Tonks Tutorial

[iliekhow]

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Alright, so, here's the basis for this tutorial. Tonks has longtime been one of my favorite characters to play. She's one of my babies. As most people know, it isn't so bad when people play "your" babies, but when they butcher them? That's bad. And one of the ways Tonks is butchered is through one of her most fun aspects - her appearance! Of course, what is Tonks without her brilliantly colored hair? I like looking at other manips people have done, but some of them... Well, some of them are bad. I went through the stages one by one. Denial. No, that icon can't be that bad. We're taught to color in the lines in kindegarten! No oen uses paint to make icons anymore! Anger. How could they do this to Tonks? Bargaining. I will make you new icons if you just take those hideous ones down. Depression. I can't bear to look at these icons. I just can't join this game. Acceptance. Some people just don't know how to photoshop. So now, I have decided to end the hate! I have decided that these bad iconners aren't bad, they're just unlearned! So I have come to learn you, and learn you good. This may not be the quickest way or the best way, but this way works, and that's a lot more than some other people can say. I use paint shop pro 9 to do my icons, and though I'm not sure exactly how well that translates to photoshop, I think the tutorial should work alright for photoshop users. On to the tutorial! First, I give you a few tips about PBs: 1. Blonde hair is hard to make dark colors from. Use a blonde if you're going for light blue, light pink, etc. 2. Black hair typically the hardest to colorize well. At best, you can make dark colors, but lighter ones are extremely difficult to do and have them look good. 3. The best colors to work with are medium browns and reds. They can be darkened for dark colors or lighteded for light colors fairly easily, and are the easiest to work with. 4. Spikey hair is harder to work with - instead of working with an overall shape, you have to work with individual spikes. It can be done, it's just going to be harder. Now on to the tutorial! I begin working with this photo of Nora Zehetner. I haven't used her as Tonks, but I think she'd make a pretty good one! Notice that though her hair is dark (a bit darker than I'd usually like), her hair is neither blond, black, or spikey, which makes it easier to work with. Now, lets fast forward through the resizing, cropping, sharpening, brightness/contrast tweaking, and levels tweaking. I'm assuming you already know how to do this, and if you don't, then that's for another tutorial. The icon we begin with is this: Now, because her hair is a little on the dark side in the photo, I want to brighten it up - but only her hair. I do so by copying the image and pasting it into a new layer. I brighten this whole layer. I go to adjust, then Brightness/Contrast, and up it by 25, which gives me the following. Now, remember I only want to brighten her hair, so I erase around the edges of her hair on the top layer. I am careful to leave ONLY her hair, but not take any of the hair away. Less care is needed at the bottom, because it's so dark anyway. I have the eraser set to size 4, 0 hardness, and 50 opacity. The best part about this is that if you erase too much, you can always put it back by erasing witht he right mouse button! Don't use the freehand cropping tool. It's kind of hard to use it well, and if you're good enough to use that effectively, then you probably wouldn't need this tutorial. The current layer looks like this: I merge the layers, and now I have the following: Now comes the exciting part where you pick Tonks's hair color! I chose a bright pinkisk, R:255 G:1 B:192. I create a new blank layer, and flood fill it with our nice pretty pink (or any other) color! I go to the layer properties, and I set this layer's blend mode to "color". We now have this. Now, the ovious flaw here is that the whole picture is pink! That's obviously not right. So, again, we're going to erase around the edges or the hair. It's essential that you stay in the lines!! This is the major downfall in many Tonks iconners. So, unless you want her head to actually be glowing pink, take the time to do it right. Here's the layer that will color her hair. Here's what we've got so far! Notice that I even erased the bit of skin above the strand of hair on her forehead. For that, you may need a slightly smaller size and a lower opacity, whatever you find is the easiest for you. Now, you could leave it like this if you like. This is the part where you'll have to tweak it. This icon doesn't look too bad, but sometimes, with the colored layer at 100% opacity, it looks completely unrealistic. Don;t be scared to lower it! Tonks is magic, yes, but she isn't described as having glow in the dark hair. Aaaaaaand ta-da! I add the finishing touches: I lower the hair color layer opacity to 85 to make it a touch more realistic, I follow all the same steps as the hair to make the eyes green, and I brighten it a touch. It isn't the best, but at least it isn't done in paint, and I can live with that. This same method also produced these icons! So play around with the method, see what you come up with. →