Step 4. The Face: Onto the Nose

OK, so doing the nose wasn't such a hustle since it only consists of the right shape and two holes in it. I presume you are noticing how the nose doesn't really look good, but I like it. If you rotate the picture (or your head) you can see how it isn't straight, but it is really at its right place. Doing all those little fuck ups, makes your picture look real, not like some casted-outa-plastic-and-based-on-Barbie kinda chick. So, the nose was a WHOOOLE 5 minutes work. We'll work on it some more later down the road.

Step 5. The Face: Tha Bloody eyes

I have to tell you, I hate eyes. You have to spend, like, HOURS before you get them in the right shape, but when you do...WHOOHOO. Thats the best part, coloring the eye. I'll do a little tutorial on that some day. So, I decided to go with the eye-lids closed kinda look. Doing that line again (same as lips), between the upper and lower lid, gives you the ability to change the expression of the eyes, which automatically changes the complete mood of the picture. And here it is, my babe looks very calm and relaxed. Did some eyelashes with the 1pixel BURN tool, added the shadows with the same (but larger brush) and here it is. -Repeat the combination of actions to get the other eye complete-

Step 6. Face: Finishing the grey-scale

And yes, voila, here she blow., oops, swings (It was at this point that we began to suspect Petar had been drinking a bit too much Vodka, or smoking just a little too much of that funky Croatian weed. ~Dave) Adjusted the outline of the head, added some shadows, some eye brows (again with a combination of dodge/burn 1 pixel size, doing strokes freely) and thats it. All we have to do now is...... colour!

Step 7. The Face: Colouring

So, I prepared my little piccy (adjusted the curves with CTRL-M, brightness and contrast), closed that other pic, and zoomed this one to 200%. Now the fun part begins. I mixed the usual colours for the skin and colours for the shadows (I always make shadows out of colours, I don't BURN the motha fukha down, that technique sux) and with airbrush set to overlay, 10% opacity, I did the 1st stroke. Hmmm, doesn't look that good. Lemme try multyply. Hmmm, this one sucks too. So I started using every goddamn option there is on airbrush and nothing. NOTHING!!! I am gonna kick the shit outta Calvin for putting this stupid idea into my head. How am I gonna colorize my cute babe? Damn it. Oh well, we will have to use all those fancy options Pshop has to offer. Colour balance first. I adjusted the midtones into light red, highlights into some yellow and I had the base colour. I reduced the contrast and had my pic look like it has a very weak spotlight so I could again manually do the shadows and highlights (but this time with colour, as I usually do it). ! Rule of thumb ! OVERLAY for higlights ----- MULTIPLY for shadows So, I used PALE, PALE yellow for my highlights and that way I got somekinda weird lightning that I actually liked very much, - added some green and brown strokes here and there and I got myself some very nice colour work. I like it. Added just a little bit of hair, dunno why. How? Well now I used my technique. Did some splats in some brick-red colour and then simple shading but, all done with 1pixel brush. Takes time but it looks good.

Step 8. Goggles: Plastic/Glass Visor

This is the easiest part of the mask, and it's the glass/plastic visor. Make a new path with the shape you want it to look like, fill it with the colour you want and!!!! (See next Step for advice about paths. ~Dave) Just change the Layer to the MULTIPLY setting. Of course you have to make that in the new layer, coz otherwise it won't work.

Step 9. Goggles: The Rubber and Metal

Well, we are ready to start with the 2nd part of this tutorial which will include creating different materials. Ok, so we start with the rubber outside rim of the mask. I really don't know how to explain this but rubber doesn't shine as much as I did it, but, hey, it looks better that way. Those are all those things you do by yourself using your taste. I think thats where artists vary. Everyone of us know how to use Pshop or something else and the overall use of colour. But where to put each pixel/stroke, thats the individual thing. Anywayz, what I did for that metal, was AGAIN I put down broad stokes of pastel colours and going again in the detail. I created a texture simply by dragging the 1,2,3,5,8 pixel brush freely whilst changing their opacities and colours. The highlights again....how? Overlay with a bright colour (preferably white or pale yellow). OH, I almost forgot. When you work with several types of material you should always put all of one kind into one layer. That way when you want an overall change of colour, contrast, brightness etc. of each material, you change them all you don't have to do it separately. Of course you can always use Photoshops actions for each part, but thats dumb. Oh yeah, and one more thing. When you are doing shapes that are not organic (for face we just used airbrush and relied on Ye Ol' Good Hand. Well, if you want something to look really solid, like metal in this case, you should use PATHS. Paths can be found in the same box where the LAYERS are, and the Path tool is that little pen below the water tool. So, you have paths turned on and you make a shape that you are satisfied with. Now what? Well, on the bottom of the Path dialog box are little icons representing *from the left* FILL PATH, STROKE PATH, MAKE SELECTION. The other ones you can experiment with since I don't use them (of course I know what they do =). MAKE SELECTION is our main squeeze. This thingie changes your path into, yeah you've guessed it, active selection. Now you can paint all you want into it. And the cool use of paths is when you deselect the selection you can always turn it again, by turning on the path 1st and then clicking on Make Selection. Don't forget to save your path just by double-clicking on its name in the dialog box. You change its name and TA DAAA. Its saved within your file (JPG also supports paths).

And thats it. The mask is all done. All I did now, is some more overall shading on the face to avoid that look as if that mask was just pasted onto the face.

Sooo, I am gonna retire now, and do those little thingies we all do individually ,and spend another day for the coolest part in this job....... and thats FINE TUNING or TOUCHING UP, whatever you prefer it to call it. OK, thats about it, its kinda late, and I can't really think straight anymore. Lets check how long it took... uuhhmm, yesterday 3 hours, today 6 hours, cool! around 9 hours for everything. I think that’s pretty fast. Cheers, and DON'T SMUDGE or I will come out there and kick your ass. Use Airbrush and its zillion settings as pics looks cleaner that way. dP

Petar Ivancek