June 26, 2008

• Ladybug Tutorial

   

  

  Okies I’ve never done this before at xanga, but several people from a group I want, would like a tut for a little critter that I created, and this seemed the most logical place for me to put it.  For those who aren’t psp’ers…just skip this. 

  Open a 4 inch by 4 inch blank canvas.

  Go to elipse preset shape.  Set the background to this pattern Right click on the pattern to save.

   

  Set foreground to null  Width at 3 in the tool bar. 

  Draw an elipse filling about 3/4′s of your blank canvas with it.

  Convert to raster layer. 

  Take your selection tool and select half of the elipse with the rectangle shape. 

  Right click on the layer and choose promote selection to layer. 

  Click back on the original layer, and hit delete on the keyboard

  Select none.

  This should give you two half circles on two seperate layers. 

  No grab the deform tool or the pick tool depending which version you use and use the handle to tip them open like wings.  Look at my sample to see approximately what it should look like.

  I had the right half on the bottom, and prefered it on the top, and thus rearranged it in the layers.  I thought it looked slightly better. 

  Select rastor one, and the elipse tool.

  Leave foreground the same, change background to duotone red.  Draw a slightly smaller elipse underneath the wings.  Again look at the sample for an approximation.  Convert to raster layer.

  change elipse tool background to black white gradiant. 

  Draw a third smaller elipse under the wings for the head.   Convert to raster layer.

  Again using the elipse tool set foreground to null, and background to white.  Draw a fairly tiny elipse.

  Choose paintbrush, set to circle, black size 22, or smaller.   This is to make the black eye speck inside the white.  This should have automatically converted the elipse to raster, but if it didn’t do so now. 

  Now select all, float, defloat.

  Open effects, artistic effects, balls and bubbles.  I used the preset for the glass rocks we used having saved it.  If you don’t have it saved…the settings are as follows.

  Shape.  Single ball/bubble.   Surface;  15 Shininess;  50   Gloss;  80  Material white.

  Illumination 17  Individual light properties Light 1 Color white Highlight size 28. 

  I use this quite a lot, you’ll find yourself using it.  Save it as a preset it will save a TON of frustration. 

  Click okay.  You now have ONE googly eye.  Go to your layer properties and click duplicate on this layer.  Move second eye the proper place.

  Now for the antennas.  Grab your pen tool.  Set start point under the head/eye of the ladybug.    Set second point off and to the left.  Keep hold of the mouse and drag into the right amount of curve.  I’m assuming you know how to use the pen some.  If you don’t…please email me, and I’ll try to help.

  You can add as much curve to the antenna as you want.  I’ve changed it each time, makes it more unique.  Once your happy with the shape,  click apply, and switch vectory layer to raster.

  select all, float, defloat

  You can use a inner bevel here, or you can use super blade pro if you have it.  I used super blade pro with the cheap gold setting. 

  Select none.  Duplicate.  Image mirror.  Wa-la two antenna’s. 

  Now add a drop shadow to each layer starting at the top so you don’t forget which you’ve done haven’t done.

  I used vertical 2, horizontal 2, opacity 44, blur 16 shadow color black. 

  Don’t fill bound by my colors, they just happened to be what I picked. 

  Merge visible. 

  Grab paint brush set to circle.  Set color to black, and add spots.  I changed the size of the brush for almost every spot.  Play with what you think looks best.  You could even use a jewel tube instead if you wanted, or on top of the spot. 

   

   

  

   

   

   

  • 11:08 pm
  • 1 Comment