It’s not often I post images I do for people but I’ve gotten a pretty good response to this and thought it would be cool to share how I get from point A to point B in one of my design jobs.
This one started out with the notion that there was going to be a skull in the image and that was it. Other than that, I was fortunate enough to be told to just go with whatever I felt was right for the job so I started plugging away. I was literally told to, “…make it sicker than any other job you’ve done for any other fire station to date.” I love getting the go-ahead like that!
Here’s an image of the compilation of assets I used for this job, just a few simple logos and pictures I’ve had in my library of stuff.
I began with the skull and started rendering that out, adding shadows here and there and highlights and such. Then I moved onto putting the flames in his eyes because I didn’t like the blue that was in there originally. A few paths drawn with the pen tool to get the masks I needed, a layer mask here and there and I was finished with that. I chopped his lower jaw off and started liking how that was looking.
Next I moved onto adding the lighting effects the flames would have on the skull and evening out the tones on a whole. That’s when I pulled down the highs on the brow and darkened up the nose area.
Onto the cross, knowing I had to put one in there. That came in via Illustrator as a vectored object. I added the texture into that, going for the old leathery parchment type of look. I evened out the colors with selective color and the channel mixer before I brought it into the working document. Once again, I added the shadows and highlights. These are subtle touches but the ones that really help sell the image once it’s done.
Next came the axes. The image I had for the axes wasn’t the best so I added some texture to the handles and really dropped down the color a lot to make it looked like it they belonged in that kind of lighting environment. Once I had one axe done in that respect, I added the flames to it with a good deal of time spent on the layer mask so it would look like it was interacting with the axe handle and not just thrown on top of it. Got one axe the way I wanted it, flipped a dupe of it horizontally and put in the drop shadow.
The logos came next – adding them as though they’ve been burned into the texture of the cross using three layers for each; a base layer of the logo set to color burn (med brown in color) with a layer mask for the texture knocked out of it, the actual texture color burn layer (light brown) for the orange-ish color in there and a soft blur around the whole thing on the final layer. Jeez, that’s a long sentence.
The text came last. I got the font called “Pieces of Eight” from www.dafont.com. At this point, I saved the PSD and placed it into Illustrator to work with the text. I could have used the envelope text command but wanted to really tweak it to get it exactly as I wanted so I opted to edit all by hand. There’s a really great tutorial for enveloping text in Illustrator over at n.design studio’s site at http://www.ndesign-studio.com/resources/tutorials/envelope-distort/. Check it out if you want an easy to follow tutorial for that.
Once the text was done, I imported them into Photoshop as vectored objects, added the distress from another file I have on hand that I scanned from a piece of wood, got the right color and texture on there and was good to go.
A few shadows here and there, a beveled edge and drop on the stroke of the cross and this was ready to ship off. Now I just have to make the front of the shirt and sleeves and we’ll be golden.
Hope you enjoyed this entry. A newer thing for me, not really posting it as a tutorial but just as a little…I don’t know, rant I guess. Either way, have fun and keep designing!
Tags: envelope distort, Illustrator, Phoenix Fire Department, Photoshop
Great job, bro! Hope Phoenix is treating you good…41’s is stoked with this design, it’s crazy good!!
Best sh!+ I’ve ever seen….Your site is sick too!
This sh!+ is sick!!!!!