Create a 3d Calvin from Calvin & Hobbes

Today, I am going to show you how to create a 3D Calvin. After my last tutorial on how to create liquid splashing onto a car, and playing around with repousse tool, this got me thinking what else I could do with this tool.

Couple of things to keep in mind with your photo selection. This effect will work best with simple line art. Too complicated and the 3D tools in Photoshop will balk. Each section that you want to be 3D needs to be a completes section, if there is section where the lines do not connect, you will not see has dramatic a effect. mmm kay.

Step 1:
Open your image in Photoshop.

Isolate your image from the background.

Step 2:

Duplicate the working image.

The duplicate image is what where going to use to create our selections. Grab a standard round brush, set the hardness to 95% and go about connecting an areas that are not complete.

Step 3:

Separate the head from the body, There's a couple of ways to do this, one is to use the pen tool to create a new selection around the head, this is what I used initially but I think it would far faster to do it the following way. CTRL+CLICK on the thumbnail of our working image. This is going to select the whole image. Grab the Marquee tool and while holding down the ALT key de-select everything but the head.

Create a new layer and fill it with black, turn off the working image and the duplicate and you should have just the head of Calvin. Using the Magic wand brush, make a selection of the outside of Calvins head, Press CRTL+SHIFT+I to reverse the selection. With the selection fill with #fee2ba

Fill the selection by pressing SHIFT+F5 and then enter.

Goto the 3D menu and select Repousse.

Press okay and you should have something like this.

Right click on the layer and select Rasterize 3D.

Disable this layer for now.

Step 4:

Re-enable our duplicate Calvin layer. Using the same process as we did for the head, create a selection of just the body.

Create a new layer but this time fill it with #df0400

You should have something like this.

Goto the 3D menu and click on Repousse.

Should end up with something similar. Right click on the layer to Rasterize 3D

Step 5:

Duplicate the same process for the feet but this time fill the selection with white.

Be sure to Rasterize 3D.

Step 6:

For this step we are going to need to use the Pen tool to create a selection around Calvin's hand.

Click to zoom this image

Next use the Convert point tool to adjust the nibs around the selection. Once your happy with the paths, click on the Paths Tab.

At the bottom of the paths tab you'll see a small circle of dots, click on it to change the path you created to a selection.

Create a new layer and fill the selection #fee2ba

Goto the 3D menu, Repousse, use the same settings as before

You should end up with something similar.

Right click on the layer and Rasterize 3D.

Step 7:

Now you should have something similar to this.

Move the original Calvin layer so it's above the 3D layers.

Step 8:

To create Calvin's hair, we'll use the pen tool to create a path, focus on the hairline and don't worry about the hair.

Goto the paths tab again and click on the circle of dots. to change our path to a selection.

Create a new layer and fill the selection with #fccb05

You should end up with this:

Clean up the excess yellow, select Calvin's 3D head and using the magic wand make a selection.

Select the previous layer and press the delete key to get rid of the excess yellow. There may be a little yellow peeking out around the black outline, use the eraser to remove it.

Change the layer blending mode to soft light.

Step 9:

Select Calvin's arm.

Select the brush tool and change the color to #df0400

Paint in Calvin's Sleeve.

Double click on the layer to open the blending option box, select drop shadow.

Why were working the arm, we need to fill in the small section on the left of Calvin. Select color #fee2ba and paint in that small section.

Step 10:

Lastly we need to pain Calvin's socks. Select color #d34956

Paint in Calvin's Socks

That's it - Congratulation your done.

Create liquid splashing onto a car

Today, I am going to show you how to create a liquid splash across a car.

Step 1:

Open your image in Photoshop.

Select the pen tool, we want to create a selection on the front of the car.

Don't worry about making the selection perfect, we don't want to create too many nibs.

Using the "convert point anchor" and the "direct selection tool" adjust the path to some nice curves.

To convert the path to a editable selection, click on the the paths tab ( goto windows menu and select paths if it's not already selected)

In the bottom left of the paths dialog box, click on the third from the right circle, It's the one made up of tiny dots.


You should see your path change to a selection.

Create a new layer and fill this layer with a gradient, use a reflected gradient.

Step 2:

To make the splash look a little 3 dimensional, goto the 3D menu and select repousse, then current selection.

Use the following selections.

Next rasterize the 3d object by right clicking on the layer and selecting Rasterize 3D

Step 3:

There's a sharp point that was created during the repousse tool, know that the layer's been rasterized we can go and round this out. I am going to use the smudge tool, the liquify filter would do a better job but in this instance would take too long.

Create a new layer beneath the 3D layer. Select the brush tool with a 0 hardness, select black create some shadows beneath our new 3D layer. Drop the opacity of the layer to about 60%.

Step 4:

Next, lets import our pouring liquid into Photoshop. I found this image here:
http://www.traylerandtrayler.com/files/media/thumb/large/Milk_SPlash_L.jpg

Open the image in Photoshop and remove the white background.
Transfer this image over to our working image!

Scale and rotate the image so it's better aligned with our image.

Step 5:

There's a couple of ways we can extend the milk to the edge of document. For this image we'll use the puppet warp feature. You can find in the edit menu.

Select three point along the stream of milk


















Grab the topmost point and stretch the image upward. Be careful as it the bottom will tilt in one direction or another.

Step 6:

Color correction:

This next step can take some skill, Hue and Saturation is a fairly powerful tool in Photoshop. It can take some so be patient.




Once I am happy with my match, use the eraser tool and smudge tool to help blend the two images. I went ahead and merge the two so i could smudge from both images color pallets.





Step 7:

Add some splash, download a nice splatter brush set if you don't already have one. Here's a nice set for free from Brusheezy.com




http://www.brusheezy.com/Brushes/1476-Splatter

A very useful feature in the brush pallette is the ability to alter the perspective. There is a compass that
allows you to adjust the rotation of the brush as idicated by the arrow, there is also two small dots, these allow you alter the perspective of the brush, You this to throw some paint spatter under the car.



Create a new layer under the main splatter layer and throw some paint around.



Next create a new layer and select bevel and emboss and use the following settings.

Use the various brushes to through some more paint around. Once that's done use the smudge tool to blend your spatter into main image.

Change the blending mode of your splatter to Lighten your done.

Thanks
Nathan White