themeletor: close-up of a cupcake in the grass against a blue sky (batman)
[personal profile] themeletor
Batman has done a lot of weird things to me. Not the least of which, deciding to make an icon tutorial. Funky spunky, yo. Let's do it.


First thing you do is look for a sextastical Batman picture. There are a lot of those. Preferably one from Batman Begins, because the lighting is sincerely droolworthy and the Batsuit is top-notch sexy (and the soundtrack rocks). I used this as an excuse to stare at pictures of Christian Bale in fitted, semi-lustrous black chose this one:
Image hosted by Photobucket.com
Thank you Yahoo Movies and various other places.

1. Crop and resize the image to a 100x100:
Image hosted by Photobucket.com
(I think I also worked some 'filter>sharpen>unsharp mask' magic on this one)

2. You see the way his head's glowing? Let's not have that. In fact, while we're at it, let's black out the Batsuit so there's a nice emphasis on his handsome face/mask and on the text. First step to that, the Magic Wand tool and Quick Mask. Comes out something like this:
Image hosted by Photobucket.com
so his face and the background are under the mask, hence outside the selection.

3. Go back into normal mode, make a new layer, and on it black out (with the paint tool or fill tool) everything within the marquee. It'll be a shape like this:
Image hosted by Photobucket.com
fitting onto the image like so:
Image hosted by Photobucket.com

4. Well, that looks neat and slightly iPod-esque, but not quite what I was going for here. So, we'll set the layer to overlay, and get one of these:
Image hosted by Photobucket.com

5. The belt and the pec-shine, though, are distracting me. So, new layer, and let's black those out for real, with the paint tool. Like so:
Image hosted by Photobucket.com
I like that much better.

6. Now, it's background time. I right-click the thumbnail of the blacked-out batsuit overlay layer on the layers palette, choose 'select layer transparency', then select the inverse of that.
Image hosted by Photobucket.com

7. Then I pick some random brown from the background (in this case hexcode A5692C), create a new layer, and paint that in all around the batsuit -- but not his mouth, which I was just too plain lazy to subtract from the selection. See, like this:
Image hosted by Photobucket.com

8. Set that layer to something fun, like 'vivid light', and we'll get this:
Image hosted by Photobucket.com

8. Wooh sexy. But I want to play more. So, duplicate the layer:
Image hosted by Photobucket.com
Oh. It seems Wayne Manor's on fire again. That's not cool.

9. Why don't we set the layer to 'hue' instead:
Image hosted by Photobucket.com
Which is better, but still looks like a bad Halloween-angled advert.

10. Duplicate the layer again, and this time set it to 'saturation', but it'll come out boring, like this:
Image hosted by Photobucket.com
so take it down to 82% opacity to make it prettier.
Image hosted by Photobucket.com

11. Time for text. Thanks to [livejournal.com profile] elizile and late-night AIM, I have this little gem --
Image hosted by Photobucket.com
in DE9953 and the font is Mackintosh SF. On the image, it looks like this:
Image hosted by Photobucket.com

12. Now that everything looks nice, let's ruin it. New layer, and fill it with whatever you happen to have handy (in my case it was Batsuit Black). The finished icon will look like this:
Image hosted by Photobucket.com


...except it won't. Because we'll go to the layer effects and put a stroke, 1 pixel black, on this layer and set it to happen on the inside. See?
Image hosted by Photobucket.com
Then we go back to the icon and set the HUGE BLACK LAYER OF DOOM to a fill of 0%. And poof! magic border (I do actually have a brush for this, but it's on my laptop which is in the shop >.< ).

The finished icon is:
Image hosted by Photobucket.com
(mine; please don't snag, though you can have the base if you promise not to hotlink)

The layers overview is:
Image hosted by Photobucket.com

And the moral of the story is:
Batman is cooler than you. That and, I'm insane and don't think I will ever do this again kthx.

(no subject)

Date: 2005-07-12 11:04 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] adap.livejournal.com
yaaaaay for a good tutorial AND for batman! yay! :D

(no subject)

Date: 2005-07-12 11:07 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] meletor-et-al.livejournal.com
yay batman!

ooh. don't mind me petting your icon...

(no subject)

Date: 2005-07-13 04:19 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] adap.livejournal.com
no, not at all. XDD i seem to get that a lot..

(no subject)

Date: 2005-07-13 06:09 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] meletor-et-al.livejournal.com
I should imagine you would. Comes with the territory of having the Supernatural Epitome of All Pretty featured.

(I've been working on the same Cillian icon for about 3 days running. The trouble is that I tend to just fade out and start staring, rather than working, otherwise it'd be done by now)

(no subject)

Date: 2005-07-12 11:07 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] aradiria.livejournal.com
...I tried to follow, I really did.

but you lost me at sextastical.

(no subject)

Date: 2005-07-12 11:08 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] meletor-et-al.livejournal.com
well, you're on GIMP. it's forgiveable.

<3

(no subject)

Date: 2005-07-12 11:09 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] aradiria.livejournal.com
:)

*drools at icon none-the-less*

(no subject)

Date: 2005-07-12 11:12 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] aradiria.livejournal.com
hehehehehe.

if I had a paid account, I'd probably find a batman icon of my very own.

but my denial...ness still holds sway. wtf is wrong with me???

(no subject)

Date: 2005-07-12 11:14 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] meletor-et-al.livejournal.com
mehhh... I'm with your subconscious on this one.

ARA LOVES D-TRAIN.
deal with it.

(no subject)

Date: 2005-07-12 11:16 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] aradiria.livejournal.com
*looks around room...specifically the plaque, and the poster, and the newspaper clippings, and the pc wallpaper....*

omg, I think you're right. AHHH!!!!!!!!

(no subject)

Date: 2005-07-13 05:12 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] tiggothy.livejournal.com
Oooooh, lovely :-) Though with showing how much work you go through, it kinda brings home how lazy I am in my iconnage :-p

(no subject)

Date: 2005-07-13 06:15 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] meletor-et-al.livejournal.com
Ah, no; I'm just a PS7 addict. You have better things to do than icon -- I don't.

(no subject)

Date: 2005-07-13 06:25 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] tiggothy.livejournal.com
You have better things to do than icon

That's debatable... *goes back to 'Diary of a Hairpiece'*

Hmm... crappy working title as usual, may have to change it to "Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow"

Unless you can think of anything better?

(no subject)

Date: 2005-07-13 06:26 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] meletor-et-al.livejournal.com
Is this the wiggy fic? *bounce*

...no, I suck at titles.

(no subject)

Date: 2005-07-13 06:30 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] tiggothy.livejournal.com
Yep :-) What else? *giggle*

(no subject)

Date: 2005-07-13 06:41 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] tiggothy.livejournal.com
*giggle* Wanna beta / suggest more ideas?

(no subject)

Date: 2005-07-13 12:08 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] ima-pseudonym.livejournal.com
I'm so very very confused.......
Hey! Look it's Batman! *squee*

Profile

themeletor: close-up of a cupcake in the grass against a blue sky (Default)
i'm cooking the veggies and valuing myself!

December 2011

S M T W T F S
    123
45678910
11121314151617
18 192021222324
25262728293031

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated May. 29th, 2025 12:57 am
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios