Drunken Monkey Photoshop Tutorial - Smashing Magazine

Drunken Monkey Photoshop Tutorial - Smashing Magazine

7:37 PM

This Adobe Photoshop tutorial is a guest article written by Sergio Ordóñez, 29 years old Spanish designer and illustrator who is working as a freelancer in SOSFactory since 2004. The article focuses on creating a visually appealing mascot and a logo and provides insights in the designers workflow and the design process itself.

by Sergio Ordóñez

In this article I will explain step-by-step how Ive designed an attractive character in one of our recent projects, namely for the company Drunken Monkey Collectibles. I will review the entire design process, from the first sketches and drafts to the final touches with Adobe Photoshop. In the post youll find further references to different articles published in my blog SOSNewbie2; you might want to check them out as they cover more details of each phase of the process.

To provide you with a profound understanding of the process from scratch, let me provide you with a brief outline of the article first.

Outline

Mascot and logo design

  1. Briefing3
    Covers the inception phase, the phase of gathering requirements and analyzing the profile of the work.
  2. Looking for references4
    The phase where were getting more familiar with the design requirements.
  3. Drawing the character5
    We take a look at some basic principles in the corporate design of mascots and draw first sketches of the character.
  4. Coloring the character6
    We make the character more vivid and pretty colorful using plain colors, shadows, lighting medium values, lights, reflection and lines coloring.
  5. Designing the logo7
    The stage when we design a rather amusing logo which fits to the character.
  6. Final presentation8
    We introduce final changes and finish the design combining everything weve created so far.

1. Briefing

The briefing9 is a common instrument which is used in the beginning of the design process to obtain information about the results the company is expecting from us. It is similar to the Q&A-sessions where you are defining the objectives and the plan for the design process.

  • Name: Drunken Monkey Collectibles
  • Sector: Toys and collectibles
  • Audience: 5 25 years old
  • Message to communicate: the company wanted a character with an attitude, aggressive but also friendly, very energetic, and some kind of a hero with an oriental touch.
  • References: Drunken Master10, a movie with Jackie Chan made in 1978. The main character uses a funny Kung Fu technique, especially for the position of hands. The company specified that the character shouldnt look drunk.
  • Technical aspects: the design should be used for both Web and print. It must work together with the logo, but should also remain usable if the logo isnt used.

2. Looking for references

So far we have all the information we need, so now its time to look for references to use as a base. Lucky me, as a child I really liked Karate movies; I remember that after watching this movie I spent several days beating my brother using exactly the same technique. The first image that comes to my mind is Jackie Chan (a stranger in that time, at least for me) in that characteristic pose.

After watching that video I think were in conditions to start. ;-)

This 10-minutes video is a pretty good manual of amazing poses; however its important to mention that the key was finding a pose not too comical that transmitted aggressivity as the client wanted, so I searched in Google and found one with the perfect balance between the comic and the heroic part:

Drunken Monkey11

We had a freedom to decide which clothes should be used, so we decided to make it wear a kimono, something simple not to overload the design. We suggested it would be better to add further accessories once the the character is finished.

3. Drawing the character

Before starting to draw its a good idea to review the basic principles in the corporate design of mascots12. In fact, you need to have few things in mind:

  • the character must transmit the desired attitude only in one single drawing,
  • the character must be attractive and original,
  • the pose must be clear and recognizable, it has to work in small sizes,
  • you shouldnt overload the drawing. The lines should suggest the volumes to the colorist, as less lines the drawing has, the design will be cleaner and we will get a better sense of volume with the color.

Sketches13
Weve tried a number of different poses for our character, weve chosen the third one.

Over years it turned out to be extremely useful to start the design with sketches on paper. After that I usually pass it to Adobe Photoshop since Im not very skilled with traditional drawing and I draw with the digitalizing PC tablet (Wacom Intuos3 A6). I draw everything in high resolution (about 6000x6000px); its easier because the errors will not heavily impact the design. Besides, we can also print the sketch in a large resolution if needed.

Below you can see the evolution of the drawing step by step:

Mascot design Progress14
Character evolution, from the sketch to the final touches, took about 6 hours of work.

Now let me explain the creation process in a little more detail:

  1. Lines
    We plan the pose starting with the typical dummy. In this step, the most important thing is to find the correct corporal expression, adjust the character proportions and try to get a clear pose.
  2. Shapes
    We give shapes to the lines and start defining the character.
  3. Refining shapes
    We connect and soften the volumes.
  4. Adding details
    We keep refining the volumes and add details to the character.
  5. Final sketch
    In this phase the character is complete. We only have left to clean it and ink it.
  6. Inking
    • Option 1: digital inking with Photoshop15, using the vector drawing tools and with some help from the digitalizing tablet. Its the easiest option if like me, youre not that good at drawing.
    • Option 2: mixed inking16. We make the final drawing in pencil, scan it and after that using Photoshop we convert the pencil into ink. If youre very good at drawing, its the best option and definitely the first option to consider.
    • Option 3: traditional inking. This option is only for very experienced designers.
  7. Final touches
    Once we finish the sketch and make sure everything is perfect. Usually its necessary to reassign line weights, clean stains or lines, simplify volumes, correct errors Sometimes you might need to even re-create parts of the drawing.

Final lineart17

We have 3 types of lines:

  1. Contours: the thicker lines of the drawing. They give a unity appearance to it.
  2. Area delimiters: to distinguish elements in the design, we use a medium thickness.
  3. Intern lines: the lines that mark the cheek, those are the thinner lines.
  4. Transition lines: they start as a contour and get inside the design. We make it thick and start to make it thinner when it goes inside.

What we should never do:

  • Make shadows with the lines: well only make the design dirty.
  • Create extremely thick lines without any thickness variations.
  • Long intern lines: these lines are used to mark volumes, you have to make them appear in a very subtle way, its just a guide to help you color afterwards.
  • Straight lines: if you take a look at the image, youll notice that all lines are slightly curved.
  • Small areas: try to make your volumes as big as possible, otherwise in the coloring phase you wont have any space and the image will look flat.

8. Corrections: I usually ask for the clients approval in each step (concept, sketch, inking, color), so I dont have to do many corrections in the later phase of the design process. For instance, in this case I designed few different hairstyles:

Hairdress18

4. Coloring the character

For coloring I usually use Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator, however the process is basically the same. I do it in various steps:

Digital color with Photoshop19

Many illustrators color everything in one layer, i prefer to to it in separate ones, so i can make color modifications in any of the design tones, lights or shadows. Let me briefly explain each step, if you want to get into details I highly recommend you to watch the Photoshop coloring videotutorial20.

4.1. Plain colors

Its ideal to have a set of the lines on a transparent background. If you inked it in the traditional way well have the lines with a white background, so we need to extract the lines from the drawing21. The advantage of this method is that we can color the lines easily although there are other methods like changing the blending mode of the drawing and multiply on top of all the color layers.

Layers palette in Photoshop22

We create a layer under the drawings layer and fill it with plain colors of medium values (not too dark and not too light). Doing that we need to consider two objectives:

  • Start choosing the color scheme.
  • Its useful to make quick selections of the different area of the drawing, using the magic wand.

4.2. Shadows

Well create a new layer set and name it Skin; after that we make a new layer and name it "Shadows" obviously, here well color the shadows. We have to change the layers blending mode to "Multiply".

Layers palette in Photoshop23

Before coloring like a madman study the volumes, try to visualize them in 3 dimensions, understand each volume separately, and then imagine how they look like if theyre connected. Here you have a little study:

Volume study24
Face volume study

Now well start to color the shadows. I used the same base color of the skin (but as we have the layer in "Multiply" mode we can see the difference) having in mind several things:

  • Leave a shadow margin near the edges, thicker in the inferior edge since the light comes from the top, later well add reflections to mark the contours.
  • We have to obtain the perfect balance between soft and hard shadows. Usually the ample and curved surfaces are soft (Volume 1), and the angled ones are hard (Volume 4).
  • We need to leave some space for the lights, its not useful to overload the drawing with shadows.

Painting shadows with Photoshop25

This is the process I follow to color the shadows:

  1. Having the original image, I used the magic wand in the plain colors to select the face (you can hide the dotted lines with CTRL+H)
  2. Fill the area with the same background color (but with the layer in multiply mode)
  3. I erased until its degraded (you can also use the gradient tool)
  4. I added a hard border to the gradient
  5. Lets go with the second volume, repeat step 2
  6. Repeat step 3
  7. Repeat step 4
  8. I added a gradient in the upper part

4.3. Medium lighting values

Layers palette in Photoshop26

To define the light source we use the gradients; so we create a new layer, "Source Light" and put it below the shadows.

Source light27

These are the steps i followed:

  • 8. This is step where we were before
  • 9. Lets change the "Shadows" layer back to normal mode. We put it in Multiply before because we were using the same color as the background, just for comfort. Now itll look like nothing happened, but dont worry about that for a moment.
  • 10. Lets go to the "Source Light" layer and make a gradient with a lighter color and magic! I chose a light source from the upper left corner.

4.4. Lights

Lets create again a layer called "Lights", and put it on the top.

Lights28

Having in mind our light source (upper left corner) well color the lights for the different volumes. The lights should be in the upper part. Lets take a look at the image to understand how Ive done it:

Adding highlight with Photoshop29
We color the lights with Photoshop

4.5. Reflections

Reflections in Photoshop30

In this stage we simply add a few lines for brightness in the contours; this way we reinforce them and everything looks clearer. I just make the line and after that I blur it a little bit:

Reflections31

4.6. Lines color

This stage is optional, I usually like to join the lines with the color to obtain a softer result, so what I do is coloring them. As we already extracted the lines of the drawing32, now we only have to select them (CTRL+click in the "Lineart" layer thumbnail) and color them.

the best thing to do here is to choose a color a little bit darker than the skin tone , so it can still be distinguished. I like to have the colored lines in a layer different from the drawing layer, just in case I need to make any modifications.

Final color with Photoshop33
This is the final result

I color the other parts of the character with the same technique, one by one; as you can imagine the process is pretty long, so I usually spend about 4-6 hours only coloring but its worth it, dont you think?

5. Designing the logo

Drunken Monkey logo34

The company which hired us ordered both the character and the logo design. My intention was to obtain a clean and simple logo, legible and typography-based, so the design wasnt overloaded, worked with the mascot but also remained usable used without the mascot.

The logo should be funny and should convey strength and stability; however it should also remain flexible and transmit a lot of energy. Here you have the reasoning for my choices:

Font election35
Plain O Matic (by Utopiafonts)

Typography: its a thick font, heavy but flexible due to the rounded parts of some characters. I only modified the width of the characters which are too thick for my taste.

Format: I chose a 3-lines-format, using two different fonts. This way we can distinguish the name of the trademark (its more important, thats why its bigger) and their activity.

Base line: the base line of the word "Drunken" is irregular, a care-free touch. The word "Monkey" is regular, which suggest stability and gives unity to the design.

Borders: irregulars on top, to emphasize that care-free touch; a little bit more regular going down to suggest stability; regulars on the sides, to give this appearance of unity to both words of the design.

Shape: wide on top and narrow on the bottom, suggests activity, energy, power. I used some horizontal lines to give more stability to the logo and unity to the design.

Capital letters: very simple, more energy for the logo.

File formats for web and print36

Click on the image to see different versions I usually create for Web or prints if the budget isnt too constraining.

Rendering: when I design for web, I usually add bevel and effects, but this time I chose a more practical approach and used plain colors, ideal to print at low cost. When the budget allows it, it is reasonable to make different versions of the logo as well.

Colors: yellow and black (suggests danger, action, excitement). I used white to obtain the maximum contrast over the black background.

6. Final presentation

As a good designer as I am, I like to present my designs in an eye-catching and professional way. So heres the final version:

Drunken Monkey mascot and lgoo design37

Hopefully youll find it useful.

Footnotes

  1. 1 http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/01/10/adobe-photoshop-tutorials-best-of/
  2. 2 http://www.sosnewbie.com
  3. 3 #1
  4. 4 #2
  5. 5 #3
  6. 6 #4
  7. 7 #5
  8. 8 #6
  9. 9 http://www.sosnewbie.com/en/resources/the-briefing/
  10. 10 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080179/
  11. 11 http://www.smashingmagazine.com/images/drunken-monkey/drunken-monkey-menu.jpg
  12. 12 http://www.sosnewbie.com/en/mascot-design/mascot-design-for-websites/
  13. 13 http://www.smashingmagazine.com/images/drunken-monkey/skechts.jpg
  14. 14 http://www.smashingmagazine.com/images/drunken-monkey/progress_animation.gif
  15. 15 http://www.sosnewbie.com/en/mascot-design/advanced-digital-drawing-photoshop-videotutorial/
  16. 16 http://www.sosnewbie.com/en/mascot-design/videotutorial-digital-inking-with-photoshop/
  17. 17 http://www.smashingmagazine.com/images/drunken-monkey/05-finished.jpg
  18. 18 http://www.smashingmagazine.com/images/drunken-monkey/faces.jpg
  19. 19 http://www.smashingmagazine.com/images/drunken-monkey/digital_color_photoshop.gif
  20. 20 http://www.sosnewbie.com/en/mascot-design/videotutorial-digital-color-with-photoshop/
  21. 21 http://www.sosnewbie.com/en/photoshop/extract-comic-lineart/
  22. 22 http://www.smashingmagazine.com/images/drunken-monkey/01-flat-colors.jpg
  23. 23 http://www.smashingmagazine.com/images/drunken-monkey/02-shadows.jpg
  24. 24 http://www.smashingmagazine.com/images/drunken-monkey/volume_study.jpg
  25. 25 http://www.smashingmagazine.com/images/drunken-monkey/capturas_shadows_animation.gif
  26. 26 http://www.smashingmagazine.com/images/drunken-monkey/03-source-light.jpg
  27. 27 http://www.smashingmagazine.com/images/drunken-monkey/capturas_source_light_anim.gif
  28. 28 http://www.smashingmagazine.com/images/drunken-monkey/04-lights.jpg
  29. 29 http://www.smashingmagazine.com/images/drunken-monkey/capturas_lights_anim.gif
  30. 30 http://www.smashingmagazine.com/images/drunken-monkey/05-reflections.jpg
  31. 31 http://www.smashingmagazine.com/images/drunken-monkey/capturas_reflections_anim.gif
  32. 32 http://www.sosnewbie.com/en/photoshop/extract-comic-lineart/
  33. 33 http://www.smashingmagazine.com/images/drunken-monkey/color_final.jpg
  34. 34 http://www.smashingmagazine.com/images/drunken-monkey/logo.jpg
  35. 35 http://www.smashingmagazine.com/images/drunken-monkey/font.jpg
  36. 36 http://www.smashingmagazine.com/images/drunken-monkey/file_formats_high.jpg
  37. 37 http://www.smashingmagazine.com/images/drunken-monkey/final.jpg

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This Adobe Photoshop tutorial is a guest article written by Sergio Ordóñez, 29 years old Spanish designer and illustrator who is working as a freelancer

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