Unicorns and shapes
The unicorn shape is based on a horse shape with a horn. In this tutorial
we will make a custom shape of a unicorn that can be used at a variety of
sizes and modify and color it so it can be used in your fantasy images. To
complete this tutorial you will need
  1.
Open your image. Click image=> mode=> RGB. Click image=>image size. Check
constrain proportions and set the width to 1000 pixels.
2. Duplicate the background.
  Use
the magic wand set to tolerance of 32, uncheck contiguous, uncheck
anti-alias and click in the white area. Hit your backspace key. Use your
eraser tool to erase the black stripes and other extraneous black links.
Hit your D key and use your paint bucket to fill in the letters
missing in the middle of the horse. Use a good size hard brush with
anti-alias unchecked to paint over the eyes and nostrils so you are left
with a solid black horse. Add a layer and Draw in a corn for the unicorn in
black. edit and adjust it here on this new layer.
 3.
Control click the horse layer to select the horse. Hold your shift key down
and control click the corn layer to add that to your selection. Click on the
path layer. Click the button on the bottom of the paths panel that says Make
Work path from selection.
4. Click Edit=>Define Custom Shape. Call the shape Unicorn. Click ok. To
save that shape permently you must go intot the preset manager, edit=>
preset manager. Set the preset to custom shapes, click on your unicorn and
click save set.
5. Open a new canvas that is 750 wide by 450 high, RGB, 72 ppi, White.
Insert a New Layer. Select your shape tool set to your new unicorn shape.
Set the option to draw the shape as a pixel drawing, opacity 100%, anit
alias, color= black. Draw your shape on your new canvas.
 6.
Set Your tool to dodge and brush to about a 45 pixel
 soft
brush, range= shadows, exposure=15%..
Run over the highlight areas or highs that a horse would have, such as the
hind quarters, the center of the neck, the mane, the tops of legs and the
centers of the legs, the belly, the tops of legs, etc, until you have
basically worked out the shading in black white and grays for the horse
shape. Reduce your soft brush to work on the legs. Then select a hard
3 pixel brush and zoom in on the corn. Using the dogde tool set to shadow,
highlight out the "ribs" of the corn.
 7.
Click Image=> Adjust=> Hue/saturation.
- colorize = checked
- hue= 0
- saturation = 30
- lightness= -6
 8.
Select the smudge tool set to the hair brush you installed for this
tutorial. Set the strength to 90%. Open the brush palette. Set the brush
diameter to 30 pixel, and spacing to 1%. Drag from the neck left to make the
hair more intense. Drag from the base of the tail left to make the tail hair
more fluffy.
9. You can add some fluff Around the body following the body line if you
want. You can darken areas with the burn tool, and lighten areas with your
dodge tool if you want to accentuate the highs and lows. The more work you
put into this, the more realistic this will be. |
