The Chrome Robot Tutorial - Page 4
As before, we will need the Polygonal Lasso Tool. Zoom in in the section you wish to add the copper bands to. In this example I chose the arm (Figure 31).
Figure 31
With the Lasso tool, trace the exact area for the band as in Figure 32. Make sure you are on the Background Layer. We don't want to go outside the figure with this step.
Figure 32
Now, do an Edit, Copy and and Edit, Paste. This will give you yet another layer. Now use the Magic Wand Tool and select Outside your selection. This will select everything But your selection so now we need to click on Select and Inverse as in Figure 33.
Figure 33
Now comes the fun part. Click on the Linear Gradient Tool shown in Figure 34. In one of the little tool boxes on the side, click on the Options tab and select Copper (as shown below).
Figure 34
As seen in Figure 35, click and drag a line starting from within your selection following the angle of your selection. Now you have a copper band but it may look terrible. This part IS tricky and takes me several tries. Play with it a few times and try to match the shading of your chrome figure. You may have to drag the line further out or position your starting point a little differently.
Figure 35
Hopefully that wasn't to frustrating (it can be). Figure 36 shows my result after a few tries. It doesn't look to bad but the band is supposed to be metal so it should reflect like your chrome figure. How do we do this?
Figure 36
We add transparency to this layer so that the detail of the chrome figure can be seen. So, in your Layers box, click on the little arrow for Opacity and drag it to 70. Any higher and you won't see much detail, any less and you will lose the metalicity of the copper. See the results below in Figure 37.
Figure 37
You can deselect your selection. Now to give the band relief, we can bevel it just like we did for the indented band strips. Figures 38 - 40 will show you what I did but you should be an expert at this by now.
Figure 38
Figure 39
Figure 40
If you have some jagged edges Like I do in Figure 40, use a brush to clean it up after you flatten your image. After you added all your detailing, click on Layer and Flatten Image. Now you can do some clean up with the rough edges. Once you do this, you can resize your image if you want to or save it as is. Your Done!!!
By all means, experiment! You don't have to use the exact settings all the time. Once your comfortable with the procedure of this tutorial, cut loose and be creative!
This tutorial was brought to you by Fernando Remo Grisolia. Visit my web site at http://www.remosworld.net.
Fin