This pic kinda popped into my head late at night and I scribbled the idea down on a bit of paper (see next step) and I decided to paint it up in photoshop and also write a tutorial of sorts to try and explain some techniques I use, and being a big Blade fan it was good fun to paint.....read on....
First I took a photo of the scrappy little sketch I did cus my scanner is broken :) as you can see its very very rough but all I really wanted was to get the basic composition down and the ideas...basically a reaper in the foreground, Blade in the middle sweeping his gun from front to back and loads of reapers casting long shadows on the sewer ceiling.
I created a new layer and filled it with a dark grey, added some white blobs in the middle as the basis for the light at the end of the tunnel, I also dropped the opacity temporarily to see the pencil sketch through it. 2. I created another new layer and called it "arch", using the selection tool I selected the light grey arch, airbrushed some light greys into it then picked a dark colour and a hard brush and roughly blocked in a shadow this side of the light..giving the arch some depth.
Next part. I copied the arch several times and scaled each one to give the impression of perspective and I merged each one down until they were all on the same layer.... Forgot what I was gonna say
Heres a simple technique for constructing perspective
Step 1.
Imagine the blue lines are the top and bottom of a wall going off into the distance, right now the green lines are the things you want to repeat into the distance, Draw a construction line from the vanishing point (the point in the distance) through the center of the green lines as shown...
Step 2. Again construction lines (just lines that wont be used in the pic) draw from 1 to 2 to 3, from the bottom of one green line THROUGH where the next green line crosses the center line up to the top blue line, NOW draw a green line vertically downwards from where it intersects , Rinse and Repeat...As you can see the green lines get closer together the further INTO the pic they go....the same thing can be used on floors, ceilings, buildings etc....
Anyway back to the pic, As mentioned higher up I merged all the arches onto a single layer, I create a new layer and blobbed in some rough water in and I used the select tool as shown to create to lines down the sides and airbrushed with a large brush and a light colour to define the sides of the sewer floor/water...
I added some vertical lighter areas to define some pillar type forms then using a big dark brush again I put in some rough shadows along the floor and behind the pillars to give that 3d-ish effect, I also added a bit more white light and some reflection in the water of the light and pillars.
Now I zoomed in and roughly painted in Blade, and I mean very roughly basically keeping him dark with the main highlight being from behind from that bright light. I used various sized airbrushes and blocked him in, refining details as I went along probably took about 15-20 mins, its not gotta be great at this point as for one thing he's kinda far away and the other I'll add more detail later.
I duplicated the BLADE layer and Flipped it vertically, I also changed the layer to OVERLAY and I dropped the OPACITY to 74% (I experimented with different layer settings and opacities to get the one I liked) I then used the smudge tool horizontally to make the inverted reflection more broken up as if by the water ripples.
I created a new layer and called it "foreground" using the Airbrush and various sizes and shapes I blocked in the foreground reaper very roughly and picked various colours to shade his shadows and highlights, as you can see the sword goes through his head, i later changed this cus Blade seemed too far away to be able to reach :-)
Again another layer created and named "roofdudes" and I moved it just above the "stuff" layer so it was under all the other layers but over that one...Again I blocked in a couple of reapers on the roof using hard n soft brushes then I added some long soft shadows as if cast from the light down the end of the tunnel
At this point I decided to rotate the whole pic to give a bit more interesting angle to it, I selected the top layer "foreground" and clicked all the LINK icons as marked in red, now whatever you do will work on all the linked layers, so I rotated it all a bit. Then I airbrushed over the corners where the pencil pic was showing through!!
I created a new layer called "bullet construction" and this is basicaly a temporary layer where I layout where the bullets will go and the path they take just for reference, I then create another new layer Called "bullets" this is the actual layer I will draw the bullets and bullet holes on. I drop the opacity of the construction layer so its just about showing up, its just a guide showing how Blade is swinging his gun from front to back...
Another new layer called "yellowdodge" set to DODGE mode and I painted some muzzle flash under Blades' gun and some subtle stuff on the walls, Theres a layer below as well with some more white glows around Bladed and his gun, I seem to have missed this one out heh heh, I switch off the construction layout after The bullets and bullethole layer is painted...
I'm gonna add some motion noise, I duplicate the background layer as shown, goto FILTER>NOISE>ADD NOISE and set it to about 46 (experiment) and tick MONOCHROMATIC then click OK, the background now has some noise.....next step..
I couldn't show the setting of radial blur for some reason so I'll explain em, goto FILTER>BLUR>RADIAL BLUR and then set the amount high about 80%, the BLUR METHOD to ""ZOOM"" and click OK, you should get this nice motion blur as shown above...next step...
Next I upped the contast, using about 50% to make the whites' whiter and the darks' darker....next step.....
I set the layer To "screen" and the opacity 3. to about 30% and as you can see you get a subtle wind/movement/perspective type effect!!
Heres the final CG, I added several more reapers, refined various areas and added lots of highlights from Blades' gun flash. I also added some subtle bullet trails and subtle colours overlayed on a colour layer, thats about it really, lots of painting and a few effects and its done
