Full Grunge Sig Tutorial

[jarrod2323]

credit to Print & JC12

INDEX

Part One - Getting Started
Part Two - Render Placement
Part Three - Brushing
Part Four - Blending
Part Five - Colouring In
Part Six - Adding In Things
Part Seven - Text
Part Eight - Border

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PART ONE - Getting Started

1. Start off my opening up a new transparent Document. Choose your size to suit your style [I use 400x100]

2. Reset your Colors (Ctrl+D) and go to Filter >> Render >> Clouds

http://img438.imageshack.us/img438/7622/image10ja.jpg

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Now, it's time to pick your pic, or Render and decide what brushes you are going to choose (Some Brushes look better with certain Renders).

Sometimes you can (and most probaly will) get a really good grunge feel by using multiple brushes.

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PART TWO - Render Placement

There's lots of things you can do with renders other than just placing them splat on the canvas. Experiment with the placement of the render. Maybe even duplicate the render and make it fade away in the background. Who Knows. EXPERIMENT!

1. Grab your selected render and rezise if needs be. Now as I had stated above, Experiment with the placing of the render. I'm just going to use a splat on the canvas placement and Nudged toward the Left side of the canvas.

http://img470.imageshack.us/img470/7103/image23xe.jpg

But I will show you experimentation on placing renders.

http://img470.imageshack.us/img470/8808/image38qd.jpg

http://img470.imageshack.us/img470/8411/image44pj.jpg

It might not be too exciting, but it can make a big difference on the final product.

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PART THREE - Brushing

This part of making a sig is bad for those who have no imagination and too much Perfect Symmetry in their mind.

Good brushing, believe it or not, can just be random dabs on the Canvas. Other times you can acheive a good brush over without thinking about it. Well, I'm going to tell you now that Brushing can depend alot on both of those techniques, and alot on the render you chose.

But lets start with teaching you how to brush.

1. Grab your best Grunge Set. Actually, make that your four best Grunge sets since we are going to make this pretty grungey.

2. Make a new layer just above the clouded layer.
Choose the softest grunge brush and just dab anywhere and random (Mind not to drag your brush, or it will look horrible.) Constantly be changing between black and white and making new layers every now and then (also, don't forget to keep the black and white Brushes on seperate layers)

http://img427.imageshack.us/img427/2277/image52mq.jpg

3. Now choose some slightly harder Grunge Brushes and Apply like you did with the soft ones.

http://img427.imageshack.us/img427/6684/image64hi.jpg

4. Now do the same again, only choosing your two hardest brushes and mix them together.

http://img427.imageshack.us/img427/5224/image71oz.jpg

5. Now that was just mindless dabbing. Now if you want you can add some after brushing. With this type of brushing its probably better to keep to a softer brush again. for another effect, use colors selected from the render - not alot of brushing, but just a little for coloring

This, after brushing, can be an effect of mist over a render or sorrounding dark effect. Heres what I did with mine.

http://img427.imageshack.us/img427/9521/image89is.jpg

To get this I just made a few layers over my render layer and did some brushing and blending option change.

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PART FOUR - Blending

Now, there's loads of different types of ways to blend in renders. I'm going to show one way of doing it. and the most simplistic, too.

1. Grab the Polygonal Lasoo tool and carefully trace around your render about 2 pixels in. Once you've done that, Right click in the middle of the selection and click 'Feather'. Now type in 10 and click ok. Then just Ctrl+Shift+I and hit delete.

2. Then just put your render behind about 1 or 2 more brush layers. Now still on the render layer, Dupliacte it twice (or Ctrl+J twice) and there you have it, a simple blended in render.

http://img357.imageshack.us/img357/4012/image97lt.jpg

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PART FIVE - Coloring In

There's defientaly more than one way of coloring in, But I will show you two ways.

One Way Of Coloring

1. Select your very top layer. Go to: Layer >> New Adjustment Layer >> Color Balance.

2. Try and choose the colors that fit with your render. You don't have too, but It will look alot better if you do.

Try and play around with the Shadows, Midtones and Highlights and make the color stand out a bit more.

3. After you have chosen your color/s, go to Filter >> Render >> Clouds.

4. Then make another Color Balance, but this time use slightly different colors. Filter >> Render >> Clouds.

5. Do that with about 5 different color balances along with rhe extra Rendered Clouds.

http://img456.imageshack.us/img456/1182/image104wu.jpg


Another Way of Coloring

This way is easy, and will probably get you closer to the colors of the render.

1. Duplicate your render layer and place it just underneath your other render. Now go to Filter >> Blur >> Gaussian Blur and set it too about 4.0

2.Duplicate your newly blurred layer and shift it around. Keep duplicating and moving around the blurred layers until you have filled up the canvas (and are satisfied with the look of it) Then Merge down the Blurred layers into each other, nothing else - just the blurred layers. (also make sure that they are under the original render)

http://img456.imageshack.us/img456/9539/image114bn.jpg

3. Now, on the totally merged layer you just made, set the blending option to Overlay. Duplicate the layer if you have to.

http://img456.imageshack.us/img456/1598/image127bn.jpg

And thats all there is to coloring. Try combining both of those ways to achieve something even better, if you can.

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PART SIX - Adding Things In

Add in anything you like whether it be scanlines, boxes, Magnification etc.
Its all about what the sig looks like in the first place from now.

I'll Show you a way with Scan Lines and Boxes.

Adding Scanlines

To add scanlines to your Sig, either make your own (Tutorial not included in this one) or use this already made one: http://img483.imageshack.us/img483/5732/scanline7wm.png

1. Save the above scanline Template and open it up in Photoshop.

2. Then go to Edit >> Define Pattern >> And name it 'Scanlines' and click OK.

3. Grab the Paintbucket Tool and at the top, change 'Foreground' to 'Pattern'

4. Now just Splash it on a new layer (above all the rest) and set its blending mode to Soft light or 30% Opacity

http://img483.imageshack.us/img483/5285/image138xe.jpg


Adding Boxes

To add boxes, do excatly the same as the scanlines, but with this Pattern: http://img496.imageshack.us/img496/2051/boxes4vf.png

http://img465.imageshack.us/img465/7874/image168kq.jpg

Another Thing to do, is add more contrast to the Sig. Which makes it sharper and makes it stand out more.

Adding Contrast

1. Select the Top Layer and go to Layer >> New Adjustment Layer >> Brightness and Contrast.

2. Take up the brightness to about -11 and the Contrast to +33(play around with these settings as it all depends on your coloring and render)

3. Click OK

http://img496.imageshack.us/img496/3770/image141zi.jpg


Another good thing to make it more Grungey is to do these Little Steps.(This will look weird if you have too much contrast and will not work with ALL sigs)

Making the Grunge Feel

1. Select your Top layer and press Ctrl+A, then go to Edit >> Copy Merged.

2. Paste your copied selection. You notice it doesn't look much different? well, this next step is the most important.

3. Now set your blending mode on this new layer to Overlay

4. Select your Background Colour and Renders and Press Ctrl+U. Those Images have now been desaturated.

http://img496.imageshack.us/img496/3275/image152wc.jpg

As I said Above, This Method doesn't work very well with all Sigs. Works ALOT better if the Sig has alot of colour on it. (Unlike mine)

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PART SEVEN - Text

There are hundreds of ways of making text for sigs. But since I'm hear to teach you how to make a grunge sig and not to teach you how to make every type of text, I'll just show you a basic yet effective way of adding Text.

1. Type in your text, making sure that the color is White.

2. Open up blending options menu and Use These Settings:

GENERAL BLENDING
Blend Mode: Soft Light
Opacity: 100%

DROP SHADOW
Blend Mode: Multiply - Black (000000)
Opacity: 75%
Angle: 120
Distance: 1
Spread: 0
Size: 5

STROKE
Size: 1
Position: Outside
Blend Mode: Normal
Opacity: 60%
Fill Type: Color
Color: Black (000000)

Now just move text wherever you think your it would look best and drop it there. If you can't see it properly, then duplicate the text Layer.

http://img465.imageshack.us/img465/4281/image179sw.jpg

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PART EIGHT - Border

Finally, you've read all of this (or at least alot of it :wink and I bet your are finally relieved to be near the end of this tutorial. We just need to add a border to Our Sig now.

I'll Show you 2 different ways of simple Borders (after I've shown you, I sure you'll be able to figure out what to do to make different ypes of borders.)

1 pixel Border

1. Select your top layer of the sig and Press Ctrl+A.

2. Go to Edit >> Stroke. Use these Settings:

Width: 1
Color: 000000
Location: Center
Mode: Normal
Opacity: 100

3. Click OK, and you're done.

(You've seen the example of the 1px border all through this tutorial)

3 Pixel Border

1. Ctrl+A, Edit >> Stroke and use these Settings:

Width: 3
Color: 000000
Location: Inside
Mode: Normal
Opacity: 100

4. Click OK

5. Ctrl+A, Edit >> Stroke and use these Settings:

Width: 2
Color: 000000
Location: Inside
Mode: Clear
Opacity: 100

6. Click OK

7. Ctrl+A, Edit >> Stroke and use these Settings:

Width: 1
Color: 000000
Location: Inside
Mode: Normal
Opacity: 100

8. Click OK

9. Now set the mode to overlay, duplicate the layer.

10. Repeat Step 7

http://img485.imageshack.us/img485/60/image182eh.jpg

And thats it, you've Finished Your Sig.

Of Course, you can experiment with settings to your liking


That's it... I hope it helps...

 

[slpnsld23]

very nice! NOw if i can just find some grunge brushes for PS6......

 

[mojo]

I just tried this.
I know its (the thread) kinda old but I wanna post how my attempt went