In this project you will use all the skills you have acquired with Photoshop to turn yourself into an avatar. The rubric is based on using a picture that is high resolution, various adjustment layers, masking, and fill layers.
After tutorial, add your ears, AVATAR background, and your first name using the Papyrus font with a stroke.
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Before we begin the tutorial, be sure to create a new document of a 8X10 Photo. Use your retouching tools like the spot healing brush tools to smooth face. Then use the liquify filter to adjust nose and eyes.
1. Starting The Eyes
The Avatar characters have incredible, greenish crisp colored eyes. We’re going to begin the process of creating them. Create generous selections around both eyes using the Lasso tool (L). Go Select>Modify>Feather and feather these selections 15px. Hit Ctrl + J to copy these to a new layer.
2. Enlarging The Eyes
One at a time, use the Rectangular Marquee tool (M) to drag a selection around one eye and go Edit>Transform and hold down your Shift + Alt key and scale each eye larger. TIP: Before you start to scale, drag the little registration point to the very center of the pupil. This will prevent the eye from being moved around while we scale.
3. Clean Up
Apply a layer mask to this layer and paint away any areas that might be spreading skin color over the hair/ear areas.
4. Enlarge Iris’
Grab your Elliptical Marquee tool (M) and hold down your Shift key and drag a perfect little selection around the Iris’ each one, one at a time. We want to enlarge these bad boys and make them so big that they don’t fit in the eye anymore. Hit Ctrl + J to pop the Iris up onto its own layer and then go Edit>Transform and scale these Iris’ up. Check out my screenshots to see my selection and how big I ended up making them.
5. Mask The Iris’ To The Eyeball
Drop a layer mask on both of our new Iris layers and paint with black to get these eyes fitting right where they belong.
6. Editing The Nose
Merge all of your layers to a new layer. Go to Filter>Liquify and grab the Bloat Tool (B) and use the tool to pump up the nose like I have. Use the Forward Warp Tool in the Liquify dialog box and push the nose downward as well. Spend a little time playing with the nose to get it looking exactly as you like. Then clean up around eyes with layer mask on eyes layer.
Here is an example of an AVATAR nose, and what I did.
6. Depth And Detail In The Eyes
Create a new Curves Adjustment layer, set the Blend Mode to “Screen”, and also fill the mask with black (Ctrl-I) to hide the brightness that the Curves Adjustment have pulled in. Grab your Brush tool (B) and set the tool to 100% opacity and grab the 5 pixel brush. Carefully paint over all the brighter ridges you can find in the iris.
7. Continued Depth And Detail In The Eyes
Create another Curves Adjustment layer and set the Blend Mode to “Multiply” and fill this layer with black (ctrl-I). Go ahead and paint in the shadow areas of the iris here as well. Concentrate on area by top eyelid. NOTE: We’ll adjust the hardness and opacity of these effects in just a moment, let’s just get the painting finished for now.
9. Add Some Color To The Eyes
Add a Hue/Saturation layer and set the Hue slider to “+30” and then set the Saturation to “+35” and also drop about “+5” into the brightness slider. Once you see the green color as I do, mask the color to only the iris areas of the eye.
10. Coloring The Eyes More
Go Layer>New Fill Layer and fill you layer with the color #d1b645 then set that layer to “Soft Light” and mask it to the iris’.
11. Blue Skin
Set your foreground to the color #abc0d3 and create a new layer, change blend mode to color, and paint over each area of the skin, but avoid both the lips and the eyes.
12. Adjust Color And Light
Add a Curves Adjustment layer and drag down a bunch on the blacks area of the curve as I have in my first screenshot below. Then pull down on the “Red” curve to add some cyan as I have in my second screenshot. Also create an “S” curve on the “Blue” curve to add blue to the highlights. Mask all of this to the skin taking extra care to avoid the lips and the eyes/eyebrows.
13. Adjust Tone And Brightness
Add a Black and White Adjustment layer and set it to “Multiply”, reduce the layer opacity to 80%. Mask this layer to the skin areas also taking care to avoid the eyebrows, eyes, and lips here as well.
14. Coloring The Lips
Set your foreground color to #9bc2e4 and create a new layer. Paint this color over the lips. Set this layer to the Blend Mode of “Multiply.”
15. Face Paint, Face Tattoos
I drew my own “ink mask” type of object with the Pen Tool, filled it with a dark gray, and then just dragged it into my Photoshop document. Download the PNG file named avatar-mask above. Place embed and use the warp and tranform controls to place on your face. Set the blend mode to “Soft Light”. Apply a layer mask and paint with black to paint away the areas of this tattoo/faint pace/mask that we don’t want to see.
16. One you like the way you look, merge all your layers by right clicking on la layer and selecting merge visible. Download Avatar background above, and place behind your AVATAR. Use your select and mask feature you used on previous projects.
17. Ears
Download your AVATAR ears above and place into the project. Then choose what ear you would like to use. Select your ear and hit Ctrl-J twice. Flip your one ear to face in right direction Edit>Transform>Flip Horizontal. Create a layer mask for each ear and mask to your head. You may want to use an brightness adjustment layer on your ears if to light or dark. Once complete merge all your layers again and then Flatten (Right click on any layer).
18. Sparkles Pt. 1
To add glowing sparkles to the face we first need to edit a brush. Grab your Brush tool (B) and go Window>Brush Settings. Set your brush size to 15px and the hardness to 100%. Boost the “Spacing” to 630%.
19. Sparkles Pt. 2
Check on the “Shape Dynamics” and set the Size Jitter to 100%. Also check on “Scattering” and set the Scatter to 1000%.
20. Sparkles Pt. 3
Ensure that your brush opacity is set to 100% by checking the opacity in the tool options bar across the top of the Photoshop window. Set your foreground color to white. Paint dots of white onto your face using short, quick clicks with your mouse or your tablet stylus.
26. Add your first name, using the Papyrus font at 375px. and a layer style of stroke at 9px You choose colors.
27. Export as a jpeg; your name_avatar, and submit in classroom.