Create a Rocket

This tutorial will show you how to make a rocket similar to that of the rocket of this website. It will teach you how to use basic shapes to make items in photoshop and various effects that can be used to give them depth! This is only granted to work on PS 7 or higher.

Let us begin!

We will open up a white, blank document of 500px square for the purposes of this exercise. Then, upon a new layer, will will draw a red ellipse like so.

The Hexadecimal colour that I used was #e10404.

The first step will be to create a white nose cone for the rocket. And so, we will select the tip of the rocket using the marquee tool and press ctrl/cmd + J to duplicate this section.

Then, using the transform tool (ctrl/cmd +T) we will shrink this so a desired size. After this step, select the nosecone section by clicking on the layer thumbnail and using the paint bucket tool, fill it with white.

The result should resemble something of this nature:

Now for the next step. Go back to the main body of the rocket on the layer beneath the nose cone and go to Filter > Layer Style > Gradient Overlay and input these settings:

The darker red is the colour #850000.

Now, an outer glow with these settings:

The reason we add outer glow rather than a stroke is because you don't get alliasing with outer glow that you would ordinary get by using the stroke option as well as it looking smoother.

Now, the next step is to chop off the opposite end of the rocket to the nose cone. this can be done with the marquee tool and by pressing delete.

Now, the next step is to add the legs. So, we shall make a new layer.

Begin once more by drawing an ellipse like so.

Now using the square & elliptical marquee tools, delete various areas of this ellipse until you have the shape you desire. It should look something like this.

Now, add the same outer glow that we added to the main body of the rocket and then go the the gradient overlay and add these settings:

The red used for the shadow was this time #ae0303

Move the leg into position beneath the main body of the rocket. To do this, you will need to drag the layer beneath the layer that the main body is on. Also, an adjustment in size will be needed at this point. The reason that the leg was made so large in the first instance, is that it is better to make things large and then make them smaller, than it is to make them small and then struggle to make them larger without losing quality. The result should be thus:

Now, for the final step, ctrl/cmd & J to duplicate our leg, then, ctrl/cmd +t to activate transform and then flip the leg vertically. Now, move the leg into position beneath the body on the opposite side ensuring the legs exact alignment with its counterpart above.

Then, go to Gradient overlay in layer styles and check the reverse box of the gradient.

By this stage, i found it necessary also to modify the shape of the legs slightly by using the warp tool to just slice away a bit of that curve on the end.

Looks like this now:

For the final step, we shall add a bit of detail to the rocket.

Create a new layer at the very top of the layers pallet and then click on the thumbnail of the rocket body to select it. Fill this selection with white and then click this new layer's thumbnail to select our white section. Now, go to select, modify and contract, contracting the selection by 2px. Then press delete. This will leave a white outline, erase the unwanted areas around the top and to the rear of the rocket and move the remaining thin white line up a tad until it looks like this:

The last step is to delete a small section of this line at the divide between the nosecone and the body. We can do this with the rectangular marquee. Then, delete the appropriate part of the line, Then, select the invisible part of the line in the white nose cone and then press ctrl/cmd + J to duplicate it. Then, go to colour overlay and use the default red colour and you're done.

Should look like this:

Illustrator? Who needs illustrator..

Hope you enjoyed this tutorial.