…making contact with paper

hey folks, it’s been awhile so here’s a sketch and rendering of an alien in homage to the new aliens vs. predator game coming out today. i looked at a bunch of alien images and made up my own composition.

i decided to encompass what i would do with markers in photoshop.  it’s a very quick and basic render and all you really need to know is how to use the paint brush, eraser, selection tools, and layers.  this took a little over an hour.

scanned in my sketch. copied the background layer and made it its own and set it to “multiply” so that the color layers in the next images can go underneath it with the lines still there. kind of like a render sandwich.

set in ONE color under-layer (below the multiplied sketch layer).  used the selection tool to select the areas i want to color first. hopefully your lineweight is strong enough so selecting won’t be a pain.

created another layer and added a medium (darker) color to add contrast. here’s a neat trick i learned at work. go to the first color layer, by using the rectangular selection tool select the area of what you want to select, then set it to the “Move” tool then press left and then right on your arrow keys. magically, your color layer is selected to the utmost accuracy. pretty neat right?

and finally adding a final layer with dark tones to give it even more contrast.  i have 3 color layers by now and i just messed with the opacity on each layer to get the contrast i want overall.

enjoy!  – alessandro