A Genius Tutorial?

stormyskills Rank: member Forum Rank: Jounin Posts: 1168 Joined on: June 13, 2009

#1 Alrighty!! So welcome to my custom character making tutorial. This tutorial is meant to guide you into creating a character to the best of your abilities. Ofcourse I’m not a master in creating characters either and it’s all about learning and getting the right Critics. But hopefully this tutorial can be a starting point to become a great character maker. But enough with the talk and on to what you came for! Templates and Where to download/get screenshots So to start this tutorial I will be using Photoshop (CS4) to be exact and providing a General Template that I use for creating my characters. This template has everything already pre-planned and only needs a little touch up if necessary. For this tutorial I will be using the General Template and explain it from there however, I will add the basic Naruto, Fairy Tail, and Bleach templates at the bottom of this paragraph as well. Click For General Template Click For Bleach Template Click For Naruto Template Click For Fairy Tail Template Now you might also be wondering where do you get screenshots for all these animes? I either download the episodes I need using a torrent files on this website Animefan Download screens from Anime Caps Download videos using Anime-Access (need to make an account for this one) Or I just use trusty old Google when I’m lazy! Also if you’re ever in need for Naruto Screenshots, there are many to be found across the boards Alright so we finally have some templates and a few sites to try and find some pictures, now we can get into the actual picture making of character creations. As I said before, for this tutorial I will be using photoshop. Where can you download this? It really is easy and can be found almost anywhere on youtube. But because downloading this illegally is not allowed I unfortunately not give you the link to the download. However by typing in Photoshop Cs4 on youtube, finding a way to download it shouldn’t be hard.

stormyskills Rank: member Forum Rank: Jounin Posts: 1168 Joined on: June 13, 2009

#2 The Pictures Pictures are a basic part of every character. When a character is uploaded the first thing that’s noticed by others are the pictures. By having nice pictures you are able to catch a readers attention before they begin to read your characters by presentation alone. Ofcourse having excellent pictures don’t make a character, but it helps the characters overall appeal. We will be using two face pictures and 2 skills with different colours in order to get the maximum benefit of this tutorial Face pic 1 Face pic 2 Skill pic 1 Skills pic 2 Cropping With any image, the first thing needed to be done is to crop it. How do you crop a picture/what is the right way? Every picture will always be different because each anime characters head or skills will vary. Ideally we want to crop a face picture that reaches the characters chin and doesn’t go too much above the eyes and crop a skill picture with enough emphasis on what we want shown. To do our cropping, we use the tool located on the left that looks like this However before we start any cropping there is a value measure that allows you to crop images at a set size of 75 x 75 so that when we go to resizing the image, it won’t look stretched. The value measure is located at the top of Photoshop and looks like this Change these two values to 75 and we can finally begin our cropping. First face Image Example on how to crop First face Results for first image: first face result Second face image Now you try to get this second face result First skill Image Example on how to crop first skill Result for second image: first skill result Second skill Now you try to get this second skill result Adjusting Now that we have finished cropping our images, the next step is to sharpen them. The steps to sharpening an image are: 1. Click Filter at the top of the page 2. Navigate to Sharpen and Highlight it 3. Click Sharpen Example Now that we have sharpened the image, the next step is to auto contrast it. Note: Not all images however need to be auto contrasted on this step. Judgment is needed to be used to be able to tell if an image becomes too dark from auto contrast or too light However for tutorial purposes all these images will be auto contrasted. Steps include: 1. Click Image at the top of the page 2. Click Auto Contrast Example Next we will need to vibrance the image to give it some colour. Steps Include: 1. Click Image at the top of the page 2. Navigate to Adjustments and highlight it 3. Click Vibrance Example 4. A mini box will appear with two things, Vibrance and Saturation, Change Vibrance to 50(again can vary but for this tutorial its 50 for all images) and press ok Example Finally we need to resize the image to do this the following steps include: 1. First change this box to 100% 2. Click Image at the top of the page 3. Navigate and Click Image size Example 4. A box will appear with many dimensions. Make sure all boxes at the bottom are check marked 5. In Pixel Dimensions ONLY change the width and height to 75. Example After doing all this, your images should finally look like this: Second Adjusting Now we get to the last stretches of the images. We will be repeating the previous steps of last used with a little extra touch to the images. 1. Click Filter at the top of the page 2. Navigate to Sharpen and Highlight it 3. Click Sharpen Example 4. Now click Edit 5. Navigate and click Fade Sharpen 6. From here a box will open and you will need to fade this to 60% and press ok. Example WAIT! How do I know what to fade it too? Usually for this step, you will need to fade the image to about 60%-80%. Again this does vary with images and sometimes it seems hard to tell. However with a lot of practice it will become simpler. For tutorial purposes, ONLY this image shall be faded to 60%. All other images will be faded to 80% (Usually images are mostly faded to 80% however there are times when some images are out of the ordinary and need to be faded a bit more) Results: The next step following the rules would be to auto contrast. However because we had done this in the previous step, it will have no effect over here. Different combinations can be made with the contrast. Whenever you have time, try doing an image without the auto contrast or auto contrasting on this step and view the difference. Again will need to vibrance the image to give it some colour. Steps Include: 1. Click Image at the top of the page 2. Navigate to Adjustments and highlight it 3. Click Vibrance Example 4. A mini box will appear with two things, Vibrance and Saturation, Change Vibrance to 50(again can vary but for this tutorial its 50 for all images) and press ok Example Results: Next we are going to be putting saturation on these images again for better colour. Steps include: 1. Click Image at the top of the page 2. Navigate to Adjustments and highlight it 3. Click Hue and Saturation and a box will appear Example 4. Change ONLY the saturation in here from 0 to 20. (Again this saturation level can range from 0-25 depending on the image. Good judgment will be needed here but if you are ever in doubt, always stay below 10 to avoid over saturation)Example Results: These images are pretty great as they are and can be proceeded toward the Final step. However if you have time and want the extra challenge there is another step that can be done. By all means this step can sometimes be avoided as I avoid it myself if I’m not in the mood or don’t want to do it. If You wish to skip this step than please proceed to Final Step! Selective Colour So you came to the challenge step huh? Well it can be considered challenging or more tedious because no one wants to do this for every single image and to be honest, sometimes it’s not needed and we only need this step for a select few. For this step I will only do 1 image however and show in the final step what would happen if we had not done this step. I will be using this image Alrighty so the steps: 1. Click Image at the top of the page 2. Navigate to Adjustments and highlight it 3. Click Selective Colour Example 4. A box should appear with 4 places for percentages and be pre-set at the colour red. Example 5. Click the arrow where the box with the red colour is and you will get more colour options. 6. Navigate to Blues and select it (Why did you choose blue? This is because the character has blue hair. Because of that, we will be focusing on the colour blue. You will need to navigate to different colours depending on the colours used in your picture) Example 7. This is where it gets FUN! Or ANNOYING!! Now we need to play around with the 4 different colours testing options that make her hair colour look better. For tutorial purposes I will give you the colours that need to be set. 8. Example Make sure at the bottom, the method is selected as absolute (This is for her hair) 9. Example (This white colour is for her face) 10. Example (This is the neutral balance to lighten up the image a bit) NOTE: There are many many ways to use selective colour that can be achieved upon random practices. Always keep trying new combinations for better performance Final Step: Finally we reached the last steps!!! We will do 1 little extra add on and then put on our canvas and be finished. Steps: 1. Click Image at the top of the page 2. Navigate to Adjustments and highlight it 3. Click Shadow/Highlights and a box will appear Example 4. Change the percentage of ONLY shadow’s to 5% (Again this can range from around 0-50%. If you have done selective colouring, sometimes this step is not even needed. This step is to sometimes brighten up parts of images that you wouldn’t have expected to brighten up.) Example Skip These last steps if you do not want a border! However my end results will have one 5. Finally we click Image at the top of the page 6. Navigate to Canvas Size and click it a box should appear Example 7. Click the arrows and change both width and height to pixels 8. Enter 77 in both width and height and press enter Example Walllah we have our beautiful pics!! Results: No selective colour (first one) and Selective colour (second one) comparison All no selective colour BONUS! When you have an image and want to change its direction like this one how do you do it? Steps: 1. Click Image at the top of the page 2. Navigate to Image Rotation and highlight it 3. Then click Flip Canvas Horizontal Example And It’s Finish Final Challenge!! Using the selective colour I have taught you today, can you turn the first image into the second one? Good Luck and I hope this picture tutorial was helpful

stormyskills Rank: member Forum Rank: Jounin Posts: 1168 Joined on: June 13, 2009

#3 The Character Inserting Images Now that we have produced some pictures, we can now proceed to producing some characters! For this tutorial, I will be providing 1 face pic and 4 skills in order to show an example as we go through this guide. These are the 5 pictures we will use: Next we will need to open our template (Remember I am using the General Template above) Once you open all these images into Photoshop, copy and paste each image onto the template you have opened with Photoshop. After you copy and paste all images into Photoshop it should look like this Example Now that we have inserted the images, the next step is to accurately move the picture into the picture boxes. How? Follow these steps 1. On the left, you will see a toolbar with many tools, Switch to this one 2. Next, on the right, Each picture you recently posted should be layered according to the order you posted them. (For this tutorial it will be Layer 2 to Layer 6) 3. We will start by clicking on Layer 2 4. Once you have this layer selected click and hold the image, and drag it to fit directly inside the character box showing no buldges Example Note: This is a bad example of cropping! Bad Example Why? Because as we can see, it looks like we have a double border on the left side of the image and no border on the right! We want it to be all eqaul 5. After repeating steps 3 and 4 for the other images, The final result should look like this Example Character Names Ok so now we have our images in our skill boxes, next comes writing the characters description. To do this, we need to again head to the left of our page and select this tool After selecting this tool the following steps are pretty easy, 1. with your tool Click Character Name and begin typing the name of the character. For this tutorial her name is Satan Mirajane 2. Follow the exact same step as number 1 except we will be selecting Skill 1 and keep going until Skill 4. (You can be creative in choosing the skill names of this character however, if you aren’t really creative, there is always Google. For tutorial purposes I will give you names of these skills: 3. Skill 1 = Demon Sphere 4. Skill 2 = Satan Barrage 5. Skill 3 = Evil Explosion 6. Skill 4 = Evil Clutch Note: OH NO!! I accidently miss clicked the words and don’t know what to do? If you accidently miss clicked the words, something should appear on the right of the layers that looks like this No worries, this just mean you accidently added a new layer. To get rid of it, hold the highlighted layer and drag it towards the bottom garbage bin and then let go of the click and tadah! It will be removed. Character Skills and Descriptions/Cooldown/Classes Ok now that we cleared any problems and have our skill names, we need to come up with a character description. Again the best place to do this is to use Google. When creating a character description, try to avoid giving out spoilers to a show, mainly we just want to emphasize the characters background and give them a little push to what their skills can do. After this we need to create a mission name for this character again try to make it relate to the characters personality in some way Ok now that we have our description and mission name, you might be looking at the colours and going DAMN THERE UGLY!! No worries here cause we can change that with some steps: 1. On the right, look for the layer titled Satan Mirajane (your character’s name) and select it 2. Next we want to click on this tool at the bottom of the page and press blending option, opening a menu box. Example 3. Again because Photoshop has colours preset, it won’t be that difficult to change. 4. From the open box click Gradient Overlay by single clicking this box you will open a gradient editor allowing you to select any type of colour that you desire! Example (however for tutorial purposes, I will click a random preset and click ok 5. Repeat steps 1-4 for all other layer names and you should come out with a final of you colour choice looking like this Example Note: This next step is just a basic example of adding skills, look through it for an idea, however we will cover Flow and Balance in our Next Section Now that we have some flashy colours we need to make skill descriptions for our character. This is the exact same thing we did during character description but this time we click each skills description and write different skill sets for our character. Basic Example Now that we have our character skill description, we need to add cooldowns and classes to our characters. Again exact same tool and steps as before except this time we click the cooldown or classes area and add what we want. Note: For Classes, each anime will have something different, when creating a new character from an anime that no one has created skills or classes for, its up to you to come up with them. For tutorial purposes, we will be using Fairy Tail classes. Example Finally the last step is to add the Energy. To do this, we will need to know what each colour symbolizes. Again if you are using a pre-made template there will be explanations on what each colour represents. If you are using a custom template you come up with these Energy’s. Steps on placing Energy’s 1. What we want to do is locate our Energy Tab and make sure it’s open on the right. 2. From here we click on the energy we want for our skill. 3. After clicking the colour of the energy you want, copy and paste this energy and it should appear as an extra layer. This now becomes that extra energy 4. After repeating steps 2 and 3 for each energy required for each skill, we use our moving tool and drag each energy to the energy required area 5. What we want to do is bring the energy box right beside our semi-colon “:” and then move up 1 and 5 to the left using the arrows on our key board to get this Note: If a second Energy needs to be added put the second energy right beside the first one and then move 3 spaces right pressing the right arrow on your keyboard Our Last step is to add a character logo, we will be using this one What you want to do is open this logo, and drag it to the top of the image anywhere you see fit for our final outcome Example Lastly we need to save this character. Make sure to always save 2 files of a character! One in PSD and one in Png. Why? Because if you find out you made a mistake on a Png file, it is much harder to correct it if you don’t already have an available PSD file. YES!! We have now finished making a character! However this character is only a basic and can be much better! Follow me to the next section to learn more about character creating. Character Skills and Flow

stormyskills Rank: member Forum Rank: Jounin Posts: 1168 Joined on: June 13, 2009

#4 Creating That Flow Alrighty!! Now we get to the heart of the character and probably the hardest part. This is creating good skills and a nice flow for a character. For this tutorial I will be using this final product Example However I will work with you along the way to suggest why I did what I have done on this character. Now there are many many many ways, a character can have flow and many different strategies in creating flow. How do you know which is the right one? Sometimes you really don’t. Experimenting different techniques in a character allows you to have the best results when creating your character. Lets look at our example character skills and see what I mean. First skill: Darkness Sphere: Now when we look at this first skill, we have our character doing 15 piercing damage and then I have an additional bonus of changing their classes to physical skills for 2 turns. WHY WOULD I DO THIS? Well in order to create a character with flow, there needs to be a starting point. This starting point can be anything you can think of from increasing another skills damage or activating an effect of another skill, it all takes creativity. Second Skill: Satan’s Barrage: After we created our first skill, we need to come up with a creative move for our second skill, while still having a linkage or flow to 1 of our other 4 skills. In this case it will be the first skill. This skill deals 10 normal damage to one enemy for 3 turns and now has an extra effect of stunning an enemy affected by this for 1 turn If they use a physical skill. WHY A PHYSICAL SKILL? It’s simple, because my first skill changed all classes of an enemy’s skills to physical skills, If they were to use any damaging or strategic effect they would be stunned for one turn. By creating a linkage from the first to the second skill, I have now given you a reason to use these skills together in order to create a stronger effect. Third Skill: Evil Explosion: Again we have another combination between the third and the first skill. First we have our character dealing 35 piercing damage to one enemy. The extra effect of making her skills deal 5 damage is just an added bonus. WHY? Because for pulling of a successful move with a high cooldown and big damage, a bonus was added as a reason to maybe use it over another skill. However she also has a third effect. She becomes invulnerable to physical skills for 2 turns. AGAIN WHY PHYSICAL? Well again its very simple, by making her become invulnerable to physical skills, If your character has low health, it gives you a reason to use the first and third skills together to avoid death and stay alive in the game a little longer. Fourth Skill: Demonic Guard: This last skill is mainly an invulnerability skill. Most people don’t like to add extra effects to an invulnerability skill, however I added the effect that physical skills would not be able to bypass this invulnerability again to link the first skill, with my final skill. (This does not need to be done) After examining all of our skills, we have come to realize that each skill center’s around the first skill, giving it a dominant importance in battle. Ideally we can create many combinations of characters. This is just an example of a character created using physical skills as a starting point to create a complete circle (FLOW). I really hope you enjoyed this tutorial and learned something new about creating characters

stormyskills Rank: member Forum Rank: Jounin Posts: 1168 Joined on: June 13, 2009

#5 An example of how to balance skills shall be added in later in the future hopefully :D

eDeath Rank: member Forum Rank: Special Jounin Posts: 986 Joined on: May 21, 2011

#6 1st post :! DARE U CLICK MY SIGGY ~~~ avy by Kibune

radarobert Rank: member Forum Rank: Jounin Posts: 1603 Joined on: March 1, 2008

#7 great tutorial o,o it will help many custom chars. creators Credit for avy goes to sasori_baasama_if. ||| Click gif. for my latest char!

annoying_dog Rank: member Forum Rank: Special Jounin Posts: 998 Joined on: July 31, 2012

#8 3rd post Tournaments Won : 2

ChoujiroxD Rank: member Forum Rank: Chuunin Posts: 367 Joined on: January 5, 2012

#9 reserved. Fnd "I'm sacred of heaven to hell and hell to heaven!" <~~ Click Tutorial Avy[VIDEO] ~~ Tutorial Avy [BR]

Narutorazengan25 Rank: member Forum Rank: Jinchuuriki Posts: 17014 Joined on: September 24, 2009

#10 o:!!!!!!!!! a tutorial! o: waiting! O:! OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG A GREAT TUTORIAL! But.. i have PS CS4 :c that is okay? ;c ~By Kenny Perfect Character, By my sofi♥:

Rasengan_89 Rank: member Forum Rank: Sannin Posts: 3722 Joined on: March 1, 2008

#11 Well done Stormy U__U I enjoyed reading the first flow tutorial and gonna try to apply that (even if I do already but seems its not enough -.-) THANK YOU FOR THE SHARE Sig Stock by tremblax ~ First to ever make a Naruto Bijuu Mode ~ IT'S OVER 10 THOUSAND views, thanks a lot! Avy made by ME, Stock by Andrezoe ~ Want to be a Character Maker ? ~ It seems somebody paid you enough money to live without working, SvN. ~

ItamiKyousei Rank: member Forum Rank: Chuunin Posts: 281 Joined on: December 31, 2011

#12 Actually it's A genius* tutorial. They can't stop us ! Let 'em try! For Heavy Metal we will die !

stormyskills Rank: member Forum Rank: Jounin Posts: 1168 Joined on: June 13, 2009

#13 Narutorazengan25 wrote: o:!!!!!!!!! a tutorial! o: waiting! O:! OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG A GREAT TUTORIAL! But.. i have PS CS4 :c that is okay? ;c ~By Kenny Thanks Kenny and thats what I use XD! Soo its perfect for you then :D

Narutorazengan25 Rank: member Forum Rank: Jinchuuriki Posts: 17014 Joined on: September 24, 2009

#14 Oh sorry, i mean CS5! D: ~By Kenny Perfect Character, By my sofi♥:

sasu_laka Rank: member Forum Rank: Jinchuuriki Posts: 15131 Joined on: November 21, 2010

#15 Seems very nice ty || Avy Showcase || LakAyawesome || Some things - Never change || Set by Ayame

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