Coloring Robot in Photoshop - Tutorial

Digital Art Tutorial Recommended for Intermediate Level Photoshop Users

As you will see, it is actually quite a simple Adobe Photoshop technique, but the results can be very effective! The workflow shown below is a good way to give an image the added dimension needed to convey shape and form.

Remember this tutorial is designed for intermediate level Photoshop users, so I will not bog down the page with explanations on how to do every little function. If you are not very experienced in Photoshop, I suggest that you go through Melissa’s Colouring Line Art tutorial first.

1) Line Art

Scan your line art into Photoshop. Zoom right in and clean up any untidy areas. Finally desaturate and adjust the curves on your image to ensure that your lines are indeed black and the white is indeed white. This technique is explained in detail here.
The image above is my line art once it was cleaned up. I named this layer “LineArt”.

2) Base Colour

Next I created a new layer beneath the line art and gave it a nice tan colour. This just gives it a bit more life and be any colour you want.




I changed the “Line Art” layer to multiply mode. This effectively renders the white of the “line art” layer transparent. Now we can see the adjustments you make to the layers beneath without affecting the line art layer. I called this layer “BaseColour”.

3) Silhouette

Next I create a new layer and filled in the shape of the robot with a solid colour, and named this layer “Silhouette”.
 

 This layer will not be visible, but serves a couple of purposes. The first, is keeping the shaded values we are about to add within the lines. This enables a free and fast way to lay down the tones. The other purpose, is that eventually we will use this layer to form the shadow.

4) Dark Tones

With the “Silhouette” layer visibility turned off (click the eye icon beside the layer) we need to select this shape. From top menu,
Select >> Load Selection
(Ctrl-click on the “Silhouette” layer in the “Layer Window” in old versions of Photoshop CS and earlier).
With this area selected we won’t be able to draw over the lines. Next I create a new layer, and used a fairly dark colour to loosely lay in the darker areas of the robot. I named this layer “DarkTones”.

5) Mid Tones

I created another layer beneath the DarkTone layer. I used a slightly lighter shade to bring in some mid tones. No prizes for guessing what I called that layer. Again just lay it in loosely.

6) Soften the Tones

I adjusted the transparency on both the DarkTone and MidTone layers and gave them a slight Gaussian blur. This blended the two shades together a bit more and lightened them up a bit.

Once that was done I merged the two layers together with the brown base colour. I named this layer “Base”. I know it looks rough at this stage, but it does get better. Honest.

7) Tone Detail

I gave the “base” layer a bit more depth by using both the Dodge and Burn tools. You can start to tighten up while using this method. Make sure you use a blurred brush not a solid one, or else you won’t get that nice blended effect.

8) Getting the Chrome Look

This is how it looks once all the adjustments are done with the Dodge and Burn tools. You can get that nice chrome, reflective look by alternating different values. An added visual aid is a bit of rim light added to certain areas. I placed it against a darker value to help make it stand out.

9) More Chrome Effect

To give it that little bit extra, I used the Dodge tool to highlight the rivets and edges of the plate lines. This helped to separate each plate and gave the image a bit more depth, not to mention the eye candy value.

10) Add Glow Effects

Once the main section of the image was completed, I went about adding little things to bump it up. One was the use of glow effects. These are done by using a blurred brush.

I also lightened up the far arm and leg to give that foreshortening look.

11) Robot Shadow

The shadow for the robot was the last step, and like the rest of this tutorial, was easy. All I did was duplicate the Silhouette layer, and flipped it over by going to Edit>Transform>Flip Vertical.

12) Fine Tuning the Shadow

I then adjusted the look of the shadow by going Edit>Transform>Distort. As you can see there can be problems with the shadow matching up, but a bit of fine tuning and depending on the results, a bit of editing with a brush, you can get it looking right.

Once you have it where it should be, give it a bit of a blur and drop the opacity down. As you can see the shadow is above the robot layer. To get rid of the sections over the robot area, we go back to the Silhouette layer. Again we Ctrl click the layer to select, and with the shadow layer still active we hit delete.

The End

And here you have it, an easy tutorial. You can use this technique on any type of character you like, it is quick and looks good, and who can argue with that.
-Troy Packer