Costume Suggestions (City of Heroes)
This article is imported from the Hastur wiki. See the import log for details. Warnings:
- Image links.
 |
To make my costume suggestion images, I use Gimp, which is a program that's very like Photoshop, but open source.
There is no real secrets to making the images, other than that I use layers and layer masks a lot.
1. First, I harvest material. I take a bunch of screenshots from the costume editor of everything I think I need.
I make sure I don't rotate the figure during this process, as its almost impossible to get it back to the same place. I also time my screenshots vs the arm movement, so the hands will end up in the same place.
(If you have trouble taking screenshots in the costume editor, see this.)
Image: http://hastur.net/albums/costumeSuggestionGuide/guide01.jpg.
As you can note, I use the villaneous version of the costume editor. Not because I prefer villains over heroes, but because the lighter background means it is easier to separate the figure from the background.
2. All screenshots are collected into a Work Image as a stack of layers. I name each layer something ending in "base", to remind me that they are the the originals and to avoid destroying them, as they are hard to recreate - see (1). The size of my work images are normally 1920x1200, as that's my screen resolution.
Image: http://hastur.net/albums/costumeSuggestionGuide/guide02.jpg.
3. I pick one base layer as the background of the image. I duplicate that, move it to the top, and name that copy "background". It's usually the simplest screenshot with the least stuff on I pick for this purpose.
Image: http://hastur.net/albums/costumeSuggestionGuide/guide03.jpg.
4. Then I decide what part I should work on first. For example: "the hair".
5. I take one of the layers that have hair areas I want to use. I duplicate it (so the base version is untouched) and bring the copy to the top.
6. I apply a layer mask to the copy. I usually choose to fill that mask with black, so that the layer is entirely hidden, and then use white in the mask to reveal only those areas I want to use. Hard brushes give me hard edges, and soft brushes soft transitions. Usually there is quite a lot of going back and forth between black and white mask colors, hiding and revealing, until I get just the areas I want. It's that back-and-forth-ing that is the primary reason I use a layer mask, and don't simply erase parts of the layer with the eraser tool.
7. I repeat (5)-(6) until I get all the areas that make up the new hair.
8. I merge the hair area layers I've built up, so I get a complete single layer with just the new hair on.
Image: http://hastur.net/albums/costumeSuggestionGuide/guide04.jpg.
9. I touch up that layer, adding lines, shadows and highlights as needed. This usually means a lot of use of the blur, smudge and airbrush tools.
10. I repeat (4)-(9) until I've done all the separate costume parts that make up the final image.
Image: http://hastur.net/albums/costumeSuggestionGuide/guide05.jpg.
Some simple parts are made from scratch, and other parts are resized, rotated or distorted as needed in steps (6), (8) or (9).
11. That finishes off the work image. I make double sure I've saved it properly to disk.
Image: http://hastur.net/albums/costumeSuggestionGuide/guide06.jpg.
12. Now it's time to make the final collage image from the work image. The collage image will be smaller to fit into the gallery. Typically I use a fixed height of 640 pixels, and a variable width of less than 1000.
13. I flatten the work image, and cut out the figure area. Then I resize it to fit the collage image's size, and paste it leftmost there. I use the eraser tool with a soft brush to get a soft edge to the pasted piece.
14. I revert the work image to unflattened version, and disable all layers except the background and one of the details. Flatten again, and cut out just an image of the selected detail. I paste that into the collage as one of the detail images.
15. Repeat (14) until I get all the detail images I want. I crop the collage image and make sure I got even-sized black spaces beween each detail image. (I usually put them 20 pixels apart.) I then flatten the image.
16. I add the text and flatten again.
17. Final touch-up - color adjustment, sharpening etc. Usually the screenshots are too dark to publish, so I use the curve adjustment to brighten the image up, and then the hue/saturation adjustment to increase the saturation.
Image: http://hastur.net/albums/costumeSuggestionGuide/guide08.jpg.
18. Save as JPEG.
Image: http://hastur.net/albums/costumeSuggestionGuide/guide07.jpg.
Done!
