leenapink

Actually it looks great... must have taken a good amount of time to do..!
Just giving you grief keep up the good work..!
Lasa

Silky

Thanks. It took, I think about 10-12 hrs. I counted all the layers and I came up with 218. My only regret is that I didn't start at higher resolution. Most of the layers are vector, but not all so it would be difficult to resize it and retain detail. :{

Hercules

Great work p?tr??k !
I am sorry, I know how it feels! Never do it again.

ronmatt

Patrick, about all of those layers. You may want to consider this. When I do an illustration, I do them as elements. say for example; the rifle stock, working on a transparent background, start and finish that 'element' then save as a .png. to a folder or desktop. Open a 'new' window and go to work on another element. You can open the various elements and move them around at will without having to deal with all the accompanying layers. If you save them as .png and as .psd's, they, of course, will be editable. I do some pretty complex things, but seldom ever work with more than 4 or 5 active layers. Also, when you save the elements as .png's they retain the gradients and don't flatten out the way rasterizing can do. When you bring the elements back in they're no longer active, which means you can apply shading from different angles without effecting the existing angles. Same goes for bevels. As you know, not all shadows and hilights eminate from the same light source.

leenapink

Any thing over 10 layers scares me...more power to you!
Lasa

Silky

Thanks for the tip, ron! Though, I think I'd work on about 30-+ layers at a time, being as most of the 'elements' are 30-40 layers. The barrel, for example is about 30 layers. I go about by starting at one end and refining as I go. I make a shape, and a layer style, then move on to the next shape. Afterwards I add speculare highlights and shadows. ( I almost never use layer styles shadows) After I'm all done I add some minute texture and tweak the lighting and color. The reason I rasterized alot of the layers is because of exactly what you said, ron, " you can apply shading from different angles without effecting the existing angles" For example, bevel and emboss doesn't act realistic. Realisticly there are small highlights around certain parts of the edges, so I use the dodge tool and lighten up little corners. I don't really mind working with a lot of layers as long as it doesn't slow down my comp to much.
One other thing...I've heard in Illustrator, there is a feature called "live trace" that traces shapes and converts to vectors. If so, I could do that with my gun, reaply the styles and be able to resize it witout all the edges become all pixelated. To bad I don't have the program.
Thanks for your help

ronmatt

Patrick, that's true with Illustrator however, if you manage to retain vector quality lines, be prepaired to work in a pretty high ppi in PS, They will still rasterize once in the bitmap environment plus they will rasterize anyway once you save to .jpg-.tif-.png and on and on. I've heard people claim that PS will maintain vector shapes but I've yet to discover how when the most common file formats don't. You may be able to, saved as an EPS. If someone knows how to save a vector .jpg, please jump in ( H E R E ).

Doodad

Exceptional work p?tr??k, regardless of the subject material. You seem to have a specific technique that you employ with this, the IPod and even your coffee cup avatar. Could you perhaps do a little tutorial on how you made the coffee cup, for example? It would be much appreciated - for the upliftment of the masses!

Silky

Hey, doodad. I've accually been meaning to write a tut on how to make a photorealistic eye, but I've been too lazy to find the time to do it. [honesty] I do want to make a bunch of tuts though. Just send me a IM every now and then telling me to get of my butt! As far as technique goes, it's kinda like monkey see, monkey do. I find something to basicly 'copy' then draw it in PS. I always start looking at things to notice reflections, shadows, perspective, certain elements that make it look realistic. One technique that I can tell you is tweaking. Each sperate part or element I create in PS, I spend along time tweaking the color, gradient, shadow, reflection, etc to get it JUST right. Sometimes I think I spend too much time on one part. [honesty]
Hope that helps you understand a little bit more...untill I make some tutorials.

Doodad

Ok p?tr??k, it's a deal - I'll keep those IM's coming until you give in and write that tutorial!

Of course you are correct though - observation is key - I am very often guilty of trying to "think" of how something should look, instead of using a real object as reference. Hopefully it's just me ....