[Intro]

[Step 1]

[Step 2]

[Step 3]

[Step 4]

[Step 5]

Step 6

[Step 7]

[Step 8]

[Finished Artwork]

 

6. It's a Kodak moment! This part of the tutorial isn't necessary for everyone : some folks make their own backgrounds, others just leave it blank.  But I've always liked putting real photos in as my background so here's how to do that if you want. I tend to grab my pictures from magazines and calendars, looking for what will go well with my character and then scanning the images in at 300 dpi. I then go through the picture and fix any errors I find (bent pages, smudges, center-page seams, etc...).  The best tool to use for this is the Rubber Stamp tool : it acts like a paintbrush tool except that instead of filling an area with color it fills it with another part of a picture.  It works by first selecting an origin point (what part you want to copy : hold <alt> when clicking), then brushing over where you want to apply like you would a normal brush.  Look at the right for examples. Lastly, I adjust the orientation of the picture to fit the pose of my character, and then change the size of the background to match as well. NOTE! At this point in the game you may start be getting low on RAM : in the next step you'll be merging the background and the character, and the two of those files active at the same time can really chug a computer short on RAM.  It may be necessary to save both files as smaller-sized versions to accomodate your machine.

The two pieces used as backgounds in my image : the top was a piece from National Geographic and the one below that was from a calendar. These were their prototype stages And here is the finished product, completed by merging the top and bottom in some places, and by Rubber Stamping parts of the top picture to itself in others.  I then flipped the whole pic horizontally to match Lara's character-pose.