To make a very funky-looking cartoon zombie I will be covering my process of taking a brief through to completion, with tips and tricks along the way including the wonder that is clipping masks. I'll also show the importance of thumbnailing, taking a rough sketch to a final creepy conclusion, line art tricks, and a smattering of colour theory.
For this illustration we will be setting up the artwork for print. We want to have an A3 size print so in the New Document Dialogue (File > New or Control-N) we set:
The Color Mode is set to CMYK as we will be printing this document. However, if your artwork is not for print then set the Color Mode to RGB.
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To prevent us creating the artwork too close to the edge where it may be cut off, create a 100 pixel (px) safety zone using Guides.
Bring up the New Guide dialogue box by going to View > New Guide where we will create four guides. For each guide you will have to reopen the New Guide dialogue box.
Select the boundary with the Rectangular Marquee Tool (M) and hold down Shift to select all four sides. It can be helpful to have Snap enabled (View > Snap) and ensure Snap To > All is selected.
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Control-D to Deselect the area, then go to View > Clear Guides to remove the blue guides. I like to create a grey boundary rather than use guides, because even with snapping turned off, the brush can find itself snapping to the guides, creating undesired straight lines.
According to Wikipedia a Zombie is "an animated corpse raised by magical means, such as witchcraft.The concept has been popularly associated with the Vodou religion, but it plays no part in that faith's formal practices."
So what does this tell us? We need to create a walking corpse! If you refer to popular culture, we have a fairly stereotypical view of zombies. Groaning animated bodies with distorted joints, moaning eerily, often with open wounds and signs of decay. Films such as Evil Dead, Shaun of the Dead, 28 Days Later and Dawn of the Dead, and games like Silent Hill, Left4Dead and Plants vs. Zombies probably form our stereotypical view of zombies.
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For our zombie I have found some fantastic reference images from DeviantArt and Photodune for poses and anatomy. The area of the zombie I would need most help with would be the skull, so I waited until my thumbnail was chosen to take some reference pictures of my model skull. If you are going to be creating portraits and characters it is a great idea to get well acquainted with anatomy by studying the human form; life drawing classes are excellent for this. I find it very helpful to have a model skull on my desk, especially if I need to work out a tricky angle for a head. There are plenty of stock image sites that have turnarounds of skulls if you can't bring yourself to be greeted by a skull on your desk every day!
Here are the two brushes we will be using for this tutorial. The first is the Hard Edge Custom Brush. Here are my settings.
Thumbnailing is a great, fast way to work out a composition before you start work. Thumbnails are small squares or rectangles set up to the orientation of your document. In these you can quickly rough out poses and compositions to see which is the best use of space and which piece has the best silhouette.
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Below I have created nine portrait rectangles and roughed in a "Z" to each, as this is a central item to the piece. Then using rough, simple shapes I have made up some poses based on reference images and imagination. The three I feel are most undead have been circled in red.
Next I isolate my favourite three to see which is the strongest. The first reminds me of a bear, and the second is good but not as awkward as the last one. Normally awkward wouldn't be what we're after but seeing as we want a disjointed walking dead dude, this is perfect.
I then copy the third rough with the Rectangular Marquee Tool (M) and press Control-C to Copy and Control-V to Paste into my print document. Then I scale the artwork to the document size by pressing Control-T. Note the rough sketch is of lesser quality than we would normally work at, but as this is just a rough, it will not be seen in the final document.
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Taking my rough pose, I create a New Layer (Control-Shift-N), then take a different colour and begin roughing out the human anatomy onto the zombie pose. I start with the skull, using my own reference of a skull and refining the pose using Photodune: scary bloody zombies waiting for a prey as reference.
Then using Photodune: Anatomical Overlays with Internal Organs as reference I make sure the anatomy is approximately right to make our character believable. It can be helpful to block out large shapes for the rib cage and pelvis, and then draw in the details on a New Layer (Control-Shift-N).
Taking my model skull, I arranged it at an angle with the mouth open, and then took a few photos with my phone. I chose the best shot and saved that as reference.
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Taking the skull reference and the face of a female "zombie" I begin work on roughing out my zombie's face. To ensure I am not getting lost in details I like to have a zoomed out window of my artwork open. Window > Arrange > New Window for FILENAME.PSD. This is an identical copy of the document which I keep zoomed out. The benefit of this is that you can work on either document and it will update immediately. Good if you notice a detail you wish to change when zoomed out.
Lower the opacity of the rough sketch. I decided the lower jaw wasn't needed, and without it the zombie dude looks creepier.
Taking the hard brush on a New Layer (Control-Shift-N), I begin to clean up the line art, adding little details as I go such as wrinkles, pock marks, spots, dirt, dimples, tears, and holes. Creating details at this stage means less work in the colouring stage and gives the illusion of more structure than there really is. Rather than going with a traditional black I have opted for a dark purple. I have done this as I want the zombie to have some green and red tones, so purple will be a pleasant contrast and make the greens and reds look more vibrant.
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To make life easy we are going to create a solid silhouette for our zombie. We do this so we can Lock Transparency on the layer and colour quickly without going outside our lines.
Then take a hard edge eraser to tidy up the edges of the silhouette. You can paint in the silhouette carefully by hand, but I prefer this method.
Once you have gone round the whole outline, name the layer Base by double clicking on the layer name in the Layers panel.
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Then go to Image > Image Rotation > 90° CW to make the document landscape. Select the Line Art and Base from our original artwork and drag them into the Landscape A3 Document. Create a guide line under the feet of the zombie by pressing Control-R to bring up the rulers, then using the Move Tool (V) drag a horizontal guide down from the top ruler.
Next I select the Line Art layer and Base by clicking on the Base layer, holding Shift then clicking on the Line Art layer. Then drag both layers down to the New Layer icon (shown below) at the bottom of the layers palette.
This will make a direct copy of both layers and keep them in the same place. Do this once more to create another copy. Next select the Move Tool (V) and select one set of Line Art and Base. Holding Shift press the Left or Right Arrow keys to move the zombie across the document to give three identical illustrations.
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For each Base layer select Lock Transparent Pixels in the Layers Panel. Lock Transparent Pixels means that we cannot paint outside the grey pixel silhouette. Think of this as masking off the outside of the zombie with digital tape.
To colour over the silhouettes we will be using Clipping Masks. I use these all the time as a non-destructive way of painting an element. On the layer above the silhouette, create a New Layer (Control-Shift-N) then right-click on the New Layer and select Create Clipping Mask. Anything created on this layer will only show on whatever pixels are available on the layer below.
To create Core Shadows on my illustration I will be taking the Local Colour and painting it on a Multiply Layer. For a more realistic approach you can tweak the Local Colour to have a warmer or cooler tone depending on your light source, but for this piece I wanted a cartoon style render. For Highlights and other details I will be colour picking from the MagicPicker Color Wheel and I will cover why I chose these colours.
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Take your Hard Edge Brush and start applying colours from your first palette over the zombie. You don't have to be neat with this step, it's just to give you an idea of how
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