Making Shiny Horses
By weezapony
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9th May 2010 •
4,512 views
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3 comments
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Have you ever seen really well done photo manipulations and wondered how the scruffy stock was turned into a smooth sport horse? These amazingly done stock makeovers can be discouraging to people just learning how to make manips. After all, it's hard to find the picture perfect horses in stock photos, especially when you're looking for a certain color or breed of horse to place on your background.
Well, there is a solution that many experienced graphic makers use: customize the horse. Specifically, change the color or position of the horse, or add special effects to it to make it unique. One of the simplest ways to do this is to add shine to the horse so that it looks smooth, but not unrealistic. That is what we'll be focusing on in this article.
First, cut out your stock completely.
Start out by using a smudge tool found in most painting applications. Change the settings so that the strength is low: we don't want the horse to look over-smudged.
Smudge gently, in the same direction of the coat. Some people like to skip this step it can be hard on horses with patterns.
If you have Photoshop, lock the transparency of the layer so that the smudging stays on the horse. If you have a different application, just be very careful. A piece of advice: never smudge the edges of your subject. It makes it easy to tell that it isn't real.
Now comes the fun part! Once your horse looks nice and smooth(remember! not to the point that it looks fake) we can add shine to its coat. If your application has layers make one on top of the horse layer. If not, just be careful. If you're really worried, make a new copy of the cut out stock to practice on.
For the shine color, use white or a similar color, only not on full opacity, which means it is slightly see-through. Start out on a low level, because you can always add more.
Select your painting tool, and put it on about a 3-5px brush depending on the size of your image. If you have airbrush, go ahead and use it. It's easier on some horses than others. Look at the shoulder of the horse.
Zoom in and add small squiggly lines using the same slope as the shoulder. Now use your Smudge tool very lightly--you don't want to lose all the roughness or it won't blend with the coat. You can also add these "shinies" on the neck, if the mane isn't covering it. It's still a good idea to keep them parallel to the slope of the shoulder. Adding shine on the body and legs is harder.
For the barrel of the horse, use a bigger brush and set the opacity lower.
Use your bigger brush to go over the highlights on the barrel. If you're feeling confident, go ahead and add swooping lines to show the way the light is hitting the horse. Decide where to add these based on which parts are closest to the light source. Go ahead and smudge on these parts. Try to keep it looking natural.
On the legs, don't think of it as adding to the horse, more accenting the muscles it already has. Horses have lots of muscles and tendons on their legs. Again, go over the highlighted parts with squiggly strokes.
Zoom out again, and hopefully your horse will look smooth and natural. You can also use this technique in other digital art methods. Of course, it won't work for everyone. Just keep trying, and you'll figure out new and better techniques.
Happy painting! |
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weezapony
Glad you liked it! :)
Glad you liked it! :)
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May 10, 2010
• 3,323 views
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Cruisin Past Curfew
Great article! I'm going to try this!
Great article! I'm going to try this!
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Apr 25, 2012
• 3,325 views
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