EliteKill's Photoshop Monster Making Guide!

yunings

Author:EliteKill
Original posted at:http://heroescommunity.com/viewthread.php3?TID=21527

This guide will be finished in steps, so patience.
NOTE: This guide uses Photoshop 7.0. Any later versions are fine, but this guide does NOT use any other programs!
1 Idea and Concept
1.1 Getting Started
1.2 Idea
1.3 Research
1.4 Concept
2 Making the Monster: How To
2.1 Simple Techniques
2.2 Extracting
2.3 Recolering
-2.3.1 Color Table
-2.3.2 Hue/Saturation
2.4 Technique "Combos"
3 Animations
3.1 Getting Started (Again)
3.2 Shade (NEED HELP!)
3.3 Using the Creature Wizard
4 Hosting and Sharing
4.1 Hosting Pictures
4.2 Hosting Animations
1 Idea and Concept
1.1 Getting Started
Welcome to EliteKi's Photoshop Monster Making Guide! Here you will learn the basics of Monster Making and Animating. To get started you need to get Adobe Photoshop
here
. (NOTE: This is only a free trial for the latest version of Adobe Photoshop. I happen to know a link to the full version of Adobe {hotoshop 7.0, and I will post it if a mod agrees.) Now, install it and open it up. It should look like this:

Now you have Adobe Photoshop (from now on I'll call it AP)!!! This will be your main tool for creating monsters with this guide.
1.2 Idea
After you've got the tool (AP), now you need an idea. For this guide, we're going to make a many-armed horned woman with a lower body of a horse. Think up ideas by looking at different creatures, or you can get them from other games and/or mytholgy.
1.3 Research
This is not what it sounds like. After you have an idea, you need to think what creatures are you going to use. For this one, we're foing to use Unicorn for the horn, Naga for the upper body, and a Centaur for the lower body.
1.4 Concept
Now you are actually starting to work. Copy pictures of the creatures you need (a good site is
Age of Heroes
). Now, extract (see 2.3) the wanted creature parts and put them together without any further recoloring and fixing. This is your concept. Example: I made the concept of the creature mentioned in the idea section:

2 Making the Monster: How To
2.1 Simple Techniques
In this section you'll start making the final 1-frame look of your mmonster. Open AP and Internet Explorer. Go
Age of Heroes
and copy the creature you're going to use. In this example. we're gonna "have fun" with the Royal Griffin. Right-click and Copy and than open AP. Click Ctrl+N to opena new picture. You will get this:

The pixel size should be exact if you have a picture copied (which we do). Click OK and you have your workspace. Click Ctrl+V to paste the Royal Griffin. Now for the techniques:
The first one will be Inverting Colors. Every color has an opposite one, and to make every color in the picture its opposite, hit Ctrl+I. This is called Inverting Colors, and can give really cool results.
Before:

After:

The second, usefull, technique is Free Transform. While Free Transforming, you can rotate and resize your image.  To enter Free Transform, Right Click-->Free Transform

and it should look like this:

If you are outside the "boxes" (the red part:

), you can click and hols the left-mouse button to rotate the image. If you are in the boxes, you will be able to change the size.
The third "technique" is more of a shortcut. If you accidently overdid something or you did something you didn't want click Ctrl+Z
2.2 Extracting
This one of the most usefull things you'll learn about Monster Making. Extracting is basically taking a picture and taking only a certain part from it. The difference between this and the thing in paint is with extracting, you get ONLY what you want. For our example, we'll take the Royal Griffin again:

now click Ctrl+X to get this:

For this example, we only want the beak. To do that, first take the Magnifying Glass tool (red box) and zoom on the beak until you can't anymore. Now go to the Edge Highlighter tool (blue box) and highlight AROUND the beak:

Now take the Fill Tool (green box) and color in the beak. When you're done, hit OK and you just extracted the beak from the Royal Griffin!!!
NOTE: If you accidently highlighted an unwanted part, hold Alt and click to erase it.
2.3 Recoloring
Recoloring is what makes yout unit look good. In our concept example, we got a very unrealistic looking creature. Why? Because the upper and lower bodies didn't match. To make them match, we need to recolor. Two recoloring techniques will be in this guide, and I will post more as I learn more

Our example in this section:

**NOTE: When changing a Mode (explained later), after you are finished, return to RBG Mode.  so you can save it in any format.**
(Yes, it is the concept we used earlier

)
2.3.1 Color Table
In SP, you can get a table of every color in a picture and channge it. That's called the Color Table. To acess it, you will first need to change your mode from RBG to Indexed Colors.
**NOTE: When changing into Indexed Colors, all layers will be lost so BE CAREFULL!**
Go to Image-->Mode-->Indexed Colors and hit OK. Than, go to Image-->Mode-->Color Table. Look at the Picture.

This is the Color Table:

Every square is a color, and you can click on it to change it:

I've marked the important stuff:
The green box is teh color code box. I fyou want to tell somebody about a specific color, use its code. If in some guide you're told a code, enter it there.
The red box is the most important thing while recoloring. This is the H level (Hieght?) ranging from 0-360. When changing the H level, the colors in the Yellow Boxes will change.
Now to do the recoloring. We want to make the lower body match the upper body, so open a grayish-color and take its H level (I used 257). Now, open every bronish-color and change its H level to the grayish (257 in my case). When your done, you will get a recolored version:

2.3.2 Hue/Saturation
Sometimes, when we use Color Table, we don't get what we want. So now we'll try the Hue/Saturation technique. First, open your concept. Next, go to Image-->Mode-->Grayscale and answer OK if you are asked anything. Now your picture should be in black and white. Now, go to Image-->Mode-->RBG to return to your normal mode. Hit Ctrl+U to go to the Hue/Saturation screen. Check Colorize in the bottom-right corner.

Again, I pointed out the important parts:
The black box is the Hue, or the color.
The red box is the Saturation, or the color's strength.
The blue box is the Lightness, or how light/dark will the image be.
Expirement with the options until you get what you want in the preview. I had these option to get this: Hue=270 Saturation=100 Lightness=0:

2.4 Technique "Combos"
Some techniques go well with others. Here are some (will be updated):
Black Body:
Open you creature (I used the concept creature) and turn it into grayscale mode. Next, make in Indexed Colors and open Color Table. Click on the tab in the upper-section (it should say Grayscale), and choose Black Body (in the red box):

Click OK, and change back to RBG. Now save. This is what I got:

This guide will be updated!!!!!

Flavius

Wow.Marverlous.
I'd like to have a try.:handshake

fallening

Well, I prefer gimp......

zzy007

Oh,I have learn much from this!~~~~~~~~ But is this all ?

miw1120

great!I'll have a try!