‘Me
and Louie’s Sister’ - A Step by Step Tutorial
by
Daniel Hammonds a.k.a Wade/Haujobb &
Fairlight
Details
and Texturing
To create the texture
and stubble around the man’s chin, I zoomed into the image and 'pixelled' these
details by hand, as demonstrated in the following stages:
1.
Basic smooth area.
2.
I applied small blobs with the dodge tool
and a small soft brush.
3.
Smoothed the blobs with the smudge and blur
tools and a soft brush. Touches of shadow were added between the blobs with
the burn tool.
4.
Added faint highlights and shadows.
5.
Began applying stubble, working over the dark
areas using the burn tool and the smallest spatter brush on 20%
exposure.
6.
Added
light pixels with the dodge tool, using the spatter brush and small hard
brushes. Added shadows adjacent to these light dots and darkened the edges
of chin with burn tool and soft brushes to give a rounded appearance.
The
burn tool and spatter brushes were used for the man’s neck and strands
of
hair
were pulled over the top using the smudge tool and small hard brushes.
The finer
strands
were created with a 1 pixel brush on 5-10% pressure.
I then decided that
the
shading of the face looked too smooth and plastic, so I decided to indulge in a
little hands-on stippling - a technique familiar to most 8-16bit artists. This
helped to give the skin a sweaty and porous appearance.
2.
Light and dark areas stippled using dodge and burn tools.
3.
Additional pixels and blobs added.
4.
Smaller light and dark pixels
added with burn and dodge on higher exposure.
Reduced size - before and after stippling.
The beads of sweat were also
pixelled in zoom mode, using the following methods:
1.
Basic smooth area.
2.
Various sized blobs dotted over skin with the dodge tool on highlights
setting.
3.
Burn tool and 1pixel sized brush used to
apply shadows around each dot and blob.
4.
Smudge tool used to extend larger beads to look like drips. 1 pixel
highlights added to the blobs.
5.
Strengthened highlights and shadows and added random light and dark
pixels with dodge and burn tools.
Some of the more subtle droplets were created using the following method:
1. Faint circles made with burn tool (1 pixel brush) on low exposure.
2. Dodge tool used to fill each circle.
3. 1 pixel highlight added to lower half of circle using dodge tool on highlights setting.
actual size
Using
this technique, I added droplets of sweat to
the man’s stippled face and ended with the following stage:
Step
9
At this point I will draw your attention to the left eye of the female, where I encountered a small difficulty. When trying to paint the hair directly over the eye, the eye and the hair ran together (as shown in the first example). Unable to 'undo' this, I decided to refer back to a previous stage as a background layer and use the eraser tool to restore the eye (example 2). I then added a new layer and began painting the hair over the eye.
1. First attempt - the hair and the eye blended together.
2. Eraser tool used to restore the eye.
3. New layer added, onto which I airbrushed rough strokes.
4. Started to fine out the hair, smudging the dark shades into the light with a 1 pixel brush.
5. Highlights added to hair. More fine strands.
6. Layer flattened and more flayed hairs added. Applied fine highlights using dodge tool.
Turning back to the woman, I realized that the skin needed to be much softer and smoother than the man’s, yet it still looked too plastic. I began by adding shades of red, purple and green (using the airbrush on color mode) and then decided to stipple the skin, keeping it lighter and less erratic than I did with the man.
1. Smooth (plastic looking) area.
2. Light stippling with dodge tool.
3. Random darker spots added.
4. Outline of chin area darkened with burn tool and soft brush to give a more rounded appearance.
When applying the darker spots, they reminded me of freckles and I noticed how they gave the skin a more natural appearance, so I decided to apply these freckles elsewhere - primarily over areas where freckles are most common, like the nose, chin, cheeks and arm (freckles are less common on the forehead, neck or the eye area).
Combined
details: beads of sweat,
added over the freckled, coloured and lightly stippled skin.
Further definition added to areas such as the mouth.
1. Loosely shaded mouth.
2. Spots of light and dark added with burn and dodge tools.
3. Smudge tool used to smear shadows and highlights into place.
(Page 4/6)