(http://i.imgur.com/rsV8OAkm.jpg) (http://i.imgur.com/rsV8OAk.jpg) | The first important rule is that light has trouble to reach the bottom of cavities making them appear darker (duh!) but also less saturated. This is important because several tools that change the luminosity of an image tend to increase the saturation of dark colors. |
(http://i.imgur.com/If2k4ypm.jpg) (http://i.imgur.com/If2k4yp.jpg) | The second rule, that conflicts a bit with the first because it wouldn't be fun otherwise, is that paint ages less in cavities. Meaning that the coating get scratched and weathered faster on exposed surfaces, particularly on the edges of a plate or the top of a sphere. This is partially compensated by the fact that cavities tend to accumulate dirt. |
(http://i.imgur.com/emKxjMl.png) | So lets get started. For this example, I'll make a XIVth battle-group Gryphon, because why the hell not! It's a good vanilla sprite that alternates busy areas with flat ones. That will come in handy to show the subtleties this technique offers. The gist of my technique is to use and abuse nested masks to be able to change the paint-job on a whim without having to redraw everything. Thus, we need to prepare them. |
(http://i.imgur.com/bPnp9mC.png) | And the first mask you'll need is the one that will keep unpainted parts clean. This is the only mask that usually needs to be painted by hand so there isn't many shortcuts to take here. I usually create a layer with a solid color clipped on top of the sprite, add a black mask, then paint it white to reveal the areas I need masked. Unlike painting directly this layer, this allows me to switch between black and white colors within the same brush tool by pressing a unique shortcut; instead of alternating between the brush and the eraser. |
(http://i.imgur.com/wEhVFA3.png) | The second required mask is the one that will isolate the most exposed surfaces of the ship. This will be the parts that will be the most painted, and the most saturated. It is actually very easy to make thanks to a little tool in Photoshop called Color Range, that you'll find it in the Select menu. What it does is that when you pick a color on the sprite, it will select all the pixels with a similar color. Unlike the Magic Wand however, it does a very good job at fading the selection the farther from the original color the pixels are. You can also change the range of the colors selected afterward instead of changing the wand tolerance and having to select your colors again. You can also accumulate different sample points with shift in one selection if the ship has more than one hull color. |
(http://i.imgur.com/yvyUfXQ.png) Color Range | (http://i.imgur.com/JifOHgR.png) Magic Wand |
(http://i.imgur.com/EgBjsH8.png) | Depending on the sprite, it is sometimes more useful to isolate the cavities, or use both for different effects. Low tech ships for example have a lot of different hull colors. Those can be tricky to isolate while the space between plates are often closer in color and create better masks. |
(http://i.imgur.com/hj6yJeI.jpg) | Finally you'll need to create the nested folder hierarchy. This one works for all cases but depending on the effect you are looking for, some of those folders might not be needed, or the order changed. The "Ship Mask" is just a copy of the alpha of the base sprite. Remember to check if it has any holes or stray pixels as David's sprites are not always perfectly clean (insert death_stare gif here). The "Paintjob Mask" will be the mask you'll paint to create the actual paintjob, while everything inside will be applied to the whole sprite. You'll need one copy of these folders per color you want. |
(http://i.imgur.com/q6XgH2Xm.jpg) (http://i.imgur.com/q6XgH2X.jpg) (Click to enlarge) | For simple darkening/brightening with little color change from the original hull, I try to not use anything but Curves and Hue/Saturation adjustment layers. The reason is that using a Color or Overlay layer completely crushes the color variations present on the sprite and usually destroy some of the contrast information. Additionally, adjustment layers are non-destructive and can be changed at any time. Here I started by de-saturating the entire hull (bottom yellow layer) and shifted the color toward something a tad orange. Then I darkened it via a Curve adjustment layer. In the cavities and exposed folders I did some minute adjustments to the colors and saturation to add more variety rather than having an uniform hull. The entire time I kept an eye on the Eagle, comparing the tints by boosting both ships' saturation and contrasts to ludicrous levels. You can also see that I used the (currently deactivated) paintjob mask to check both the painted and unpainted hull next to each other. The white part was done with the exact same setup, except instead of sticking to the same white as the Eagle, I decided to stay closer to the existing white part of the ship. |
(http://i.imgur.com/JCTFzBYm.jpg) (http://i.imgur.com/JCTFzBY.jpg) (Click to enlarge) | Now the orange part of the Eagle skin is very saturated. As a matter of fact it the most saturated decently sized chunk of hull of any vanilla sprite. While shifting the color or de-saturating a sprite does not pose any issue, raising the saturation is another matter. All the small variations in hue will get exponentially more flagrant, creating a lot of unwanted color noise. This is the only case where I directly use a Color/Overlay layer, and even then I try to limit their impact. I started by shifting the color of the hull to the closest value and only slightly raised its saturation. I then color picked the exact tint of the Eagle and used that as layers in Color and Overlay fusion mode with low opacity. As mentioned before this is to keep some of the original color variations instead of getting a flat tint. This is also important in the case of the Overlay layer as it change the contrast quite a bit. Then I de-saturated the shadows and re-saturated the exposed surfaces. Again this is due to the way the Overlay works: it tend to saturate darker areas a lot more than bright ones, which is the opposite to what we want. I also added some slight color shifts between the two. This is the case where the cavity and exposed masks are the most useful. Note that I used an Overlay fusion mode for the orange layer to match the Eagle's specific aspect, but for my own paint-jobs I often prefer using the Soft-Light fusion mode that do not increase the saturation as much in the darker areas. More on that in the Tips and Tricks section to the bottom. |
(http://i.imgur.com/O2q81c0m.jpg) (http://i.imgur.com/O2q81c0.jpg) (Click to enlarge) | This is when the work done with the masks pays off. I started with the orange paint, drew the mask I wanted, and then using that as an exclusion selection, I painted the other two in seconds. I finished by adjusting the saturation of the engines nacelles that kept a bit of the over-saturation present on the original sprite. The trick now is that if I want to change the paintjob style, I can do that extremely fast given I only need to change a couple of masks that don't even require precise painting. Iterating on a style (or making something completely different) is now a breeze: (http://i.imgur.com/ScNQRHd.png) (http://i.imgur.com/LtyAEZe.png) (http://i.imgur.com/Rn69AkX.png) |
(http://i.imgur.com/aWJueHx.gif) | Despite trying to use only non destructive methods, the new sprite is usually cleaner than the original. Furthermore a XIVth variant is supposed to be an old ship that predates the collapse and saw countless battles since. This is time to apply the second part of the Theory bits: Adding dirt and scratches is usually done directly via a Normal layer on top of the paint-job layers, using a 1px round brush. Additionally each Paint-Job masks can be "dirtied" to leave unpainted spots, or areas where the new coat of paint was worn off and the original hull is starting to show. It doesn't need to be very visible, just a couple of scratches are enough to convey the idea. |
(http://i.imgur.com/XzG9WNE.png) Nested Masks | (http://i.imgur.com/JBTHirY.png) Direct Color | (http://i.imgur.com/LDbCPgs.png) Flat Hue Shifts |
(http://i.imgur.com/asLascT.png) Firecracker | (http://i.imgur.com/oKgazOK.png) Goffs | (http://i.imgur.com/kx2TJmz.png) Ravager | (http://i.imgur.com/yxYyuug.png) Blue Angels |
(http://i.imgur.com/ewOclxd.jpg) Color Range output | (http://i.imgur.com/K3nroMG.jpg) Refined mask |
(http://i.imgur.com/L9xV5aa.png) Original | (http://i.imgur.com/mWCb3iv.png) Hue Shift | (http://i.imgur.com/Fiuhywo.png) Negative layer in Color mode | (http://i.imgur.com/pS3aFoI.png) Negative Layer |
(http://i.imgur.com/1OT8i5p.png) 100% opacity | To the left a blue 100% opacity blue layer in Overlay, to the right the same layer in Soft Light. The Enforcer sprite has been almost completely desaturated to better show the issue. As you can see the contrast changed quite a bit on the left side compared to the right side. The color also got applied very unevenly depending on the area's saturation and luminosity. The two sides having a very different effect it might be difficult to judge though... |
(http://i.imgur.com/nhanvLT.png) 70% Overlay 2x50% Soft Light | But even when scaling back the Overlay's opacity and using two Soft Light layers, the former still affects disproportionately darker areas than lighter ones compared to the latter. While I insist a lot on keeping the source's color variations, this is not the case here: the Overlay create new variations along the luminosity or the sprite while still crushing the existing ones. |
(http://i.imgur.com/NMNRI25.png) | And the last thing to keep in mind is that Overlay affect more the colors that are already closer to the layer applied. Notice how the left side lets more red pass through. This can become a serious issue when using that fusion mode: if in this instance you want to change the color of those red-ish parts the same way the Soft Light layer does, the rest of the sprite will be solid blue and much more contrasted due to the layer needing to be more opaque. |