Here’s a little tutorial for pixelmator, since I’m working on some new visuals for the upcoming second promo EP from Krop. So let’s start shall we ? All you need for this tutorial are basic pixelmator or photoshop skills, a copy of pixelmator, about 20 minutes and a photo of a person. I used one of the promo pics from Krop. Read more for the tutorial itself. If any of the images is too small for you, you can right click on it, and choose view image opening it in it’s full. This release is an upcoming one, but if you like electronic dance music with an alternative twist check out the last cd at kropband.com . It’s a free download.
Let’s start by creating an 800 by 600 pixel image, and filling the background with a circular gradient such as this.
Then let’s find a nice pattern tiled background. I was looking for something in that retro wallpaper style seen in some old houses. Filled the background with it and changed the layer blending mode to “Screen”.
Then let’s fill another layer with a red to darker-red gradient (any direction really), change the blending mode to Overlay and the opacity to 85%. The result should look somewhat like this.
Then I looked for some ink splashes and pasted them onto a new layer. They were black on white background, so changing the blending mode to Multiply added them to the composition easily.
Allright the background should be a bit minimalistic, so let’s leave it and add a character. Using the lasso tool (point to point works best) cut the character out of the background. While doing hair don’t worry if you leave little parts of the background there, we’ll fix those later anyway, try and cut the hair as good as possible.
Now duplicate that layer (Option + J duplicates a layer if you didn’t know that ;)) and change the curves of it to match the background better. In this case I changed the red, green and blue separately to the values you see on the combined graph. It’s better that way. If the background is red then let’s add some red. Adding green in the higher parts of the graph and taking it out in the lower ones saturates it a little bit with yellow, and then let’s take the blue a little down in the middle. And that’s the effect.
Now select the untouched character layer underneath, add some gaussian blur (filter – gaussian blur), change the blending to Color Dodge and opacity to somewhere around 50%. That will add that nice back glow around the character.
And here’s a tip on how to fix the hair. Duplicate the character layer (not the blurred one, the one on top) and delete everything but the hair. Use an eraser with a soft edge to delete the face and leave just the hair. Then change the blending mode to multiply, the opacity to around 80%. And there’s one more step. Go to that original layer (one below the hair one) and with an eraser gently erase the brighter parts of hair that had some background pixels there as well. That way the hair gains nice color + it doesn’t have the background pixels in it at all. Mystery solved! Ha!
Let’s do the same with the eyes. Duplicate the main character layer, put it on top, change the blending to overlay and with an eraser delete everything but the eyes and little area around them. That would give the character a deeper, more “weird” look.
Let’s do something about the clothes since they’re a bit too bright. Once again – duplicate the main layer, put it on top. Blending mode to Multiply this time and opacity to 80%. Then erase the arms, hands, head and hair with an eraser leaving just the clothes. In many cases, with clothes in different colors than black, it can also yield very cool results. Try it a few times and see which opacity is best for you. The closer to the 100% the darker the image will be.
Now since the CD is called “Shake” let’s shake it all a little. Duplicate the character layer twice but move those two layers underneath the main one. Then move one of them slightly to the left, the other to the right. Add gaussian blur and change blending of both layers to Overlay and opacity to 30 / 40%. That will create that shaky “edge” but keep our character sharp and in focus anyway.
Since the character was covering one of the splashes, let’s move it a little bit to the side so at least a part of it is still visible.
Now let’s add some text. The font used is Futura (a pretty standard font for a Mac but it’s used as a part of Krop visual identity). There’s the band name, the title and what tracks will be on this little EP.
Now let’s duplicate the title layer a couple of times, change the opacities to Overlay and put the new layers underneath the main text. Then let’s play with both of them with the Filter – Distortion tools (any tool you like). A combination of both can add some background twists to the letters and make them more interesting.
Now let’s do the same for the tracklist, duplicate – rasterize the text layer underneath and change it to Overlay. I chose the Glass Lozenge distortion effect from the filter menu and played with it for a while.
And that’s it. A simplistic but atmospheric piece of visual for the upcoming Krop release. Don’t forget to check it out at kropband.com
Cheers!