Starfish Mech breakdown

[Chris Rosewarne]

Hi everyone, I got a lot of questions about my process in creating this visuals when I posted it back in the summer, so I reverse engineered the Photoshop file to break down the layers involved and shed a little light into the steps I typically take when doing this. High res. version here https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/7994921/big-page.jpg

[feher]

Love it !
It's always nice to try and see things through the artist eye.
Excellent work !!!!!
It was a keeper then and it's still a keeper now.
Thanks for sharing.
Tim

[Jslowsky]

Drop dead fantastic work both in hard surface design and modeling and the subtle art of adding the details. Beautiful composition and by adding the shark you've added life into an inanimate object. I am curious to know how you achieve your final Blooming, and your percentage of added noise?
John

[Chris Rosewarne]

Feher, thank you dude!

John - Bloom can be added in PS using a couple of methods, a layer with mode set to "lighten" is a good start, but the key here is to pick a dark, medium sat. colour and use the gradient tool to create a light source (typically the sun) coming in off camera. Lighten layers are amazing, as you picking a fairly dark colour, the only tones that will be effected will be those darker than the colour you have picked, so usually you end up knocking the blacks out of that area but all lighter tones are unaffected. Then make a colour dodge layer (little ninja tip here, double lick that layer and an option box will open, un-check "transparency shapes layer", this will lead to greater colour sat on the edge of the fall off instead of it de-saturating and looking dull). Pick a dark, mid sat colour and repeat the bloom with the gradient tool, this will create a hotter spread of light, adjust the layer transparency as usually its too strong....

Noise can be added by adding a layer on top of everything else, filling it with a mid gray, the Filter>noise>add noise - maximum amount on the slider, then we have to soften that, so Blur>Gausian Blur - usually 10%. Set that layer mode to Overlay and reduce the transparency to anywhere between 11-14% - Its a very subtle effect so don't over crank it.....

there are some more "Tricks" but I will cover these in the up coming Gumroad vids

Hope this helps

Chris