Radioactive-Headless Peacock Tutorial
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This
tutorial assumes you have a working knowledge of PSP, if something is
not clear to you please feel free to email me or post to the KPT list
for help. Here is the "Funky Peacock" we will
make. No laughing now, Diz held me at knife point until I
wrote a tut for the gradient designer in KPT. Personally me and
this derned thing don't see "eye-to-eye", despite chanting
"KPT gradients is my friend" during the entire tutorial, I
still don't think I care for it much but
here goes it anyway.
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 Step 1 Open
a new image 300 x 300 transparent. Choose the bezier line tool and
set the width to one (1). Antialias checked, closed path
checked. Set your foreground and background both to white.
Click once in bottom center and then once in left corner and then once
in right corner. (Fig.1)
(Do NOT hold down the mouse between clicks, click and release 3x.)
Try and get to the centermost part of your image to make the first
click. Use your coordinates at the bottom left to determine the
accuracy of your center point. After your third click release your
mouse. Choose FILE and SAVE so we don't lose our new image/shape
we just made. This will be master feather incase we lose one
later. :oP
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 Step
2 Open another new image 500 x 500 and copy the
master feather you just made and paste it on to the new image as a new
layer. Save and name the file. Choose your selection tool and make
a selection around the shape. Careful not to touch your shape.
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 Step
3 Choose your KPT gradient and match the settings as
close as you can to these below and for this one we are trying to get an
orange. Move the lightest part to the top right (red
arrow), and the
darker to the bottom left (green
arrow).
1.
Elliptical 2. Sawtooth
(first one)
3. No repeat 4. Normal Glue Mode |
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 Step
4 Repeat the steps above making a couple different
colors. You will need green, purple, blue and orange ones.
Start with a blue one and line it up straight in the middle.
Choose one of the other colored ones and choose ROTATE and rotate it a
bit to the left, say 20 degrees or so. Then click LAYER and
DUPLICATE, then MIRROR. Choose another color and rotate this one
as well a little more than the last one, I went 45. Continue on,
increasing the rotating angle a smidgen each time until you see
something like mine. Choose one of the orange ones again and
duplicate it twice. Resize each one to fit on top of the purple
and blues ones like mine. You can rotate them again if you need
to. Save your image.
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Step 5 PSP
7 Users-Once
positioned, choose the LAYERS and merge the visible layers. Grab
selection tool and set to rectangle and make a selection around the
feathers, then EFFECTS option for the menu, colored foil and set your
settings like mine (right).
When finished,
click ok. Now make several duplicates of the layer, I made 5.
PSP
6 Users- Since
you don't have the colored foil option the only thing that I
could come up with to make it even close to the 7 tut was to
choose neon glow set to detail 13 and opacity to 100. Make
a duplicate layer of the feather and turn it off and apply the
neon glow to the bottom most layer of feathers, then turn on the
duplicated layer and try changing the blend modes around and
play with the sliders til you can get a look that you
like. HERE,
are a couple examples. Merge all your visible layers and
don't forget to make the duplicates just like 7 users did in
step 5 (above) (sorry best I could come up with, me sickie,
fever blah. LOL
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 Step 6
Spread out your layers so that you have room to work and save your
image. (You should
have already saved this image back in step 4)
Resize a couple of the layers down smaller than your original
image. I resized down to 200 on one (right
bottom) and then 100
on the other (top
middle).
Choose the rotate tool and rotate them around. We are going to put
them together and so we need to try and mix up the patterns just a
little so it don't look plain. (you can always change and/or
adjust them later if you like.) Save the image. Set to the
side for a minute.
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 Step
7 Open another new image 300 x 300 and choose the line
tool, set your foreground color tp black and your background color to
white. Choose BEZIER and click the OPPOSITE way you did the first
time in step 1. Starting at the top middle and ending with the
right bottom and then release the mouse and should have something like
the corner thumbnail (right
bottom). Set the line width to 10 this
time.
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 Step
8
Now go to your effects and choose the PINCH deformation in your
geometric effects (PSP
7), PSP 6 it is under
image/deformations. Apply the
PINCH filter TWICE with the setting of 50. Screenshot here shows
the image after the second pinch has been applied. Click ok.
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 Step
9 Now
I tweaked mine a little with the deformation tool but you do not have to
if you like the shape and the effect that you have already. Copy
and paste it as new layer on to the same image where you have the
feathers. Position the body over the feathers, re-arrange
and play with them until you get the effect you like. Grab your
line tool and set both foreground and background color to black with a
line width of 1, antialias checked, no vector. Just draw some straight
lines that would resemble feet for the ugly little feller and
move them up under the body and position them.
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| Step 10 Now
basically that is about it. I added some drop shadows in various
places behind each feather layer as well as behind the body and under
the feet. I slapped some grass under him and a makeshift sky in
the back with sun and little lake/pond on the edge. Added a frame
and saved the image. Save in jpg format to try and preserve the
quality in the gradients, set the compression real low. |
