So a very handy, uh, technique to know how to do so now for the glass container. Basically, it's the same principle, but with a slightly more complex shape and ah, a few more details that we have to keep in mind. Once again, we're putting our brightest tones down in that bottom third and just tryingto fill out this round shape and of adding that bright highlight is if the light were kind of bouncing around inside, opposite of the highlight that we're gonna add later and some smudging here just to smooth that out but don't want to smooth the, uh the modelled look that we get is a really nice effect from using that chalk. Brush it about 20% opacity and just tapping in tones. So I'm ah, trying to figure out how I'd like it to look like the liquid edge inside of there. Uh, I'm gonna bring some of these tones from the liquid, but I wanted to seem like there's, ah, water level kind of going on in there around the edge just to make this seem like glass. I'm adding Cem some highlight all the way around the edge. If you look at a glass of water even if its filled with a dark, uh, dark liquids have filled coke or something, it still seems to be lighter around the edge, just ah, in effect of glass bending light. So something good to remember with a glass container. And now, just like we did on the Jewell just adding some highlights. But trying to keep the shape of this odd kind of cylinder on top of a sphere glass, container shape and, uh, just lightening up the top looked a little dark with that silhouette and ah, smudging these together. And we're starting to establish our water's edge and adding, adding some dark spots, the opening at the top in a little bit of shadow under that rolled glass edge. But this is starting to look pretty realistic already. And your smudging those two colors together so or the blue fluid and just the empty air that occupies it on top. And you can see I've kind of got the light bending where the liquid in the in the air come together in their glass. Does weird things toe light. So ah, you can't really go wrong because it all looks nice and random like it doesn't really life . So just treating these highlights a little bit with some smudging to make them a little more realistic. But, uh, this is ah, already looking pretty believable, adding some more highlights, just like we did in the Jewell secondary light sources. Just if this glass object was picking up light sources from all over its environment and, uh, has a nice magic potion. Look to it. There we go. A little more highlighting and just flipping things. Teoh, make sure nothing is getting strange. Make the composition fresh in my eyes. Ah, great technique, Teoh to do Whenever an object starts seeming stale, you feel like you can't trust your eyes. Just flip it. It seems like a brand new image just like that, adding all kinds of little random scratches and details just to try and make this one seems more realistic. But I'd say we're getting very close and, uh, looks certainly looks to be a fluid filled container of some kind, and, uh, that's what we're going for. This, uh, this is a very handy thing. Another category, I guess, of objects that you're often called upon to illustrate. Is a concept artist or just an illustrator? A little magic objects for the hero to collect in a video game. Say, um, always nice to know how to make something look like a realistic liquid container, and the applications there are are very numerous, so it's also just a really fun exercise as well just to play with all the different light sources that interact with one another differently and all the cool things that water and glass due to our I. So I I think it might be cool to Ah, Teoh dark in this up a little bit and make everyone will try a different color on this side . So just one of their to be a little more contrast there and, ah, painting back with the history brush again. As you can see, I just check off one of the little history items in my history panel. There's a little check box next to each item that gets logged whenever you perform a photo shop operation. And once you check one of those off, you can switch to the history brush with why, and it will paint back to that state's. That's a very useful trick. Just trying some different colors here to see if there's something else. It might look a little bit more interesting. And, uh, I thought this, uh, dark magenta would be kind of need certainly looks. Ah, very magic and history brush. Once again, I'm sort of painting back some of it to that blue color that gives it a nice tonal variation. It's got some blues and purples, even some pink. Um, now I've sampled one of those colors, but I'm making a little bit brighter one. And ah, I'm just painting in some little kind of bubbles or floating objects inside of there and just using the clone stamp again too quickly. Repeat that all over. It'll look like little air bubbles floating around in there and give it a more realistic sense of of being liquid. And I've copied that layer and ah brightened it a little bit. Here we go. Copy it here and blur it when things were in a liquid container there, a few that are in sharp focus and most of them seem blurry. So I've blurted. And then I'm just painting back again with the history brush so that only those right next to the front edge look sharp. Eso that's it. Rendering jewels and glass containers. Hope you found this interesting 6. Armor: Now we will begin our metal armor project. So I've got my design here. I had a rough sketch done, which I added in ink layer on top of and underneath that is my silhouette layer. That'll be handy because we can command click on that and paint within that shape any time we need. So to get started, I'll put my brush on color dodge mode. Use that same very subdued, barely green gray color, and we'll start breaking this complex object into more simple shapes. So let's treat this middle torso part as if it were a cylinder. And if if you can reduce any complicated shape into its base components, it makes it much less daunting and less challenging. So, uh, just think of this this middle torso shaped like basically a cylinder with a few details that you just carve out with shadow, and I'm doing that just by erasing. But that's basically it. Just about every object on this suit of armor is either Spiric away or cylindrical or ah, kind of just a flat shape. So if you start thinking of it in those terms, it's much less daunting. Teoh to render and just the same principles apply that highlight area, a core shadow and a reflected light. And then, of course, we'll add all of our cool details that we learned as well to give this interest. But I am going around a lot of these edges that I raced away and adding some pretty bright rolled edges similar to the threading we added to the cylinder shape in the metal exercise . But that, uh, that really separates these little segments into a believable components. It makes it look much more realistic and gives it that cool, shiny metal look that that you often desire. Um, in terms of style, I would say I'm coming at this from sort of a steampunk esthetic. This certainly isn't very futuristic like Iron Man, but I wouldn't quite say it's quite medieval looking either. So that's the basic design that I have in mind. But that, uh, that doesn't really govern the technique very much so much. This just the design. So don't feel limited. You know this course you can render any kind of ah art style that you like with these techniques. I'd say if if you're doing something futuristic, I'd be a little more smooth and sleek and the opposite. If you're doing something medieval, make it look a beat up old. But you can see where I had those rolled metal shapes around the neck collar. I just repeated that with the clone stamp just to make some very easy kind of repeating pattern looks and, ah, very efficient way to make something pretty, pretty professional looking without a whole lot of painstaking effort. The other advantage to using that clone stamp is it. Often you want things to look like they're perfectly repeating one another. Um, what I mean by that is each little loop of that collar should be exactly like the one below it. So I don't feel like you're cheating by copying something you did. That's really what you want. That's the way, would look in reality. It would be perfect, little repeating segments so that that's ah, good way to go. So now that I've got this middle torso part will kind of a race away this armor shoulder guard and get started on that. But when you think about it, this is just another cylindrical type shape. It's just happening off center a little bit and Ah, same thing. We'll put our highlight here near the middle and get that all the way up to a pretty nice shine almost all the way up to pure white Justo. Make it pop value ranges is what makes something looks what makes something look metallic. If if it's got the darkest darks and the lightest lights, that will usually do it, and it also makes it look very rich and interesting. If if you've got that entire spectrum so again, just outlining this shape that we just defined with some little rolled edges and I noticed I go extremely bright wherever there's a corner that that's a nice effect as well. So wherever your your armor, whatever object, your rendering has a corner. Give it a few extra brushstrokes, and that'll make those corners really pop out and define the shape in a nice way. Notice. I've kept these on separate layers just, uh, just so I could do a little bit of extra fine tuning with this shoulder piece versus the torso piece. As you can see, that came in handy when I had toe erase away a little shadow on the torso piece. But once that's done, and they work well together. I've just merged those two metal layers that I have going because you you want. Once you have things looking good, it's nice toe. Merge them together so they can start becoming part of, ah, cohesive object and not not individual segments. Some more highlights here just to make that trim work look a little more interesting. But, um, I'm trying to give this up first pass. Really? Where we're we're getting all of our values in place. First will come back and do the individual detail steps like seems and rivets a little bit later. But to start with, let's just get all of our values in place for the entire object. That way, if you do it in steps like that, you don't run the risk of your your object looking disjointed or like it was done by different artists cause, say, for example, if I just started doing that shoulder and I rendered it to 100% full detail and then it was time to move on to the chest. By the time I got there, it might just look a little bit different. It's it's amazing, your style of painting can change even minute to minute often. If if a technique starts feeling good, you can sort of go off on a tangent, so it's good to just get the broad strokes in place on the entire thing. It also make sure that all the light sources agree. If you get bogged down in details on one small part of your painting, you can you can lose at cohesiveness and a little bit of blending here. But, uh, it's It's basically just more cylinders mawr small rolled edges along those places where the segments meat and ah, and that's about it. The color dodge mode gets us up to these bright values with without a whole lot of of effort, and we don't even have to change the color in our palate to achieve that. Just a racing away some of this trim to make it stand out just a bit. And we'll do some treatment on that in later steps as well, just to make that seem a little bit different. And, uh, that the metal looks a little bit monochromatic right now, sort of one note, but we'll do some adjustments on that as well, to give it a little bit more color interest and playing around with the idea of that little center part. That's Ah, kind of rolled up around the the jewel objects in the middle, and Cem reflected light on the other side. Just refining that a little bit more of it That's looking good may seem a little bit 80 D, but I do try toe jump around the page a little bit just to make sure I'm I'm not getting stuck on one particular part. And ah, bogged down on the details just for the reasons we've been talking about adding some highlights to this little detail on this. Uh, guess you'd call it a gauntlet on his arm, his forearm and some more rolled edge highlights. Cloning that a little just to give it a cool repeating detail and notice. I just repeated it on that other segment of armor and we'll do some more cloning here. Uh, cheap tricks. I'm teaching you guys, but they sure do come in handy, and they and make your projects go very quickly. Once, once you give it a little bit of practice treating this Ah little Jewell holder thing on the gauntlet similarly Teoh to the one in the middle and another one up on the shoulder here and those little spiky things that kind of hold a Jewell in its setting. I'm adding those little details as well, but basically just a bunch of simple shapes assembled together and with some very minor line work mixed in and some little details with with a fine paintbrush, Uh, it really starts like looking like something much more complex and interesting. And, ah, basically, that's how you get from from a blank canvas to a really finished looking painting is just by breaking it down into smaller, simpler steps and not something that's, ah, too daunting. So hopefully that's what this process can can help with is breaking down what what seems like a difficult task into something that's, ah, much more, uh, easy to manage. Just cloning that rolled edge anytime you noticed Teoh areas of of metal objects that look like they might have the same lines feel free to use that clone stamp. It's s on your keyboard just is a reminder, but that's basically that the only tools I use are the brush tool, the smudge tool for blending and the clone stamp. I shouldn't say the only ones, but those air, Certainly the ones that use the most. And, uh and you can get pretty much anything you need done with with very little else. Just writing this up a little bit, giving some details to the glove's fingers here and just copied those and flipped, um, and they fit on the other side. Another nice time saving trick. So now we're gonna add some rivets. The general values look good here, so I'm just rendering a teeny tiny little sphere with a small highlight underneath. I've merged everything into a single layer, and I'm just using the clone stamp. And, ah, I had plan for this so you can see on my ink layer. I've got little circles ever so often, and I'm just, ah, clone stamping in these rivets wherever they occur, you know, very quickly Give it that That cool steampunk, uh, metal work. Look that that I was going for adding in some scratches here, just like we did in our metal exercises just to give ah, this armor, some or interest make it seem like it's been in a battle or two. And I take that as Faras is you like or as faras the story you're trying to tell, but that can really start making it seem like something tangible. So one of my favorite parts of doing a painting is when it it sort of stops looking like marks on a screen and start seeming like something realistic that you could you could touch . So just using a dark color and I should say, a switch back to normal painting mode. This is not colored dodge. It won't work in Color dodge, but just adding some dark lines and little details to make this metal seem like it was machine together out of multiple metal plates, and that will make it seem a lot more realistic. So just adding some more highlight and scratches on the underside, and that's looking very realistic. I didn't want this little detail to be raised, but I thought it would look like a nice bit of etching on that smaller shoulder guard. There we go, merging those two together. Now I'm gonna add some jewels. So just like our jewel rendering exercise, I'm really just doing one of these off to the side and I'm just gonna copy and paste it a lot. So let's put that lighter color inside near the bottom third kind of radiating out from that bottom third area, and we're gonna blend that out a little bit. But, uh, all those cool swim e jewell effects happening in there is the light bounces around, making it just a little darker near the top before we put in this very bright white highlight and a little bit of reflected light on the other side and some scratches just for added realism. But that's about it. So I've copied it, and I'm just going to start repeating this shape wherever it occurs around the figure and adjusting the brightness and the color to fit a little better. But that's it. Just making copies and transform, transforming them to fit whatever setting they were in make This guy's suit seems a lot more ornate all of a sudden, like he's some kind of important armored figure, maybe even a implied magic powers with those jewels. There we go, just merging those together. Um, I'm actually copying the whole thing. I wanted the setting as well, to repeat up near the collar here. That's a very effective, easy way to add Cem embellishment to your piece. So I've got a new layer. I'm gonna add some edge lighting, but first I wanted to makes him perfectly oval shaped edge lighting for these collar shapes . So I just used the marquee tool and then subtracted out a smaller circle. And, uh, I'm just erasing. Excuse me. Erasing away parts that I don't need and it makes it fit that edge, make it seem perfectly machine is opposed. If you tried to paint a perfect oval shape, it would be a little more difficult. So nice to use your marquee tools whenever you need something to look very geometrically perfect. And that can really make your peace seem a little more solid is a detail. So now that I have those more geometric shapes in place, I'm doing a little bit of hand painting as well. Just add some edge lighting near the top. The secondary light sources always always really fun. Step just takes it to another level of realism, and, uh, and you can start seeing what you're finished. Project is gonna look like, always a very rewarding part of the painting. So just adding those light sources kind of around the contour. Uh, I try to make those more pronounced near the top and, uh, not quite so much near the bottom, a little bit more reflected light in these darker parts. And once again, you kind of can't go wrong, adding more light sources. So wherever, if, if your object is looking a little bit flat just at another bounce light source somewhere around there. And if it's made of metal, it probably won't look out of place. So give that a try. I can kind of get a project out of a rut. If, if something seems off and you can't quite say what it is, just try adding some more light. Sources also adds, Ah, a lot of three dimensionality makes it seem very rounded. We have that merged and going to do a bit of ah, color adjustment just to, ah, differentiate the some of the trim and the metal maybe make it seem like it's made out of two kinds of metal, and also just toe vary the tones a little bit, uh, make it seem slightly less monochromatic, and it's very subtle, but, um, you can see I've got that color balance adjustment layer, and I put the mask on all black, and I'm just painting in with a white soft brush to reveal some of that slightly browner color. And, uh, that gives it a really nice variation. Makes it look like old copper or something like that and similarly of making making another adjustment here. But I'm making it a little bit darker and a excuse me a little bit greener and, uh, painting that in just on the trim just to look like it's, um, different, different quality metal that was used to make these trim colors and, ah, play around with that. It's a fun way toe to make your metal seem more ornate and, uh, kind of gilded, I guess, and gives it a lot of nice interest. And make sure it doesn't look too one note or or ah, monochromatic in your final product. But take that as far as, ah, as subtle as you like. I'm just adjusting these colors again, just to see if there's anything I like better, and I'm even knocking back the opacity a bit, since, uh, since I thought it looked a little too bold is the final step. I've merged it all into its own layer again, and I'm hitting it with some color dodge with just great paint, just to add some brightness to areas that I wanted to pop. But just ah, seen if I like that better ended up kind of dialing that back. So I went back to an earlier state and kind of masked it out and a little bit of, ah, yellow overlay just to again try and modulate the flavor of the metal a little bit. But there we have it. This is just about finished. We've gone from a plane canvas to a fully rendered suit of metal armor. I hope you enjoy this project and will try a gun and a sword up next. 7. Pistol: So now we will do our pistol project. Here's a look at my document. I've got my sketch on a layer and a silhouette layer underneath that and went for just a basic kind of ah steampunk pistol design here, but nothing too complicated. Eso I made a copy of my sketch and ah merged it with my silhouette layer. And using that as a base, I made another layer for the metal rendering. Got my standard chalk type brush. And I'm just going to start rendering this. Ah, breaking it down into simple shapes will start with cylinder shape of this main barrel. And I should say, this is in a color dodge mode, just like our exercises and our other projects. Ah, and also just like that same things, really just a main highlight, a core shadow and a little bit of reflected light on the bottom. We'll repeat that principle over and over and over on really just break this down into its simplest component shapes and ah, once I'm done, rendering one shape all kind of a race away. The hard edges do a little bit of blending, and then we just sort of move on to the other shapes that that make up this more complex object. But it's a great way to kind of compartmentalize things and make make it seem less daunting , a little more smudging just to make that seem like realistic metal. And then we'll move on to the cylinder of this, Uh, I think they call it the Drum this part of ah revolver. And I should say, I don't have ah, any kind of formal Gun Smith thing training or anything. Just what I've observed over the years and a lot of artwork of this type that I've I've seen over the years. So if I get a term wrong or something, I apologize. But, uh, all these parts that you see in a lot of of guns trying to make this kind of a nice generalization project. But since that drum shape is a larger cylinder than the main barrel of the gun, that's why the, uh, the light source is a little bit different. Why the light doesn't happen in the exact same places. And I put that on a separate layer just so that we could easily erase away and not have it compete with the other metal barrel. But now that that's don't have merged those two together and we'll make a new layer and move on to this ah, sort of 1/2 sphere, it's a ziff. A sphere was chopped in half to make this back edge of the drum. I have no idea what the formal name for this part of a gun is. If anybody does, please feel free. Teoh, leave a comment. I'd be curious, but just a little bit of smudging. It's identical to the sphere shape exercise that we did earlier in the course. So already this is, ah, starting to look like a pretty realistic pistol. Um, Now I'm doing some kind of flat areas, areas that just have flat metal plane that is facing us at the viewer. I figured this grip, it might be cool if it had a flat edge facing us, but then the actual curved, gripped parts were kind of carved out of that not literally carved out of metal. But it's sort of, um, I'm gonna race away some shadows so that that grip seems round. But treating this like just sort of striations, little parallel lines and metal. That's what makes it seem kind of like shiny metal. And I've ended a layer mask to this whole thing and I'm going Teoh blacked out the whole mask. And now I am just revealing back the parts that I want to show so you can see on the mask I'm painting white where I want that that layer to show up. And I went ahead and applied that layer mask And now I'm a racing away These little curved parts of the grip to make them seem like kind of an ergonomic shape that would fit your hand nicely and also kind of an interesting, interesting type of grip you don't see to do often thought that make might be kind of a cool design, A little bit of smudging just to smooth things out. I'm erasing away some shadows under these little kind of vent hole looking things in this top part of the gun. Again, I'm at a loss for the proper terminology, but I think everyone can probably understand what what I'm driving at. Uh, this little threaded part almost looks like a screw. It goes into the drum. I've done one little, uh, set of highlight and reflected light, and then I'm just gonna repeat that with the clone stamp over and over and over. And just like that, it looks like a long, ah threaded bolt or screw. That's, ah, really easy way to make a realistic looking metal component in a can add interest with, If you're if your object is starting to seem a little bit one note or ah, too simplistic at a little threaded area like that, it can look really cool. And, ah, just doing some hand painting under this little trigger guard part. Um, I thought this detail was what really made it look more Victorian or steampunk s. I kind of added that at the last minute, but I think it fits nicely. Pretty cool effect, and just wanted to make that seem kind of like a more polished metal than the rest of it, possibly and will even try a slightly different color for this later, just to make it seem like it's a different kind of metal, but very shiny and smooth looking, as opposed to the rougher, more texture look which we see on the barrel and the drum of the gun, and adding some very bright highlights just toe reinforce that shiny effect and a little bit of smudging Teoh to smooth it out as well. And just like that of got a pretty convincing metal shape trigger guard object. Here, this is probably, ah, the most complicated shape to render on this piece just cause of all the different curves and light sources. But, um, just like anything else is as long as we can reduce it to its Ah, it's simple shapes than, ah, it becomes easy and even copied a bit Teoh to make the trigger seem like it was a similar material. And ah, I selected my silhouette and then selected the inverse so that I could erase away the parts that were outside of the the silhouette. And similarly similarly, went this hammer part of the gun Teoh be that shiny metal as well Shiny er metal, I should say, because it's all fairly shiny and a little bit of smudging. They're just Teoh bring a nice fine edge to that highlight and then we'll Leadsom reflected light in there as well. Now that I've got that done, I'm gonna add some rivets. So I've just erased away a little shadow. Now I'm going to render a very tiny sphere just highlight on top reflected light and also a little highlight underneath just to make it look like it's kind of sunk ing in and is, ah, catching a little bit of light. So just using the clone stamp to repeat that wherever, ah, where I want rivets to bay. And I'm putting a black line in the middle of that one to make it seem like it's ah, screw kind of Ah Phillips head for a flathead types grew gonna copy this rivet and make a some smaller ones and ones that sort of bend a little bit Teoh to fit the contour e c. I squashed that vertically a bit so that it seems like it was wrapping around that cylindrical shape. Um, and also there are some smaller, finer rivets here on the drum of the gun on this metal works. I wanted that to look appropriate as well, so just copied and pasted, Really? And that's a very nice way to add some detail with not very much work at all. A few more little small details here gonna add a few seams here, just makes him. Ah, some bold line work wherever we need some interest or wherever to machine parts kind of come together. Ah, little indentation on the drum that can certainly fall under this category. Just ah helps helps make it seem much more detailed and not just a collection of, ah, simple shapes. When you start adding in these, these dark seems and it's ah, it's a really easy thing to do. Is holding down shift to do these perfectly vertical or horizontal lines? Also, a nice quick trick and, uh, makes everything seem perfectly machined and, um, inaccurate mechanically, if you do those shift operations. So if you hold down shift, it'll make your line perfectly vertical or horizontal. A little more seem work just to define those. And, uh, I forgot a rivet that needed to be added in adding some little minor details, scratches and shadows to the grip and trigger area. And I wanted to brighten up this little metal piece where the the trigger guard meets the gun. I figured that should be a joint cause it looks like it can swing open. So if you can, uh, keep a bit of an engineering mind when you're putting these things together that can always help help the final look of things. If it does make some sense that that will help cloning in some details here figured I could grab that that detailed edge near the top and just repeat that in a few places I made a, uh, an elliptical selection there so that I could paint some shadows here under the grip. You notice I have my layer locked that Group one copy layer. The transparency is locked so that I won't paint outside of the silhouette, even though I'm making a difference selection. So I unlocked that, and we're going back Teoh to the way. It used to be a little bit of smudging here just to refine things a bit, and then we'll start adding some edges. Some, uh, some scratches wherever these edges come together. It's a great place to put one of these little highlight edges where there's little curvy parts curve away on the grip in particular, you can really, really brings a lot of realism to it if if you pick those particular spots to add these very bright highlight edges. Similarly, with this kind of detail, work near the top and the edge of this indentation on the barrel. I mean, the drum, uh, really helps it. And here, on the front of the drum figured that would probably be scratched any time this gun was put into a holster or even set on a table. So tryingto try and put more scratches where it would make sense for your object. Teoh get more wear and tear, a subtle detail that maybe the casual viewer wouldn't really appreciate. But, uh, it really can make things make more sense and add more visual realism if you can keep little practical things like that in mind, adding a bit of a highlighted edge here to these little, uh, fine metal etching looking details on the drum and whenever this spirit will shape is behind the drum and just just adding details and refinement, smudging and adding highlights, uh, even making some very bright highlights on the tip of that of that barrel and up here on these little then holes. But all of this fine line work really, really makes it a much more finished in polished looking object and making a little selection with the lasso tool here Teoh to add some brighter light back there is looking a little dark on the back side of the gun. And after I d select that some some scratches and edge work. All right, I'm cloning that metal threaded look just to make it look like there's some kind of a texture grip on the top there just to bring a little variety to the textures and fields of of the gun. Ah, making a little cylindrical shaped joint for that threaded part to go into. Once we get to this stage, it's gets very easy because you can just clone areas where, where there's a nice effect going on and repeat them. And, ah, it's tough to really see where these little shortcuts were taken in your finished product. So it looks like you've done a ton of work when really, it's only, uh, taking you a short amount of time. And this detail stuff is fun. You've got most of the hard work done by now. Now it's just sort of painting in little little details, toe ad pop and interest everything. And, uh, there we go little rivet that I had missed earlier. And this is a really starting to come together, brightening up some of these little arrow shaped details a little more bright. Ning here on these cylinders, just always looking for ways to stretch the value range. I think the the more dynamic the value range is, the more realistic your metal objects looked certainly more interesting. And ah, you areas, we're looking a little bit too dark where I didn't quite have enough paint down and was letting too much of that original silhouette show through. So just a little more treatment there, and now we'll start a little bit of edge lighting, Cem secondary light sources. So going to start is if the light source was coming from above. But this, uh, excuse me. Very bright, bluish gray highlight on the top edge of the pistol. And just like the scratches, I'm kind of ah, adding in little imperfections in details, because those bright highlights really do catch those. And, ah, it attempted to clone stamp that. But it seemed easier. Just a hand paint most of it. So there we go. Just carrying this edge light out onto the hammer and here on the drum cause that that cylinder shape would be catching a good bit of that near the top and same on that spherical shape. So, uh, there's kind of laying in some tones, and then I'll clean that up with some erasing later and, uh more. Or that light source hitting the top of these cylinder shapes, smudging those out a bit to make them a little smoother. And then, ah, racing away to make make them Seymour more sharp edged and, uh, kind of machines. Look, you know, we'll add a little bit of fine line work and some kind of scratchy details to this light. Sources. Well, makes it very realistic. And help helps you define your different shapes when you can put those bright highlights right next to those dark. Seems, uh, having those two very different values right next to each other really adds a lot of pop in . The contrast really helps. So try and try and take advantage of those situations when, when they'll work for you, putting a very bright highlight next to a dark Seymour, a place where to two different parts kind of meat together ends up being a really cool look en trying a little bit of reflected light on the undersides of these cylinders just to brighten things up a bit and add apps, um, slightly different color so that it's not all quite so monochromatic in one note. And we're getting very close to a finished product here. Merging this together just for some some color balance adjustments going to try and add some different areas where it's got a bit more of a yellow issue. So I've got that blacked out, and I'm just gonna reveal it by painting with a soft brush just painting, painting white. Uh, gonna try and make this different color occur, uh, on these on these little arrow shaped details, and I thought I'd try to make that a different brightness is well, so I'm grouping those two adjustments together and same thing just ah, adding in a layer mask, blacking it out. And then you paint back in with with white, and that will reveal those two adjustment layers. So inside of that little group, the one that I'm revealing right now, there's both a color balance adjustment and a brightness adjustments. I hope that makes sense. They're, ah, they're two different adjustments going on in that group at the same time here, just made a little more sense to organize it that way and kind of very softly painting Cem areas where, where that, uh, where that different color would occur just to just to give the gun some slightly varying. Ah, Hugh there make it a little more interesting and playing around with these adjustments just a bit to see if there's any way to make it look a little bit better. And that's about it doing a little bit of color. Dodging is a final step just to add a little bit of pop wherever it might need it. But this is a simple, essentially finished a nice, believable looking pistol. I hope you've enjoyed this project up. Next we will render a sword. 8. Sword: So now we will do our sword project. Here's a look at my document. In my design, I've got my sketch on a layer and I've just created a silhouette layer underneath that and , ah made a copy of the sketches always and then merge the others into one base Layers. I've got the sketch in the silhouette all on one and created a new layer where we will do our metal rendering. And to start with, we're gonna render the blade. I've got the brush in color dodge mode and just doing some pretty much parallel angled brush strokes. They're sort of broad, sweeping strokes. What I'm trying to do is get that sort of striated look where they're all these sort of parallel angled values going up, that about 45 degree angle and that that looks like a nice shiny blade. If if if the effect comes off correctly, what I'm doing next is using the polygon lasso tool Teoh de select the middle part of this blade. I'm sort of cutting out a selection where I don't want the paint toe happen, because what I'm going to do is add some more value to that bottom part makes it look like a sharpened edge. And even a little up top here is well, makes it seem like they're different planes. Where that make metal. Is it a slightly different angle? That's what gives a sense that it's Ah sharpened edge, that kind of angles in words and certainly makes your sword look more dangerous and readyto cut something. Uh, using the history brush, Teoh put back some of these little scalloped edges I had erased away that she ate. But I wanted to save some of those those shapes and ah, just erasing away this part of the hilt of the sword. Um, anything that's not part of the blade essentially. And also wanted this to look like kind of, Ah, a carved out area in the middle of the blade here there's that gap in the middle. Always find that to be kind of a cool design feature, but wanted to make this carved out looking part is Well, what? That would give it a nice steampunk look and hope you're noticing. I try to keep the same general design aesthetic for these three objects. These three projects that I've demonstrated is if they were all started part of the same project. Really, Trying toe may make it seem cohesive in a design sense, but now that we have the blade in place, we're just going to start rendering in thes basic shapes that comprise the hilt and, ah, a mix of cylindrical shapes and a few flat areas. But just like with our other projects will just render the highlight core shadow and reflected light and then add some some bright rolled edges like I'm doing here just to define these things. You could see me using the clone stamp again once, once I have one of these curves or lines in place. I like to use the clone stamp so that the one next to it is practically identical. Identical may be offset just a little bit, but otherwise they look like they were made just by the same machine. It gives it a nice, clean, mechanical look that will make your medic metal weaponry or armor or vehicle. Whatever you're working on seem much more realistic and like it was made by a machine. And, uh, it is, you know, perfectly calculated all that good stuff, but just just refining this part of the front of the hill tear painting a little tone. This is flatter these these flatter parts that go out towards the edges. And we're gonna do a similar treatment to the back here, starting with that rolled metal edge and notice I'm flipping the campus quite a lot. It's It's much easier for my hand if I, uh, Onley do these curved lines going at a certain angle. So I just flip the campus whenever I have to make the curve happen so that it's It's in the orientation that's most comfortable for May. But that's the reason I'm doing that. Uh, certainly do whatever works best for you. There's no other reason other than it. It's what I'm comfortable with. So just painting in some details and that we have that nice, shiny center part of the hilt put together. I'm gonna put another Jewell setting here in the middle, Uh, possibly implying that this sword has some kind of magical power source, sir, uh, or something like that. You'll see that often when doing concept art for a video game. So I thought that would be a good fit here. Our kitchens be ah, decoration. It all. It all works a little more of, ah, rolled edge just to give some kind of treatment to this, uh, this area, that kind of guards to the front of the blade and brightening that up just to bid up front and continuing that up to the top. And, as you can see, with just a bare minimum of tone that that entire area seems pretty rendered already just just Wissem artful use of those those rolled edge highlight When I say rolled edge, I just mean as if the end of a sheet of metal was rolled back on itself, that that's what makes those kind of, uh, tube shaped edges that you'll see on metal work a lot. And it's what gives metal work of this type. Those those edges that you, you see often is rendering in the handle here to basic cylinder shape and has some more rolled edge work along the, uh, the edges here and erasing away some little debates for ah, for finger grips to sit in. I figured this would be a two handed swords, so I've kind of got a place for each hand to sit. Um, that little curve piece of metal that occurs down around the bottom. I was thinking that could be some kind of trigger that you pull so that bottom handgrip would be holding down that little curvy trigger type thing. Maybe maybe this sword has some magic power that's only activated when the user's holding down a trigger. Just trying to give it some kind of interesting functionality or back story there. So that's, ah, the rationale behind that guard. But of course, is that rendering exercise? None of that really matters. Just, uh, just a little background, just a little more refinement here. But, uh, basically, we've got all of the main shapes in place. Ah, flat blade and all of these little cylinder shapes Teoh to break this down into its base components. And once we have that, don't It's just details and refinement until until it gets to a final state. So there we go, going to start adding some rivets to ah to take this one to, uh, the next level of detail ing again, just rendering a very tiny sphere with a little highlight along the bottom. And then we just clone that over and over with the clone stamp Tool s is a keyboard shortcut and just drop in rivets wherever they occur. I thought this one needed to be a little larger. So just hand painted a second. When there it's ah, certainly not hard. Add these in and just added a little screw headline. There's if it were a flathead screw and ah, thought I try to repeat that one on the blade, but it didn't it didn't end up working too well. So a few more rivets, just detail, detail and that it certainly adds a lot of refinement, adding a little bit of tones. And parts of this middle part of the sword were looking a little bit dark, zooming in a bit so that we can, ah, take a look at some of this detail, work in the hill part of the sword, and we'll add, Ah, and some scratches just Teoh make this part seem a little more realistic. Some fine line work to to make thes seam edges Seymour realistic, just like we did on the grip of the pistol project always makes those edges pop a lot when you've got a dark, dark value and you put a very bright highlight next to it makes it seem like a very sharp edge. One of those nice details. It, uh, can really transform your project into just seeming like marks on a screen into something that you can really imagine holding in your hand. It's, ah, always a great part of a project when it crosses that threshold in your mind, uh, painting some details around those little vent hole shapes on top. There just a little mechanical detail to make this seem more like a steampunk type sword. And some brighter highlights along these metal handle parts. Really just refinement A. To this phase, making sure all of these little details work together and making sure it all looks cohesive and, ah, just adding fine lines and making sure that it all no works, adding a few scratches here, Uh, I can't have any blade looking to perfect like it's never seen a battle. So that's always an important detail. Is toe at had quite a few scratches, and obviously you can take that as far as you want. It could look like an old, broken down sword if you wanted, but just trying to get get the point across here. That's about it. Even smudging some of those darks out onto the lighter part of the blade just so that those scratches kind of go both ways. I think that's very effective. It's looking worn, but not not beat up. Now that we have that, don't we're gonna add some edge lighting. Secondary light sources just toe around this out three dimensionally and also to give it some more, Uh, some more detail. Nice color variation is well, it it makes it seem, uh, a lot less one noted monochromatic when you can add in these secondary light sources, because metal objects often can get a little bit monochromatic in one note in this particular technique. But certainly it's, ah, very easy and effective way to achieve a realistic metal look without having Teoh worry about colors and reflections too much. You can basically paint the whole thing or 90% of it with one color and then, ah, go back and add a little color variation at the end. And um, what a time saver and really gives you a great results. So I sure hope this, uh, this is a handy technique. If it's just something you're doing for fun. I hope it can make you a lot more confident in your own work in the level of realism that you can achieve. And if you're a professional or an aspiring professional, I hope this can give you a leg up and make you more efficient and time effective in your business. So is a, uh, nearly final detail. I'm adding another Jewell feature here. Just Teoh. Make this sword seem like it has magic powers blending out just like we did in the other projects to make it seem kind of glassy and swimming inside of there. And then we just add the very bright white highlight at the opposite corner and a little bit of one opposite of that. And just like that, it's, Ah, very realistic looking Jewell shape. I'll just drop that into place. Uh, I flipped it so that the light source would match the rest of the sword. It was a little backwards versus everything else and erasing away the edges just so that it seems to be in shadow, except for where, where where it's shining. So there we go. This is starting to look quite nicely. Finished just trying some other colors to see if there's something I like a little better I command you is how you bring up the hue saturation layers. Always a cool thing to try when you're near the end of a project doing another color balance adjustment layer here just to try some slightly yellow er, uh, tinged looking metal. And, um, also deceive if I could do that Ah, brighter adjustment is well, so I've grouped those two adjustments into that group. You see there I've added a layer mask and black that out. And now I'm just painting white on that adjustment mask to reveal those adjustments beneath so that it may be a little complicated, but I've got the two adjustment layers inside of that group. I added a layer mask to the group, and now I'm just revealing away the the the adjustment effects beneath. So start with black paint white on your mask, and it will reveal those subtle color changes and just trying things make it look like different different kinds of metal composed. This sword just just gives it a nice break from being monochromatic and adds a lot of interest slightly more coppery or brassy. looking areas. And, um, it's also nice to just pain in some, uh, some areas where there there's modulating color. You can just splash this effect anywhere. It doesn't have to be along the margins of where two different kinds of metal meat it could just look like this. Medals aged and it's ah, a little yellow er in one part than the other. I'm adding a little shine there on the tip. I've got a color dodge with just, ah, just gray paint. And that's how you add that gleaming effect, and I took a few tries at it. But, um, always nice to put a little, uh, a little gleam on on the blade somewhere. Just Teoh. Show that it's sharp and shiny. And that's our sword project. Hope you've enjoyed this one 9. Special Effects - Smoke, Fire & Lightning: that we will add some special effects, give a sense of power to our object. So I'm going to use the sword as an example here. But basically, we're just gonna do a few different special effects. Just if you want to make your weapon or armour seem magic powered. So the first what I'm doing is I'm just calling it smoke. It's ah, in affect used to make this magic looking smoke kind of curling around, um, curling around your weapon. Kind of like magic fire, I guess. But, uh, I don't know. You call it what you will, but, uh, general ethereal, billowing kind of effect. And, um, um, kind of acting as if this was a video game we were doing some concept art for. And so you pop in different colored jewels and it gives your weapon a new superpowers. So that's the basic idea. I'm just painting some some general curling shapes of got this purple color and the brush is set to color dodge. It's very important for all of these magic effects. And, uh, after doing the general shape, you can see him. I'm doing some slightly finer brushwork. And in the areas where these little tendrils of smoke let's call it intersect. There's a bright spot you could see right right where that is, curling over the top. It's especially bright, so that's That's the effect. We're looking for another little area where they intersect right there. And, ah, just like that. It looks like this magic energy is emanating from this purple jewell and giving this sword some kind of magic power. But with these color dodge effects is the more the more brush strokes you make, the more pronounced the effect gets, the lighter, the value and the more saturated. So that's that's what makes these the color dodge so effective for these special effects. Just blending out a little bit to make this seem a little more soft and atmospheric and, uh, even doing a little bit of a racing so that these little tendrils kind of fade away. But that's a basic idea. Nice smoke effect and just playing with hue saturation to see if there's a color I like better. But I think purple works very well. Up next is ah, good old fire effect. So I'm going to copy this jewell and make it kind of a burning reddish orange to fit with the fire theme. And then we're gonna make Cem some different brush strokes again with color dodge but thio thio at a fire effect. So a nice ah, nice orange color using color dodge, and you can see it kind of changes into yellows if when you get into the more extremes of color dodge. So it's perfect if if you observe fire, it goes from a deep oranges red all the way up to a very bright yellow. Check out some photos if you want, but you can take my word for it to this. This works very well, especially in this brush mode. So the first thing I'm doing is kind of tracing the contours of where I want the fire to be kind of burning from. That's a good starting point. So some fine almost line work to begin with, and now we just start adding some little flames kind of floating upwards. And, uh uh again, maybe observing some photos could be helpful, but generally, if you just keep them all sort of burning upwards in the same general direction, maybe if there's win blowing them in that direction makes it look very consistent and helps the whole effect. Uh, but that's already looking pretty convincing. I'm adding some little dots, just little sparking. Ember looking things rising up has a lot of ah, visual animation to the image gives it a good sense of movement, and ah, makes it seem very real. You can almost hear, hear the crackle. Just, ah, if you use those effects correctly, can really be a convincing effect. But just that easy, Cem. Some pretty realistic looking fire. And this sword certainly looks supernatural and magic power. So there we go, adding, Ah, little more brightness burning out of that Jewell just to make it seem even more powerful. So there we have it. The fire effect as 1/3 and final effect. We're gonna do some some magic. Lightning is if this sort had electrical Taipower's. So starting a new layer for that and I'm going to stick with the blue for this seems to fit with electricity. But we're still on color dodge and again, just kind of tracing the contours of where I want this magical electricity or lightning power. What have you to be emanating from and again with color dodge. You'll notice it as a nice variation in the color. It goes from that deep blue to that bright scion without you having to re sample any other colors. The brush mode takes care of that for you makes thes special effects just such a breeze. So now that I've got those lines, I'm kind of adding some softer brush strokes over the top. Makes it seem like it's glowing. There we go, smudging that just a little bit. If you do that too much, it starts looking like flame again. But, um which could be cool blue, blue flame. But here just kind of wanted to make it seem like a hazy, electrical kind of buzzing. And now for the lightning itself, just basically, Cem zigzag shapes our king away from the blade. Sometimes they fork like this. Sometimes they come out and then go back down onto the blade. Uh, good to keep these kind of random. There you go. One kind of connecting back on itself. But try not to repeat the same same type of thing too many times. Make it is random is you can look there have got one kind of crossing down and over a few little arcs of electricity coming out of the Jewell itself. That would make sense. But that's Ah, that's the basic effect. A copy, that layer. And now I'm running a Gaussian blur, and, as you can see that gives it a little glow makes it seem very bright and powerful. So I'll merge those two once once that's done. And I'm just erasing back the tips of these arcs of electricity just to, ah, to make it kind of fade off into the atmosphere a bit and that that's certainly add some realism. But just like that. Ah, very convincing electrical power effect and gonna brighten up that Jewell just a little more. And even these little junctions where the arcs of electricity meet the sword. Justo, give it some little bright spot and there we have it. Three very convincing, very easy to do. Special effects. Hope you find those helpful