Portal 2 Signature TutorialOpening Message Welcome to the tutorial! Today I will be teaching you how to make a Portal 2 signature with limited resources. You will probably learn some useful tricks along the way, but if you don't, you still get a signature out of it. First, get your
render, some nice
splatter brushes, a few C4D's, and a
stock image.
Setting Everything Up
Open a new document and set the dimensions to 350 x 135 in pixels. Now open your render and copy and paste it into the new document. Then resize it to fit.
Adding a Background Paste your stock and drag it around until you get a nice looking background.
Creating Some Background Lighting Create a new layer and use some large soft white and black brushes on overlay to change the background's lighting to match the render.
Creating Some Flow with C4D's Open a couple of your C4D's, paste them in the document, set the layer mode to screen, and move them around until it creates some flow in your signature.
Creating Some Flow with Brushing Now to put your brushes to use. Create a new layer above the layer you used your soft brushes on. Now switch out to some of the splatter brushes you downloaded. Set them to one color; I used
#99b158. Now just keep brushing until you are happy with the new flow it creates in your signature. If you make a few mistakes use the eraser tool with a soft brush and light opacity. After you're done set the layer to screen.
Background Coloring Now create a new layer
below the lighting layer. We're going to spice up the background colors. Select the brush tool and use about a 250px soft brush. Select the same color you were brushing with before, except now instead of setting the layer to screen, you're going to set it on color.
Adding Background Flow with a C4D Okay, this step is going to be really quick. Open up another C4D and paste it right above the background layer in a way that it works with the flow of the rest of the signature.
Lighting Touch Up Now make a new layer above everything and set it to overlay. Switch to one of you messier splatter brushes, set the color to white, and touch up the lighting a bit to make it more dynamic. Play with the opacity until it looks right.
Blending with the Liquify Filter This step is gonna take a while, so pace yourself. Create a new layer above everything. Now go to Image, Apply Image. This will create a flattened version of every layer you have. Now go to Filter, Liquify. Play around until you get a funky pattern that you like and when you're done hit Ok. Now set the layer to overlay. You will see that this has drastically changed your signature. Clean it up by erasing the layer around the render and any other parts that look funny. you should now have some very nice lighting and colors.
Burning and Dodging Touch Ups Once again, create a new layer and go to Image, Apply Image. Now use the burn and dodge tools to touch up anything that looks weird.
Adding Borders Now that the actual signature is done we're going to add the borders. Select the line tool, set the color to black, and the size to 3px. Now hold the shift key and drag it across the signature. Move it to the very bottom of the signature. Now duplicate the layer and move it to the top.
Adding Text The last step is just to add the text. I chose
#b9d1b2 as the color and just added a green outer glow. The font I used was Verdana. You can put the text wherever you want. I chose to put it above the portal gun.
Completion Message Congratulations on completing the tutorial! You now have a brand new signature! Hopefully you've picked up a few tricks to use in your future designs. If you had any trouble try repeating the tutorial to figure out what you did wrong or need to improve on. If you need further help then just post in the topic and I will try to answer your question.