Futuristic Town Scene

Step 1.

Open a new document of any size, I'm using 1000x700 for a nice large area to work with.

Step 2.

Set your foreground color to: #263C47 and your background color to: #517B91

Get out the gradient tool and set it up like so:

and fill the canvas with a gradient like so:

Step 3.

Next create a new layer, and name it "Moon".

Get out the Elliptical marquee tool, hold down the Shift key on your keyboard, and draw a perfect circle somewhere in the upper portion of the screen. I placed mine in the top left corner of the canvas.Fill the circle with the color #FEFEFE (which is an off white) as pictured bellow:

Step 4.

With the selection still active, get out the elliptical marquee tool again; this time hold down the ALT key on your keyboard, and deselect a portion of the circle as pictured here:

Go to Select->Modify->Contract with a setting of 1 or 2 pixels:

Fill this selection with the color: #DFDFDF this is be a slight "shadow" to our moon.

Step 5.

Now double click the "moon" layer, and apply the following blending options:

Outer Glow:

Result:

Step 6.

Now create a new layer, and name it "stars". We're going to make some stars for our picture now.

Set your foreground color to: #FEFEFE (off white)

Get out the brush tool, and set it up like this:

Now we're just going to dot some stars into the background. Now bear in mind that its very easy to go "overboard" with the stars, just keep in mind that you only need about 22 of them. Here's how mine looks after I dotted it with some stars:

Now double click the layer, and apply the following blending options:

Outer Glow:

Here's what you'll get:

Step 7.

Create a new layer, and name it "clouds".

Now using the Elliptical marquee tool again, make a oval selection like so about mid way down the canvas:

While holding Shift on your keyboard, make another selection like so:

And do this a few more times, the idea is to create a 'cartoonie' looking cloud shape:

Fill the selection with: #586F7B

Double click the layer, and apply the following blending options:

Inner Shadow:

Result:

Step 8.

Use the same technique as in step 7 to create 2 more clouds on the canvas, so that you have a total of three clouds. If you're feeling lazy you can duplicate your first cloud layer, and just flip it horizontally Edit->Transform->Flip Horizontal. Here's what I have after adding 2 additional clouds to my scene:

Step 9.

Okay, now we're going to do the cool part, and create the town for our scene. The town is basically a handful of buildings, and then those buildings are duplicated over and over again, and positioned in different spots about the image, to give the appearance of a thriving metropolis.

Lets get started. Create a new layer, and name it "city". Using the rectangular marquee tool, make a selection near the bottom of your canvas as shown:

Go to Select->Modify->Smooth with a setting of: PX

Fill this selection with black (#000000)

Step 10.

Do this about 4 or 6 times, and create different rectangles of varying heights and widths, make sure you have them all on separate layers:

Step 11.

Now get out the Move tool you can get this by pressing V on your keyboard or clicking on the icon

Hold down CTRL on your keyboard and click on one of your rectangles to select it's layer. Release the CTRL key, and press and hold the ALT key on the keyboard, click the mouse and move the rectangle around. When you hold the ALT key it will duplicate the shape.

Continue doing this until you've got a nice assortment of buildings on the bottom of your image, once you're happy with the amount and the position of the buildings merge all the "building" layers together by clicking the top-most building layer, and pressing CTRL + M on your keyboard.

Step 12.

Now what you want to do is get out the Elliptical marquee tool and remove some of the sections of your buildings to give it a little detail. Just make a selection and tap delete on your keyboard to get rid of a section:

Continue to do this until you are happy, just don't go overboard:

Step 13.

Now we'll add some depth to the image, press CTRL + J to duplicate your 'city' layer.

Step 14.

Now drop the opacity of this layer down to 50 percent:

Finally go to Edit->Transform->Flip Horizontal to with the new layer selected/active, using the move tool reposition the contents of this layer to whatever suits your tastes:

Step 15.

Now press CTRL + J on your keyboard one more time, to duplicate the city once again. This time drop the opacity of this layer down to 30 percent.

Go to Edit->Transform->Flip Horizontal and reposition it a bit with the move tool:

Step 16.

Now create a new layer and name it "house lights". Set your foreground color to #00A5F4. Get out the pencil tool set at 1 pixel. and draw some lights onto your buildings such as I have done here:

Finishing Touches:

Keep doing this until you've got a good amount of lights all over your front row of buildings:

When you're happy with the lights, double click the layer, and apply the following blending options to the "lights" layer:

Outer Glow:

Result:

And that's all there is to it, just continue to add small details, like spaceships and other various things, here's how mine ended up after playing with it for a few more minutes, and adding some antennas to some of the buildings, and a simple triangle shaped spaceship flying off in the distance:

Click to enlarge

Notice: I would like to point out that the concept of this tutorial is based off of a work by the talented deviantart artist Bioshadow. If you liked this piece, please visit be sure to visit the BioShadow gallery to view some of great digital artwork!