HTML5 is the next update of the core markup language, which makes up the internet as we know it. The update will allow for direct implementation of dynamic media, without the reliance of plug-ins.

You’d think Adobe would fear HTML5, and be in panic mode trying to find its relevance in the changing times. However, they seem to be embracing it and changing with the dynamics. As proven by their latest blog, “Design and Web”.

Paul Gubbay writes in the blog, “Recently, we attended technology demos across our design and web products. We saw a range of prototypes, many of which were focused on new services, multi-screen authoring leveraging html5 and css3. We have been spending a lot of time internally thinking about how our tools can best support and take advantage of some of the new functionality in HTML 5, and we wanted to share a couple of early ideas with you.”

There’s a lesson to be found here, and is one many designers face on a constant basis: Adapting to and adopting new technologies. The familiar is safe, and actually is more efficient than learning something new. In the long run though, relying on old technologies can be a massive mistake. Where you’re left with stale sites with little-to-no content worth accessing. Just ask GeoCities, which was once a massive service on the internet.

In terms of markup language, HTML5 is the wave of the future. Which is incredibly important to understand if you’re a designer/owner. Here are a few places to check out further details of HTML5, and what changes are coming:

Differences in HTML4 and HTML5
Dive into HTML5
HTML5 Gallery

First start new document with the size 500X500px, I am going to walk you through making the tachometer first in its own document then you can duplicate that one for the speedometer.

So in your new document start a new layer and create a circle in the middle of the canvas and choose a dark blue color for it. The blue I used is #00082d.

Next create a new layer and within that circle create another one and use whatever color
you want, I just used white so I could see the circle.

Now add these blending options to that layer

Outer Glow

Inner Glow

Gradient Overlay

Time yet for another circle.. Create this one in a new layer and in the middle of the last one leaving space around the edges.

Now add this blending option to the new circle.

Also click on the gradient to bring up the gradient editor choose these colors



This window will pop up



Now you should have this so far

Now to make the lines like a speedometer has you need to create a circle the exact same size as the 2nd circle we made. So I am going to hide the other circle layers for now and hide the blending options so we just have our 2nd circle showing and white again.

To create another circle the exact same size we will use the ruler tool. Hit ctrl+r on your keyboard to bring up your ruler tool. You will see a ruler pop up on the top and left of your window.

Don’t worry about what the number is in the ruler because it doesn’t matter at this point.

First click on the top ruler with your mouse and bring down a guide on the very top of
your circle.

Do the same thing for the bottom and the left and the right of the circle.

Now create a new layer above all the others we have made so far. Choose your ellipse
shape tool.

As you can probably guess we are going to create a circle within those guides, they will help make it the exact size of the other circle.

The most important part of this next step is this; make sure in your shape settings to choose “Shape Layers”. You will see the shape settings at the top of the photoshop window with the tool chosen

This is important because once we create the circle this setting will allow us to put the lines
on its path.

Create your circle within the guides and there will be a line around the circle

Once you make your circle you can drag your guides off your screen.

After removing those guides we need to add one back, except put it right in the middle of the circle. The guide should automatically snap to the middle once you drag it there.

If your guide does not snap to the middle in phtoshop go to view and make sure “snap”
has a checkmark beside it.

Ok now its time to add the lines for the speedometer.

Grab your text tool and choose whatever text you want. I am using one on my computer called Helvetica Neue Medium Condensed. Click on the bottom middle of the circle and use the color white and hold down shift. Click on your back slash key to create a vertical bar.

Here are the font settings I used:

Hold down the vertical bar key until you have the lines for your speedometer most of the way around your circle. I stopped at a certain point but just estimated it.

After looking at some real speedometers I decided I am going to make my tachometer go up to 10,000 RPM’s since this is a tutorial. Most cars don’t go that high but some super cars do so that’s how I am going to make it. Each notch for me will represent 50 rpm’s and I will base where I place the next notches we will make for the next step.

In this step I will place the notches that will be the mid point for the whole numbers.

So from 0 and up 10 notches will be 500 rpm’s and that notch will be a little longer than what we currently have. The other notches will be even longer than those where I will be placing the whole numbers 1 through 10.

To make these notches longer I tried just counting up 10 and making the font bigger where I wanted a bigger notch but this did not work out for me well. So I decided to use the line tool.

Create a new layer and while in that layer, hold down ctrl and click on the preview icon on the left of the 2nd layer’s name. I renamed my layers to make this part easier. I named the first circle we made “bottom circle”, then “second circle”, and “glow circle”.

Doing this will create an outline the same radius as the circle.

To make the notches the same length there is a cool little trick I will show you.

In your new layer with your selection still made go to select>>modify>>expand

In the window that pops up put 12 as your number.

Now do you see how that expanded the selection. So now when we use the line tool to make the longer notches we can take them to that line and they will be even.

Now choose your line tool, change your color to white and zoom in to the tachometer.

Count 10 lines and place a line that goes out to the selection.

Then from the first notch you made you need to count up 20 lines to create the next mid point notch. The reason for this is because if you only counted 10 more that is where the actual whole number would go. So keep counting up 20 from each notch until you reach the
end.

Here is what I have after that

Now create a new layer above those notches to create the longer ones where the numbers will be placed.

Use the same method as before and in the expand settings put the number 16.

Now place a line every 10 notches after the mid notches.

So now we can place our numbers, you can use whatever font you like. Here is how mine looks with the numbers placed.

I placed a drop shadow on each of my numbers.

From the 9 until the end we need to make the lines red because that is where the car would redline if this was a real tachometer. So to do this just highlight the lines with your text tool and choose a bright red as your color.

Other real speedometers usually have some sort of red bar along with the red marks so to do this we will use techniques already discussed in this tutorial.

Create a new layer below the numbers but above the notches.

In this layer use the ctrl+click technique yet again on the second main circle to make a selection. Fill that layer with a mid red color I used #ba0810.

Now we are going to use the modify tool again by going to select>>modify except this time choose “contract”. Set your number to 12 again.

Just hit delete on your keyboard to get rid of what is within the selection.

Now I will erase the rest of the red line from the 9 back.

I want to fade this red part at the bottom to give it a more modern feel. To do this I will add a layer mask to the layer, get my gradient tool, and drag upward to fade it.

So now that’s done, I will add some text that says X1000 RPM on the lower right side of the tachometer.

Next will be a quick speedometer needle.

First make a circle in the middle in a new layer with a dark blue.

Create a new layer and a smaller circle within that one.

Add these blending options to it

Outer Glow

Bevel and Emboss

Color Overlay

Choose the color black.

After that it should look like this

To make the speedometer needle I just use my rectangle shape tool to first make a line down to the “0″

Put a guide down the middle of the line so we can cut off the end evenly and make an angled at the end like a real needle in a car.

I added a gradient and drop shadow to the needle for added effect.

Finally I will add one more circle above the needle to give it more realism.

All these steps showed you how to make a simple speedometer in photoshop, here is my final image. I went through and made a full speedometer/tachometer display…

Click on image for large version

Thanks for reading!

To begin open a document 1000×1500 and fill it with white.

Make a new layer and add a 50 border using your guides. Make a selection within the borders and fill the selection with #E2DBCB

Now we need to add four new guides. Set the left and right guides in 90 pixels from the 50 pixel border. Then set the new top guide 230 pixels from the top 50 pixel border. Then add a new bottom border 260 from the 50 pixel bottom border. Then make a selection within and fill it with #C8BEB4

Next download AllianceAsset here. Open this file in photoshop and using the pen tool cut out King Varian Wrynn. Then add him to our poster inside the darkest box. Align him to the bottom left of the box.

Since the colors of the time were somewhat subdue we are going to soften his color pallette useing a color overlay. Open your blending options and select color overlay. Then change the default color to #C8BEB4. Set the opacity to 25%. Your can do more or less if you like.

Now we are going to start adding the poster font. In your text pallette choose Arial as your font, set the style to Black (we did not go with arialblack as the font because it is has a slight italic style to it), set the size to 50, the leading to 45, and the color to #FFFFFF. Then type out “Land Sea Air” after each word hit enter to star a new line and make sure all the letters are capitalised. Once you have it all typed out set the aligning to right and place the text next to his sword.

Make a new guide 25 pixels from the bottom of the small inner box. Continue using the same font and set up only this time make the size 35 and the color #403B35. Type out “PLEDGE FOR THE ULTIMATE VICTORY”.

Next add a guide 10 pixels below the text you just created. Set the font size to 18 and type out “DEATH KNIGHT”. Use the same color as the previous step. Then rotate the text 45°.

Copy this layer 8 additional times. Space out each copy 40 pixels to the right of the one before it. Then highlight the first copy of the text and type out “DRUID”.

Then “HUNTER”.

And “MAGE”.

Next “PALADIN”.

“PRIEST”

Followed by “SHAMAN”

Now “WARLOCK”.

And finally “WARRIOR”.

Now change the font size to 197, set the color to #A12B2B, and the text tracking to 10. Type out “GLORY” and place it at the top of the inner box.

Rasterize this layer then make a selection of the inner box. Now erase all of the parts of text outside the selection area.

Using the same color as before set the font size to 70, and the tracking to 2. Type out “FOR” and angle it 20°. Place it like below.

Now set the font size to 90, the color to #818F9A, the height to 125%. Then type “THE ALLAINCE”. Also angle it 20° and place it 5 pixels before the “FOR”

Next duplicate the “THE ALLIANCE text 5 times. each copy move one pixelto the right and down from the one above it. Merge all the copy layers and add a color overlay in color #3D444C.

Merge both parts of “THE ALLIANCE” together and set the opacity to 90%.

Now copy the inner box layer and move it to the top of the pallatte. Set the fill to 0% and add an Inner Stroke. Set the stroke to 3 pixel, centered, in color #403B35. Add all the layers between the Inner stroke and the first three boxes by highlighting the layers and hitting CTRL+G. Name the Group Alliance. And you are finished with the alliance side. Now let’s create the horde version.

Next download HordeAsset here. Open this file in photoshop and using the pen tool cut out Thrall. Make a new group and call it Horde. Then add him to our poster inside the darkest box. Align him to the bottom center of the box.

Open your blending options and select color overlay. Then change the default color to #C8BEB4. Set the opacity to 25%. Your can do more or less if you like.

Duplicate all the Alliance text layer and place them in the horde group. Hide all the layers except the “FOR” layer. Change the font to “GLORY”.

Now unhide the “PLEDGE FOR THE ULTIMATE VICTORY” and change the font to “BLOOD AND GLORY TO THE VICTORIOUS”.

Then unhide all the classes.

Now change the font size to 197, set the color to #A12B2B, and the text tracking to 10. Type out “HORDE” and place it at the top of the inner box.

Rasterize this layer then make a selection of the inner box. Now erase all of the parts of text outside the selection area.

Now set the font size to 90, the color to #818F9A, the height to 125%. Then type “LOK’TAR OGAR”. Also angle it 20° and place it 5 pixels under the “GLORY”. Next duplicate the “LOK’TAR OGAR” text 5 times. each copy move one pixel to the right and down from the one above it. Merge all the copy layers and add a color overlay in color #3D444C.

Merge the “LOK’TAR OGAR” layers together and set the opacity to 90%.

And you are finished with your propaganda posters. What did you come up with? Send me a link and I will post your here for all to see.

Here are the resources I will use:

To make this tutorial easier I went ahead and cut out all of my images from their backgrounds so I could just place them in my poster. Since this is the most time consuming part of the tutorial you might want to get that out of the way first.

Once you get your pieces cut out start a new document 519X833px to make it look like a poster size. Fill in the background with black.

Place the plate in the document first and size it down to fit in the canvas width.

Next place your alice cut-out in the document and size her down so that there is some space left above her head.

Next place your cup cut out in a layer behind the other and place it similar to where I have mine. Also I rotated mine a bit so the handle is facing toward the bottom.

All the lighting on everything is off and looks kind of dull so far but we will fix that in later steps. First I am going to add the background behind the other layers.

If you have seen any of the alice in wonderland posters the one I am using inspiration from has a greenish background with key holes all over it. So first I will create the greenish background.

First create a new layer behind the other layers this will be layer 4 for me or you can rename them like I did in the next image. To rename them just double click on the layer name beside each layer.

In the new layer use your rectangle tool and choose the color white and cover the background like this…

Now right click on the green background layer and click blending options.

Use this gradient overlay

Click on the actual gradient and choose these colors and move the arrows a bit

Create a new layer above the others and go to your Custom Shape Tool in your tools

In the drop down menu with the shapes choose “sign 3″

In your new layer create a triangle anywhere because we will be moving it around in the next few steps. Don’t worry about how big it is either because you can size it down to your liking. When creating this shape make it kind of longer and narrow similar to this…

Next I am going to flip it vertically to be the bottom part of the key hole. To do this while on the layer hit ctrl+t on your keyboard, right click on the shape in the canvas and choose “flip vertical”…

Now create a new layer above that and choose your ellipse shape tool

Create a black circle and place it over the triangle you just made to finish the key hole

Now highlight those 2 layers in your layers palette and merge them together so it is now one image

Once you merge them you can call the layer key hole.

I will size my key hole down some before I continue to the next step

Move your key hole layer to the top left of the canvas.

Duplicate it multiple times, 4 for me and put them vertically down the left side

Merge all those layers together and duplicate the one layer again and move it to the right. Offset the layers so they don’t line up perfectly.

Now here is what I have

I merged all my key hole layers together so I only have one layer of the key holes. Drag that layer behind all the others except for the green background layer.

Create a new layer above the key holes, open the texture, and drag it in the canvas.

Size it down so it fits into the image.

After sizing it down make it black and white with the keyboard shortcut ctrl+shift+u. Then set that layer’s blending mode to overlay.

Once you complete that click back on your key hole layer and set its opacity at 50%

Now its time to adjust some of the lighting on the different objects in the poster.

First click on your plate layer. Something I always do when I am editing layers, whatever layer I am going to work on I will duplicate it and hide the original so I have a backup in case I mess up the object I am working on. That happens quite often actually so having a backup is good for me.

So I will duplicate my plate layer and hide the previous. First on the this plate I just want to get rid of the bottom portion of the plate you can see here

For this I will just use a soft eraser brush to erase it away.

Create a layer above the plate you are working on and while holding down ctrl,
click on the layer thumbnail. Its the little preview image beside the layer name

When you do that it will create a selection around the plate.

In the new layer fill it with the color #8feaa7

I wanted to give it a slight greenish glow since the background is green. This look a little too bright for my liking though, so I will adjust the plate layer.

Click back on the plate layer and hit ctrl+L to bring up your levels tool and slide the middle cursor to the right a bit

Now the plate should just be a little more brighter green than it once was.

As for the cup there are a few things I want to do with it. First I will duplicate it and keep a backup like with the plate. On the cup though, I am going to use the burn tool to burn certain areas of it.

Grab your burn tool, set its range to “midtones” and its exposure to “49%”

Here you can see how I burned mine

After doing that I will create a new layer above the cup and fill a color over it similar as how I did with the plate.

This time I will use a darker green color, #485926.

Set it to overlay as we did with the plate color.

The next thing I did which I won’t go over because I just used a downloaded grunge brush set. I created another new layer above the cup and used a grunge brush to put white spots over it then set it to soft light to give the cup a more used effect.

As for alice I duplicated her and used the same burn tool settings and burned parts of her clothes mainly and a little on the face and arms.

Now I want to add a shadow from her hand and the back of her body on the plate,
mainly the legs. To do this I will create a new layer below her and first use
my elliptical shape tool to create a circle where the shadow from her hand would
be and then use the pen tool to create the shadow for her legs.

Now add gaussian blur to the shadow layer

Then set the opacity on the shadow layer to about 50%

The last thing I will do to for the shadow the width of her body is get my gradient tool and create another new layer above the shadow I just made. I will choose a darker green color and choose my gradient tool settings:

Now drag your gradient tool to create a rounded shadow below her

Then use your ctrl+t transform tool to size it down by pulling the top middle cursor down and the bottom middle up.

And here is my final shadow for Alice

One last touch for Alice is to add a random reflection of her on the plate. Now since this is wonderland I am going to just do a random reflection and not really worry about how realistic it is.

So first duplicate alice and put the duplicated layer behind the other. Move the layer down and flip it horizontally. Change her opacity to about 20%.

Now I will use the warp tool to warp the reflection to mend with the plate.

To use the warp tool you need either photoshop cs2 or cs3 or newer. If you don’t have that tool don’t worry about this step. So hit ctrl+t on the layer, right click and choose warp:

Using the warp tool drag the cursor as seen in the next image

Now use a soft eraser brush to erase the rest of her body other than legs and feet.

I will do something similar with a reflection for the cup.

To finish off the work I think there should be a reflection of the key holes on the plate. To get this effect I will duplicate the key hole layer and fit it over the plate and change its perspective to look like a reflection.

So duplicate the key hold layer and drag it above the plate layers.

Use ctrl+t on the layer and flip it vertically. After hitting ctrl+t just right click on the layer in the canvas and choose, “flip vertical”

Next use ctrl+t again and size the key holes down by dragging the top middle cursor down.

Finally, use ctrl+t again, right click on the layer in the canvas again, and choose perspective.

Drag the bottom left cursor to the left to make the key holes look like they are on the same plane as the plate.

This will make the key holes look bigger so just use ctrl+t again to size them down.

Erase the excess key holes, set the layer to soft light and 30% opacity.

That is almost the final touch other than adding font.

I downloaded an Alice in Wonderland font on a site, just search for “alice in wonderland font” in your favorite search engine. You will find something. This isn’t the same exact font as the new movie but it works for this tutorial.

Install that and write Alice in the top middle of the poster.

I added the rest of the font from an actual movie poster I found on the internet and now we are done!

Thanks for reading, please leave any questions or comments you may have.

This is how she looks in game. We’re gonna use it as reference for the following manip.

This looked like a great pic as a jumping off point. She’s wearing a very similar shirt as her character so most of the work is already done for us. Now would be a good time to test the Clone Stamp Tool as we’re going to be using it copiously. Hold down ALT and sample the area on her for head and then release ALT. Proceed to paint some of her forehead back.

Continue to clone away her blonde locks and the streamers hanging from the ceiling by sampling the background with the Clone Stamp Tool.

I found a picture of a woman’s short hair cut and traced around with the lasso tools and Ctrl+C to copy.

Here’s what she looks like with her new do pasted in. (Ctrl+V) Also go to Edit>Transform>Flip Horizontal to better match Madison’s part in her hair.

The original picture is a bit more muted so we’re going to desaturate the hair some. Ctrl+U to bring the window up and slide down the saturation on the hair layer to -40.

Use the eraser to take away some of the hair beneath ears to better match Madison’s haircut.

Looks like it’s gonna rain. To make this happen, start with a new file and paint
a single drop like so. Use the brush tool with a soft setting and paint a single
dot.

Go to the top menu and choose Filter>Stylize>Wind. Press CTRL+F 5 times to extend the raindrop tail out. Ctrl+F simply repeats the last filter.

Navigate to the top and hit Filter>Blur>Motion blur with the following settings:

Now Image>Rotate Canvas>90 degrees CCW.

Now Ctrl+I to inverse the blacks and whites. Now we’re going to turn this into
a raindrop brush. If you haven’t already marquee select the whole raindrop and
go to Image>Crop. Press Ctrl+A on your raindrop layer to select all. Now choose the brush tool. Go to the top menu and choose Edit > Define Brush and you have a custom rain brush.

Make sure you’ve chosen your new custom brush from the brush shapes and Click Brush Palette Icon to open the options for it.

Here are some settings to paint some raindrops across the canvas with a single brush stroke. We’re going to use Shape Dynamics and Scattering. Click the check box for Shape Dynamics and use the following settings:

Now use these Scattering options. Go back to your main art file and make a new
layer for the rain. Now you can watch the rain fall on the canvas with a single
wave of the mouse. I also dropped the layer opacity to about 50% in the Layers
panel.

At this point we can go ahead and change the color of Jacqui’s shirt to match Madison’s. Use the Lasso tools to select the shirt. Hold down SHIFT before making a second selection without losing the first. Now press Ctrl+U to adjust the Hue and Saturation to turn the purple into a deep red.

In the next step, the original image has some nice grain on it but the hair doesn’t. Lets go to the hair layer and go to Filter>Texture>Grain.

Now double click the hair layer in the Layers Panel to open the Layer Styles. Choose Drop Shadow and use the settings in the following image. For the shadow colors, click the color swatch in the layer styles and it will activate a color picker. I click the shadow beneath her neck. It should now make a shadow under the hair that better matches other darker shadow colors on her skin.

Now for some final touches. Make another layer of rain above the one you already have. Except this time increase the size of your brush and turn the Shape Dynamics and Scattering off by unchecking them. Paint some large heavier raindrops to simulate them being closer to the camera. When you’re happy with your rain go to the top menu and click Image>Flatten. Cltr+U again but now adjust the Saturation levels to -65. This should create a more muted darker tone.

Here’s the logo to copy and paste in. Change the layers blend mode to “Screen” to make the black disappear.

The final image.

Click here for a higher resolution. Leave a comment for any thoughts or questions!

To begin you will need to download and install the brush style pack I created here. If you still need mor tech style brushes you can find them here at Deviant-Art. These are not mine I simply put them all in one zip file. Next you need to download our space backdrop here. Lastly you need need to find a nice large version of the planet earth and the moon. Open the Space back drop file, this will serve as the bas of our wallpaper.

Next find a nice hi-res moon and add it to our wallpaper. Then scale it down like below.

Now CTRL+Click the moon layer to make a selection. Make a new layer and fill the selection with black. Next set the layer fill to 0% and add a gradient overlay. Set the gradient to 180° and make the color #020a11 to Transparent. Finally add a 5 pixel gaussian blur.

Now we are going to build the display around the moon. So grab Tech Frame 1 and make the size 300 and place it like below. Make sure the color is white. Set the layer style to Soft Light.

Duplicate the layer once.

Now grab your rectangular Marquee tool and and make a selection around the moon with around 20 – 30 pixels on all sides. Make a new layer and fill the selection with white. Set the layer fill to 0% and add a 5 pixel, white, Inner Stroke. Make a new layer then higlight the box layer and the new empty layer and hit CTEL+E. Then using the rectangular marquee tool remove some of the box like below. Lastly, inside “Tech Frame 1″ add “Binary 1″. Set the layer style to Soft Light.

Duplicate the layer twice.

Next install the “Berny Klingon” font. I chose this font cause it really looks alien. Then type out “Celestial Being: Moon” and place it in the “Tech frame 1″ above the binary. Set the layer style to Soft Light.

Duplicate the layer three times.

Now grab your pen tool and make a small line between the moon frame and the tech frame. Then select a 1 pixel brush and go back to your pen tool. make a new layer and stroke the path. Set the layer style to Soft Light.

Also duplicate the layer three times.

Next add your moon to the center of the walppaper.

Now CTRL+Click the moon layer to make a selection. Make a new layer and fill the selection with black. Next set the layer fill to 0% and add a gradient overlay. Set the gradient to 180° and make the color #020a11 to Transparent. Finally add a 10 pixel gaussian blur.

Again using the klingon font type out “Target Earth” and place it in the “Tech frame 1″ above the binary. Set the layer style to Soft Light.

Duplicate the layer once.

Next select “Aurora Brush T13″ set the brush size to 700 and place it over the earth. Then remove the sections covering the planet. Set the layer style to Soft Light.

Duplicate the layer once.

Next select “Sample Brush #143″ set the brush size to 500 and place it in the top left corner with a 10 pixel space from the edge. Set the layer style to Soft Light.

Duplicate the layer twice.

Now grab your pen tool and make a small line between the “Sample Brush #143″ and the “Aurora Brush T13″. Then select a 1 pixel brush and go back to your pen tool. make a new layer and stroke the path. Set the layer style to Soft Light.

Also duplicate the layer three times.

Next select “Aurora Brush T14″ set the brush size to 125 and place it in the bottom right 10 pixles from the edge. Set the layer style to Soft Light.

Also duplicate the layer three times.

Set the third copy to saturation.

Next select “Circle2″ set the brush size to 300 and place it in the bottom left with 10 pixles from the edge. Set the layer style to Soft Light.

Duplicate the layer four times.

Next select “Circle4″ set the brush size to 784 and place it around “Circle3″. Erase the section overlaping the earth border. Set the layer style to Soft Light.

Duplicate the layer twice. Set the two copies to Overlay.

Next select “Circle5″ set the brush size to 656 and place it on the center of the erath. Then CRTL+Click the earth layer to make a selection. Erase everything outside the selection. Set the layer style to Overlay.

Copy the layer three times.

Next select “Sample Brush #144″ and place a copy under the right edge of “Sample Brush #143″. Next select “Sample Brush #140″ and place a copy next to the bottom left of “Sample Brush 143″ and the Moon box. Finally grab “Sample Brush 139″ and place it next to the bottom half of “Sample Brush 140″ under “Sample Brush 143″. Set the layer style to Soft Light.

Copy the layer three times.

Now select “z1″ and place a copy under the right edge of “Sample Brush #140″ slightly to the right under the moon. Then grab “z12″ and place it under the right bottom of “Tech Frame 1″. Set the layer style to Soft Light.

Copy the layer once.

Next grab “Sample brush 92″ (if you do not have this set you can find it here) and place it above the moon. Set the layer to Soft light.

Copy the layer six times.

Then find a Power indicator brush (I am not sure where I found this one been holding on to it for two years). Set the layer style to Soft Light.

Copy the layer twice.

Now select “Binary-Matrix-Style” set the size to 175 and place a copy under “Sample Brush #144″. Set the layer style to Soft Light.

Copy the layer twice.

Then add “Circle6″ at 175 pixels next the the lower left display. Set the layer style to Soft Light.

Now select “Glowbug – Text” and place it under the 3D disc. Set the layer style to Soft Light.

Copy the layer once.

This next step will take some imagination on your part. Select your pen tool and make a slightly inverted triangle at the base of the Earth target. Fill the selection with white. Now using your “Single Row Marquee Tool” remove some sections of the triangle like below. Set the layer style to Soft Light.

Copy the layer once.

Next open the sphere png from the zip file and add it to our wallpaper in the center of the 3d disc. Then make a selection of one of the disc layers and erase some of the sphere so it looks like it is sitting inside of the disc. Set the layer to hardlight.

Next select some other misc. tech brushes to fill out the empty space like below. Set this layer to overlay.

Copy the layer twice.

Lastly add “Interface21″ to the top empty space in the walpaper and set the layer to overlay.

Copy the layer twice.

And you are done. I now this was a pretty long, quick and dirty, tutorial. But, I think the end justifies the means here. Hope you enjoyed it.

Here is the imagery we’re going to animate. Start in Photoshop and make sure you Right click this layer in the Layers Panel and duplicate so we have a spare image we’ll need later.

The next thing we need to do is clone away some of the Wolfman because as his arms move, there needs to be a background behind them, obviously. With the Opacity and Flow set at 35%, Hold Alt with the Clone Stamp Tool and take a sample of the background. Paint in the arms and legs to fade them away.

Here’s the arm cloned away using the fog in the background.

Go up to File>Save for Web and save the finished background for later use.

Go back to the uncloned file to cut out some of the body parts we’re going to use later in Flash. We’re still in Photoshop though, so use the Polygonal Lasso Tool to trace around the torso and head of the Wolfman.

Ctrl+C (Copy)and Ctrl+V (Paste) and now you have the torso sitting in its own layer. Do the same thing with the upper and lower arm pieces.

Marquee select each individual piece and go to the top menu: Image>Crop. And File>Save As… a PNG file format. I’m suggesting png because they support transparency and shake hands with Flash well.

Now it’s time to open Flash. At the bottom check out the Properties. You can bump up the Framerate to 30. This will make the animation much smoother.

Double click “Layer 1″ and rename it to “background”. Press Ctrl+R to import the background image file you saved earlier. Now click the New Layer button on the left and name it “Wolfman”. This is where we’re going to build our character.

Ctrl+R to import the main body torso png file to the stage.

Press F8 to “Convert to Symbol”. Name it something like “main_body”. This is the symbol that’s going to house all the rest of the body parts.

Ok now on the stage, double click on the main_body symbol. We’re going to be “inside it”. This is where we’re going to build the arms. We’re building them inside because we want the arms to move along with the main_body if we decide to move the whole figure around. Ctrl+R and import the upper right arm. F8 to convert it to a symbol. I named it right_arm_root because it’s going to be the shoulder joint that roots the rest of the arm. At this point we’re a symbol inside a symbol. right_arm_root is inside main_body. Double click the right_arm_root now and go inside this one!

In attempt to clarify this we’re going to make 2 layers inside right_arm_root. To go outside a level click that arrow that’s pointing to the left beside the symbol names.

1 for the upper arm, and another for the forearm. For posterity go ahead and make the upper arm a new symbol called right_arm_top.

Create a new layer then Ctrl+R import the right forearm hand and turn it into a symbol.

Click on the free transform tool. This will allow you to rotate and scale objects. It should also show you the anchor point of the symbol that’s selected. It should be a white dot in the middle of the symbol. If you rotate the forearm in it’s current position, it will just spin like a top. But if you drag the anchor towards the elbow, the forearm should rotate properly at the elbow.

Go to the timeline and click around the 60 mark. Hold shift and click below it and you’ll have both layers selected at the 60. Press F6 to add a keyframe and it will drop keys on both layer timelines.

Now go to the 30 mark and hit F6 for another keyframe on the forearm timeline. This is where we’re going to animate. With the Free Transform, rotate the arm inwards.

Click anywhere in between 1 and 30 and right-click for the drop down menu to “Create Motion Tween”. Do the same thing in between the 30 and the 60.

Go to the top menu and navigate File>Publish Preview and know the Wolfman should be doing the robot.

Click the arrow that’s pointing left to get out of the current symbol. Instead of manipulating the forearm you should be clicking on the entire armroot. Make some keyframes from 1-60 the same way you did the forearm. But instead of rotating, this time, nudge the arm up a few pixels at the 30 mark.

This should simulate a shoulder shrug. You’ll notice that due to our symbol hierarchy that the entire arm shrugs up with the shoulder as it animates.

Now repeat the entire right arm process with the left arm! Ah the joys of animation.

Now back all the out of the symbol until you get to the top of the stage. No matter where you put the top level wolfman symbol the animations inside it should be ok. You can animate him left, right, spinning or even his opacity. In this case I just animated a slight up and down to make it look like he’s breathing, ready to chomp you down.

Now you should be able to make a jointed character from nested symbols.

I am going to use a rocky texture I downloaded somewhere. You can use this file if you want. Just click on the image for the large version.

Now start a new document in photoshop and I am going to make my canvas 1024X768px.

Size your rocky texture down using ctrl+t to transform it. Then hold down shift and position our mouse on the bottom right corner and drag it toward the top left corner. The reason you hold down shift is because it will size down the object evenly. Try without shift and you will see how the object reacts.

Here is the size I sized mine down to

To show you what I mean by seamless duplicate your rocky layer in your canvas and move it to the right of it.

Now do you see the seam?

If you duplicate them a couple more times and move them underneath the others you can see how this texture will not be seamless in any way.

Ok you can delete all the duplicated layers, you won’t need those. I was just showing you what I meant by seamless.

So now copy your sized down rocky layer into a new document. Just grab your rectangle marquee tool and highlight around the layer on the canvas and hit ctrl+c then ctrl+n for a new document.

When you hit ctrl+n hit ok on the window that pops up. Then paste it in the new document with ctrl+v.

Now to make this texture seamless, photoshop has a nice little tool to help out with that. Its called the offset filter. To use this go to filter>>other>>offset

The offest filter copies parts of the texture and rearranges them so all we have to do is slight editing to get the texture looking good.

Here are the offest filter settings I used:

All I did was experiment with the horizontal and vertical settings until I got the texture to where it needed the least amount of editing. What I mean by that is it will have the least amount of seams.

And here is what my texture looks like after that:

Do you see the seams photoshop added to the image? I highlighted them in the next image.

How do you get rid of those? That is easy as well, by using the clone stamp tool.

This is a very easy tool to use so it should be easy to learn by any beginner.

Grab your clone stamp tool

Choose a 21px soft brush

To use this tool hold down the alt key on your keyboard and click to the left or the right of the seam with your mouse to pick part of the image to cover up the seam with.

See how I am getting rid of the seam?

Now my texture looks like this

Now drag that into the document you were working in before and compare it to the texture as it was originally. You can see how in the new one certain areas are repeated, but not much. You can get rid of the other layer that we started with or just hide it.

Now do like we did before in the first few steps and duplicate the new layer and you should see no seams when they are side by side or below or on top of each other.

To show you this working in action I will do some simple css/html coding to make this repeat on the background of a website.

I will be using dreamweaver, if you don’t have that I am sure there are some free programs you can use out there that will do the same thing.

So I saved the texture as a .jpg image called seamlesstexturetut-bg.jpg

I am not going to go through the steps of using dreamweaver but I will show you the css I write for this to work on a website.

In between my ending header tag and beginning body tag of dreamweaver I will write this code:

That is all the code needed to see this example at work.

Click here to see the working tutorial

Thanks for checking out this tutorial!