How To Make A Zombie Nightmare in Photoshop & Illustrator

 

 

Hello, and welcome to my second Photoshop & Illustrator-tutorial. Taking on board the feedback from my first article, we will here do something a lot more advanced, and hopefully the result will also be considerable more awesome. We are going to turn a beautiful day in a sleepy Croatian coastal town into a post-apocalyptic zombie nightmare. These are our resources:

 

 

If you cannot restrain yourself, scroll down to see the finished piece – which, via a few quick clicks in Illustrator, will have a dark, comic book-like feeling. In fact, this picture is a conceptual sketch for a graphic novel that I’ve just begun working on – which will later be published via the Blurb-platform. Also, if You do not own the latest versions of Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator, click here to download the free 30 day trial. Now, let’s get on with Photoshop!

This tutorial will not explain every single detail of this piece, rather it will focus on some of its key aspects. These are the use of Adjustment Layers, which in Photoshop CS4 is more powerful than ever, and Masking. Together, the use of these functions enable us to create our art in a completely non-destructive way – meaning that we can at any time go back to the original state of our image and change the effects.

We will also briefly talk about the use of Brushes (blood!) and how the Paths created via the Pen Tool is what makes everything possible. Lastly, Illustrator will flex its muscles and do what only it can.

 

 

Above You see the raw image from which we will create our post-apocalyptic nightmare. First of all, it is absolutely essential to draw some Paths. All in all, this file has over twenty different Paths for all its objects, but the most important ones are those that encompass the sky and the three different houses. Using these Paths to mask and select different parts of different layers, we are able to apply all the necessary effects to make this nightmare come alive.

 

This is how I drew my basic Paths, highlighted here with a stroke. For a full introduction to how to use the Pen Tool, I’m again referring to the unrivalled expert – Bert Monroy TV.

 

In order to set the mood, we need to make this picture look more harsh and foreboding. In Photoshop CS4, this is best achieved by using Adjustment Layers – Window -> Adjustments. In Your Layers-panel, every Layer placed below an Adjustment Layer will be effected by it – whereas those on top will not. In my picture, the zombies are for example placed on top of the Adjustment Layers that set the colour and saturation for the background.

 

For someone like me, who does not really understand exactly how colours blend and so on, this is more a matter of playing around with the dials until I get the right effect. There are a bunch of different adjustments one can make, just go in there and play until You get it right. The best thing is that we have not actually made any permanent changes to the original background – just turn off or delete the Adjustment Layers and the original settings are intact. Neat, yes.

 

Now that we got that right, it’s time to create an atom bomb-lit sky. I chose to do this from scratch directly in Photoshop, via the Render Clouds-filter. First, create a new layer on top of the background and name it ’sky’. I created my sky on top of the entire upper half of the art board, and then used the Path I drew around the sky of the existing background to create a mask that will hide the sky-layer apart from where I want it to show.

Choose an appropriate fore- and background colour, like black and yellow-orange, and go to Filter -> Render -> Clouds. However, whilst pressing ‘Clouds’ – hold down Your Option-key (Alt on a PC). This will make the effect stronger. Re-apply the Filter (Filter-menu -> Last Filter) until You get the right mix of clouds and blackness. You might want to blur them by using Filter -> Blur -> Gaussian Blur.

 

As already mentioned, we now turn our previously made sky-Path into a selection and whilst being in the sky-layer we press the Add Layer Mask-button (at the bottom of the Layers-panel). This will hide what is not selected by applying black colour to the mask, and reveal what is selected by filling those areas with white. If the wrong parts of Your image are the ones showing up, worry not – just select the mask (to the right of Layer-icon) and invert it, Image-menu -> Adjustments -> Invert.

 

Again, for a more proper explanation of Layer Masks and all the things they are good for, Bert Monroy in video is The Man.

 

This technique of making use of Masks, Paths and Selections will be repeated throughout the entire creation of this piece. Now, let’s move on to the Big Bang.

Since I have not had the misfortune to witness and hence being able to photograph an atomic blast, I did not have access to my own reference material. I surely could have gone to iStockphoto.com and bought a ready image of a mushroom cloud, but why do that when it’s perfectly easy and so much more fun to create one in Photoshop? Since this image will ultimately be vectorised, it does not matter if some details are non-photographic.

 

This mushroom cloud is actually just a mad collection of Filters applied onto a Gradient within a simple shape created with the Pen Tool. Again, this is about playing around and go mad. I primarily used the Add Noise-filter, Render Fibres, and Gaussian Blur. Then I used Edit -> Transform -> Warp to create some more irregularity within the shape, as well as the Filter -> Liquify-tool. To get some black and uneven smoke-effects in there, the Ink Outlines-Filter with a bit more Gaussian Blur did the trick. One could spend a whole day on getting this perfect, whereas I spent ten minutes.

Once the mushroom cloud is created, it is re-sized (Edit -> Transform -> Scale) and moved into position on top of the sky-layer. Then I use my familiar Path for the sky to select the cloud and Mask it so that it appears to have its impact beyond the horizon.

 

Moving on to making the houses into ruins, there is more Pen Tooling and Masking to do, as well as using the Burn-tool (which darkens underlying pixels) and a few other little tricks. Using the house nearest to us in the image as our example, let me show You how I destroyed it.

Since we have already made a Path around the whole house in the original background, we turn that Path into a selection, copy it (from the background-layer) and paste it into a new one. Name it ‘1st house’. Use the same selection to Mask the house in the background, so that our vision is clear. The sky-layer should be placed in between the ‘1st house’ and the background, so that it can appear behind the new cracks we are about to create.

 

Using the Pen Tool to create a new Path, we zoom in and try to follow the natural movements of the bricks, creating the Illusion that this house fell apart in a natural way following a previous explosion. Once we are done and the Path is completed into a whole shape (not just a line), we turn that Path into a selection and add a new Layer Mask to the 1st house-layer and fill that portion with black (in the Layer-mask that is). To make the sky-layer appear, use that very selection we just created, go the Layer Mask of the sky-layer and fill that portion with white. Another piece of our gloomy sky just appeared.

To make the ruins look more real, we must give them some dimension. One way of achieving this is to reveal the insides of the now exposed bare stones in our ruined house-wall. In a new layer, placed behind the 1st house-layer but on top of the sky-layer, we may draw the third dimension of the stones by using the Polygonal Lasso Tool. Fill them with an appropriate colour, apply Filter -> Noise -> Add Noise and some Gaussian Blur, use the Dodge- and Burn Tools to create shadows and highlights – whatever You need to make it real. The same steps are used for the other houses.

 

Jumping over a few steps, let’s get down to the zombies! I’m the first one to admit that they are not as realistic-looking as they could be, but that doesn’t matter – this art will be vectorised anyway, and here I’m exaggerating some bits for dramatic effect and the purpose of learning.

 

This picture of me as a young goth is a perfect starting point for creating a walking dead. Having selected the shape from the original digital photograph with the Pen Tool, it is copied and pasted into our panorama as a new layer, which I name ‘yours truly’. I place it on top of the Adjustment-layers of the background, as I want to give this zombie a whole new set of Adjustments.

 

The skin-tone and eyes are all results of various Adjustment Layers applied in combination with each other. Hue/Saturation, Brightness, Color Balance – try them out and see what happens. The blood is created by making use of the more advanced settings within the Brush Engine – another extremely powerful tool within Photoshop.

 

There are many ways of creating convincing damages using Photoshop. Here, since we are doing zombies after all, we are going to go way over the top. In order to create a spattered blood-effect, I start off by creating a new Layer (called ‘blood’) on top of the yours truly-layer – which I then clip with it (press Option/Alt while holding the mouse cursor on the line between the layers and click). Now all the effects applied to the blood-layer will only happen within the area of the active pixels of the yours truly-layer.

 

Select the Brush Tool, go to Window -> Brushes and apply the following settings. Choose a spatterad Brush Tip from the list (under the Brush Tip Shape-option) and give it a bit more Spacing. Then go to the Scattering-options, and give Your Brush some one axis-only scatter, and maybe some more Angle under Shape Dynamics (while You’re there, turn the Control from ‘Pen Pressure’ to ‘Off’). Now, most importantly go to the Color Dynamics-option and give the Brush around 75% Foreground/Background-jitter – and 100% purity. Make sure that the boxes for Scattering and Shape Dynamics are ticked, and exit the Brush Engine.

 

 

Now, pick appropriate Foreground/Background-colours for Your blood, such as a medium-dark red and an almost-black red. Give Your Brush a good size and – very importantly – change its Mode from Normal to Dissolve. Start painting in the blood-layer, and try to follow the natural lines of the person underneath, such as around the mouth and along the shape of the head. When You’re happy, go to Filter -> Blur -> Gaussian Blur and adjust the settings until the blood balances just right between too sharp and too smudged. If You want more blood at other places, create a new Layer for each part and repeat. Here the Transform -> Edit -> Warp-tool might also come in handy.

 

Further depth to our zombie is easily created by enhancing the undead-ness by adding some harsh shadows and highlights, using the phenomenal Dodge- and Burn-tools directly onto the yours truly-layer. The crack in the head, bullet hole, torn arm and wound on the cheek are other Pen Tool-based and then Filtered details that are created in separate and clipped layers. The other zombies are more simplified versions of the one we just did, and the same goes for my old Toyota.

 

This is the almost-finished picture in all its semi-photographic apocalyptical glory. I’m certainly not saying that it’s realistic, but I do think it sets the mood. Now, however, we are going to really mess it up by heading over to Illustrator.

The high resolution images are hosted on my other blog, polygonrevue.com

 

Providing You have bought or downloaded the free 30-day trial version of both Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator, start the latter program and create a new file with at least as big a resolution as the image we have just created.

In order for this to work, we must use the Place-command. File-menu -> Place. Then find the directory where your zombie-nightmare.psd is saved, click ok. Your image now appears on the Illustrator art board.

 

Now go to the Live Trace-button in the middle of the top menu, and click on the little arrow next to it to bring up the Tracing Options. Once there, You can do almost anything. Choose what Mode You want; Black and White, Grayscale or Color, and the amount of Max Colors (between 1-256). Click preview and see what happens, play around and go crazy – this is Vectorisation.

 

This is what I decided to go with, to capture that rustic and almost water colour-like comic book feeling. It is very true that many of the intricate details we made in Photoshop are lost in this process – but that’s a good thing, to achieve a result like this one does need to be too detailed during the preparation. In this tutorial I chose to do so anyway, so as to show You some interesting features of Photoshop.

 

What did You think about this article? Good, bad or lukewarm? Was it more helpful and inspiring than the first? Do let me know in the comments, all feedback is greatly appreciated since I very much want to improve and provide You with helpful ways of creating graphics for practical purposes.

 

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