Orb Eyes

Note: First of all I would like everyone to know that this orb eye style is not my own. I got the concept by looking at "Krank" by John Schewgel who is a much better artist than I would ever be and he deserves all the credit for his great work. Much respect to him... I've just been smart enough to reverse engineer his technique.

Step 1

First make the shape you want the eyes to be using vectors then make a selection of the area.

Step 2

Next we pick the colors we want the gradient tool to have. In my case I picked the colors #0DF1FD and #142D91

Step 3

Next we fill the area with the gradient, making sure that the selected area is still selected. Set your gradient style to radial then click in the slightly top right middle of the orb and move upward diagonally like this before releasing. The star marks the starting point from which you click and the end of the line is where you release.

When your done you should have something like this:

Step 4

Now we add a little inner glow all around the eye to darken the edges a bit and give it more depth.

Inner glow: color=black

That should have it looking something like this:

Step 5

Next select the layer transparency of your orb layer and create a new layer. Fill this layer with black then move your selected area down by 10 pixels (pressing the down key on your keyboard 10 times). All while making sure that you're using your Marquee (selection) tool. Click delete on your keyboard to delete the area within the selection then set the opacity of this black layer to 15%. Then deselect the area.

When your done you should have something like this:

Step 6

Next select the layer transparency of your orb layer again and create a new layer. Then with the selected area still enabled click Select > Transform Selection then click the chain link icon so that both the height and width reduce by the same amount. Then we reduce the selection to 94% of the original size. Finally fill the area with white.

Then using your elliptical marquee tool and select and area like this:

Delete the area within the marquee and set the layer transparency to 10% and deselect the area.

When your done you should have something like this:

Step 7

Now we add a little glow of white to the orb by adding a glare spot to it. Create a new layer then use your elliptical marquee tool and create a circle or maybe more of a regular elliptical shape, then you can 3D transform it a bit by using Edit > Free Transform. If the edges are a bit rough just Gaussian blur it a little (Filter > Blur > Gaussian blur).

When your done you should have something like this:

Now with a few of my hidden touches it becomes this:

Additional step

What's the use of having one eye when you really need two so you duplicate the image and mirror it horizontally to the second part of the canvas and shrink it to 75% of the original and now I you have a pair of skewed eyes like this:

The colors are reminiscent of the Playstation 2 colors don't you think?