Grunge Textures and You, Graphics Course by Senator Seth

[phantom_causes]

First of all, let me apologize for the lateness of this banner image I really did try to have it finished on time. Unfortunately, several times when trying to work on this image my computer seemed to be having issues loading GIMP. After several attempts I was able to fix the issue w/GIMP & complete my project.

My image before:


After:


For this one I really tried to use a lot of different textures since the background of the image was so plain looking. My textures used were:

Dirty & Grungy patterns by redheadstock
http://redheadstock.deviantart.com/art/Gru...xtures-65839322
Grunge Textures by cesstrelle
http://cesstrelle.deviantart.com/art/800x6...xtures-89523370
http://cassie47.deviantart.com/art/100-Gru...e-Pack-20602501
This site is awesome for Misc. Textures & Stock:
http://deadly-nightshade.com/media/textures.php

[Senator Seth of the UGS]

That's okay phantom. However, I must apologize to everyone because I didn't get the lesson up today. I'm sorry, I just didn't get there today. I'll have the lesson up maybe later this evening or probably tomorrow.

Sorry if that's an inconvenience to anyone.

Thanks,
Seth


Edit: Lesson 3 is up!!

[mina]

Seth, wat your doin is amazing!

great teacher
you've come a long way yourself

[Senator Seth of the UGS]

Adding Text

Okay so in this final lesson, we will be learning how to add the simple text "Supernatural" to our banners and also playing around with them to make them look more grunge style for our signatures. In this lesson hopefully you will learn more about "Layer Masks" which are an extremely helpful item when it comes to blending pictures together or doing cool image/text effects like we are going to do today. However, looking at a lot of your banners from the past lesson, it is a good idea to expand on layer masks and maybe use it to improve your banners overall, which is something that happens to us all when we get close to the end of a piece...we find that we need to go back and edit some stuff from the past to make it look better. I'll explain more as we go along.


So first off, we have to add our text and place it. For this I used "Supernatural Knight" (Thanks to JessicaRae for hosting that) and set the size to 23 pixels. For the color, I decided that I would give one of the colors I stole from that one cloud texture a try and see how that came out, so I used dcb89e as my text color. Next, I had to find a good placement for the text. The location I have the text in that image is where I left it, but I could have moved it to the left of Sam's head and it would have worked pretty well, but I just kind of liked it where it was there. I set the text's mode to "Addition" at 72% opacity.

In placing text, it is one the hardest things that digital web graphic designers do because text is such a key element of their work. It takes a really long time to actually learn how to do great text work, so it's something that unfortunately I can't teach in a lesson. Most new comers to graphics always ask, "How do I do great text?" and the answer is one the typically don't like, "Just read tuts and play around with text." This is what you are going to have to do. You have to just play around with text several several times and read good tutorials and just figure out how text works. And it's something that I believe everyone develops in their own way. It's kind of like Calculus...one day it will just make sense. Also, I really strongly suggest that you look up artists who's style of text you like...and just look at their art and see what they do that makes their text great to you and then try to incorporate that into your style.

Moving on, we move to one of the important parts of this lesson, layer masks. Let me take a moment to explain what layer masks are before I go on to how we will be using them. Layer masks are simply masks that you put over whatever layer you want. Take for example our text layer which I have put a layer mask on. Notice how there is the text layer and then to the right of it is the layer mask. Also, take notice of the black box around the text layer and the white box around the layer mask. This is to tell you which one you have selected. If you have the text layer selected then there would be a white box around it and a black box around the layer mask. Make sure whenever you are using a layer mask that you have the layer mask selected...otherwise you're just painting on the actual layer which doesn't really help you. Now what you can do with a layer mask is take your brush tool, , and paint in that layer mask area. Now if you paint in black, then whatever you paint over will be masked, and whatever you paint over in white will be unmasked or just like regular.

Now for what we are doing, we have the layer mask on the text layer when you selected "Layer Mask" this is what should have come up, these are the settings you need for your layer mask to work correctly. And after the layer mask was set, I went to the brush tool and painted with a soft brush, , in the corners of the text and kind of in the middle and then I went to one of my grunge brushes (resource posted below) and just brushed around in the text a little more until I liked the outcome. In general, when doing layer masks on text for grunge, you want to always keep in mind that you want your text to look somewhat eroded or faded away into your background. So that is the look I was trying to go for. Also, you don't want to make whole letters disappear because then it's too hard to read, so just take out chunks of the letter make it look like it's fading away.

The next thing I did for my text was try to high light it and bring it out more. So I duplicated the layer and then made a new layer and then merged the duplicate text layer on to the new layer. Remember that you want to put your text layer on top of your new layer and also that you want to set the text layer to Normal at 100%. After that, I selected the new text layer and set it to "Saturation" at 50% opacity. Next, I duplicated the new text layer, the one we just set to Saturation, and went Filters>Blur>Gaussian Blur. Then I set my Gaussian Blur to these settings and hit okay. Then, I set this layer to "Divide" at 100%.

As a final touch to add a little something, I just quickly added a small text brush (resource found below) right below my text. The color I used was 25213f and I set it to "Grain Extract" at 46.5% opacity.

And now your are done!!

Here was my final result:


Now as I said at the beginning, after looking over some of your banners from the last lesson, a great many of you can really benefit from using your new skills of layer masks to improve you signatures. My general comments of student's sigs thus far would have to be that everyone needs to keep in mind what their focus is. In almost everyone's banner the focus should be Sam and/or Dean so don't overload your banner with a lot of high contrast textures that distract from that. Also, I noticed that a lot of people used the textures from sanami276, which is great, but with those kinds of textures you really don't want them in the way of your focus because it kind of distracts from it. Now in some cases you can have them in the way of your focus very lightly as to give the impression that you are looking at the focus through dirty glass or something, but you don't really want them if you signature is really bright. And other than those few comments, everyone is doing a great job so far!!

I hope that you found this course to be enjoyable and informative in the end. Again, please don't be afraid to post something in there if you need help, or send me a PM if you prefer. I'll help you the best I can.

Homework is due Friday October 3, 2008

Don't worry if you're late any more, I'm accepting late work for this one and any of the past lessons that you may have missed. However, I do ask that if you were late for any of the past lessons, that you please save your piece after you finish each lesson and still share it with us. I'd love to see your progress.

Also, everyone, if you can, I would like you to post your first banner, second banner, and this final banner all together so that we can all look at the progress we have made.

Information on the Final Project will be posted on Saturday October 4, 2008

Thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed!

Seth

Resources:
Font:"Supernatural Knight" (Thanks to JessicaRae for hosting that)

Small Text Brushes: Foxxie-Chan's Tiny Text 5
Other Small Text Brushes

[Senator Seth of the UGS]

Thanks so much Mina!

[DeanLives]

That's alright Seth. Will be waiting for it when ever you get it up.

[phantom_causes]

That's okay Seth, I really appreciate how your lessons are so in depth. Some of the things you posted in the lesson really helped me to get my banner image into focus. Hopefully I can clean up some of the spots that still need a bit of work w/this next lesson.

[DeanLives]

Ok here my stuff.

Before:



After:



I tried different colors but black seemed to bold. Teal was to light. Dark pink just to bluh. But all together they made a nice little effect. Then the text brush under was stamped in black then stamp white all top gave it a nice look cause everything I tried was to dark or too light. I'm very pleased how it came out.

[Episodic Love]

Again I feel really bad for not doing the homework correctly soI made two new banners from scratch and followed each lesson and remembered to keep the before and after picture.

Dean Base:

Sam&Dean Base:

D Lesson 1:

SD Lesson 1:

D Lesson 2:

SD Lesson 2:

D Lesson 3:

SD Lesson 3:

Final Results:


>>



>>

It's too bad this was the last lesson. I've really learned a lot.

[BabyAngel]

hey I Know that I didn't turn in my homework in the last two lessons, BUt i wasn't allowed on the PC...
But I made it now

This is how it was after lesson two:


and this is after lesson 3


couldn't find my lesson 1 banner anymore.. dad must have deleted it

to everyone else.. Great Job guys!!!

[crazyisgood]

I might totally re-do this with a Supernatural one as I don't like this and nothing was going right for me.
Lesson 1

Lesson 2

Lesson 3

[BabyAngel]

Oh I like you.. You do SGA WHEEE Carson

[hobbleit]

I won't be able to do this this week. My cmputer broke again and the .xcf file is saved on the hard drive so I can't get it

[Senator Seth of the UGS]

Thanks okay Hobbleit, we've all been there. I hope you have your computer back up for the final project.

And I really like everyone's results so far! The text just wraps up everything in everyone's pieces. Great work everyone!

[BhBear06]

As you can see, i changed the border in all three, but I think I like it now.
Lesson#1

Lesson#2

Lesson#3