2d tutorial created by Ls-Dark

Background info on tutorial:

For this tutorial we are going to make a 2d sheet that we can paste onto any render using psp but can easily be done in ps. Ive written this tutorial in psp as this was my first program i ever learnt, but the same principles apply to ps. I just find psp easier to create something so simple as 2d work, ps comes in handy for the more advanced stuff which is explained at the end of this tutorial.(also more people are likely to have psp as its alot cheaper)

This tutorial is written for beginners, alot of people ask me how 2d work is done, to be honest im rather surprised as its one of the easiest things that can be done, so i hope this helps.

Instead of making all our 2d on a render itself we are going to make it on a plain sheet and save it as a .psp or a psd.(what i call a 2d sheet) Saving it in this format will mean our layers will not merge, meaning we can paste what ever we do on to any render or piece of work and re-use it. Extra 2d work can be done when actually on the render itself to make it fit and look right. You can just do all your 2d on the render itself but to be honest it becomes rather hard to see all the lines we make and things can get messy. Clean 2d work is very important.

Ok lets start, going to try and make this as detailed, but as simple as possible.

File>new>
width: 600 (pixels)
height: 600 (pixels)
background colour: black
image type: 16 million
click: ok
The size of the document doesn't really matter, i normally make lots of 2d sheets, some very large, some small, for now we are going to use 600x600, but feel free to use any size, doesn't really matter.

Ok we should now have a blank black document ready for out 2d work. First thing we need to do is save it and get everything set up so we don't have to mess about later.

Layers>new raster layer>click ok.
File>save>locate where you want to save it, give it a name, and very Important save it as a "paint shop pro image" or a "photoshop psd". If you don't have photoshop save it as a psp. By saving in these formats nothing will merge unless we tell it to, even after closing down the document.

The set-up of psp toolbar's:

If your toolbar's are not set up right follow this step:

View>toolbar's.
make sure you have the following checked
standard toolbar
tool palette
colour palette
status bar
tool options palette
layer palette

and the menu at the bottom as follows:
display flat style toolbar's and enable automatic roll-ups (This just means when you hover over the palettes up comes the options)

Ok onto the 2d itself, we are now set to start:

In case you didn't read the above steps make sure you have a new layer, its very important otherwise all your work goes to waste or we waste time cutting it out which we don't want.

Ok our main tool for 2d work in psp is the pencil and The pre-set shapes The main trick to doing 2d work is to zoom in, the more the better depending on your screen res, mine is pretty high so i will have to zoom in quite a bit to get a good view of whats going on.

To zoom in:
You can use either or view>zoom in (pick how much you want to zoom in, i've gone with 5)

Ok now we want to work somewhere near the top corner, so adjust your scroll bars along the side and bottom so we can see the top left hand corner.
ok now click your pencil tool.
settings: to get the settings up hover over your "tool options tab" (read above notes if you missed how to view the tool tab)

quick explanation of antialias: Antialias makes your lines/text what ever it might be softer by adding pixels round the edge some people like to make 2d with antialias checked, personally i don't, it makes it look bigger and blurry, so i keep it unchecked.
Change the colour of the lines if you like to white
ok we can now start to draw our 2d work, Pretty darn simple you just need to be creative and design some stuff you like.
only thing you have to remember is when drawing lines with antialias unchecked you cant draw them at every angle as it will go to pixels, check antialias if you need a line at a certain angel or try and keep it as if you were a pixel artist,e.g:
note the zoomed in version and zoomed out version.

its totally up to you which style you use. One thing you have to remember tho is shapes such as circles have to have antialias checked. ok back to the 2d work. its just a matter of carefully drawing out what you want, there is no easy way about it, you have to design and create everything you want pixel by pixel and its very time consuming but rewarding and you will enjoy it after a while trust me, i prefer to do 2d than 3d most of the time.

I don't suggest anyone stealing any body's 2d work ideas, it might seem quite simple and just say i'll zoom in on his/her work and copy some of there ideas..well i wouldn't suggest you do this as all 2d artists take alot of pride in there own original 2d designs, just as people do with there 3d work. You need to create your own style using your own imagination which means drawing your own lines and shapes with a unique style. But feel free if you have no idea about 2d work to zoom in on some of my pieces to get the general gist of how its done, but don't copy the ideas. The range of what you can do is infinitive.

First i am going to show you an example of my 2d sheet that i used for my "wire hazard" wallpaper. One section zoomed in and the rest in normal view.


section zoomed in:


There is also one lil circle in there which i'll show you how to make later in this tutorial. along with a few boxes etc.



ok so we know how to make basic lines. You will soon learn the correct way and the wrong way of making lines by experimenting, nothing worst than bad 2d, keep it neat. Onto some more advanced shapes using the pre-sets.

click your pre-set shapes button

Hover over your "tool options tab" and you will be presented with these options:


in the drop down menu (where the circle is) you have a variety of shapes, i use mostly only the circle the box and the ring, the rest i feel are not that handy for abstract work so forget about them for now.

You also have options such as:

retain style: This will retain the style of the original pre-set
antialias: again this will add pixels round the edge to smooth it and soften (use for circles)
create as vector: This will enable you to manually manipulate the pre-set on the canvas by stretching it to the shape you want.
line width: what ever pre-set shape you make it will change the thickness of the line used
line style: you can also change the line style and make your own line styles (best left alone for beginners)

For this tutorial and most of my work i use the following settings:

for a circle:
Retain style: unchecked
antialias: checked
create as vector: unchecked
line width: 1
line style: 1 solid (default one)

for a box/rectangle:
Retain style: unchecked
antialias: unchecked
create as vector: unchecked
line width: 1
line style: 1 solid (default one)

ring:
Retain style: unchecked
antialias: checked
create as vector: unchecked
line width: 1
line style: 1 solid (default one)

when creating pre-set shapes if you want the shape to keep the correct diameter etc, hold down "shift" and drag out the pre-set this will give you the perfect circle or perfect sized box etc.
One very important part of psp is how the colour palette works.
This is your colour palette as default set to the right hand side of the screen.

right at the top you have two colours, 1 is black the other is white. The black one is your "foreground" the white one is your "background" (hover over them if you are unsure)

styles: The black one in this picture is your "stroke colour" (change this it also changes your foreground colour) The white one is your "fill colour" (change this it changes your background colour)

textures: we don't need to worry about these for 2d work, just make sure they are blank like shown in above picture, leave lock unchecked.

ok many people don't understand how the colours work in psp so here is the basics:
See picture above for reference.

see the arrow next to each colour. If you click it and hold down the mouse button you are presented with a few options
1.The brush: this is for a standard colour e.g we use this all the time for 2d work.
2.The gradient: is what it is, used for gradients, click it to play with the settings if you wish.
3.The next one is pattern, again don't worry about this one either for 2d work.
4.The next one is off all together, no colour at all.
for this tutorial we are only going to use the brush one.(the first one) this will give us just plain ole colour which is what we want.
now when we make something like a circle we may want the circle to be filled or we may just want the outline of the circle with a hollow center and this is where the stroke and fill come into play (foreground and background)

ok presuming your colour palette looks like mine above, with the black and white colours selected etc i'll now show you how to to do this.
hold down your mouse button on the arrow on the white colour (the colours under style, its the fill one) up comes your menus as explained above, select the last one (no colour what so ever one) now left click the black colour (the stroke) and change it to white
Draw out one of the pre-set's either a box or a circle (remember for a circle have antialias checked and hold down shift for perfect shape. A box needs no antialias.
You should have something like this:

Remember as long as you have at least one layer and save it as a .psp or .psd the layers will not merge meaning you can copy the circle and box and paste it on what you want without the black background.
If you want a circle or box to be filled you just change the settings round. Have stroke on no colour and fill on white.

now you know that, you can make them in all sorts of sizes and shapes to fit your other 2d work.

A good way to start off some 2d is to build of some text, decide what your piece is going to be called and build lines around it with shapes etc comming off this way it helps you to get a perspective of what you are trying to achieve.
ok now them wires people keep asking me about. The 2d wires i make are quite simple, this is what you do.
In your document, make sure you have at least one layer.

click your pencil tool.
in the "tool options tab" click the drop down menu under type.
select bezier curve
width 1
line style on normal which is 1 solid.
antialias checked.
close path and create as vector unchecked.

draw out a single line straight across the page and let go of the mouse button
now click your mouse again in the middle and pull upwards then click again and pull the other half of the wire downwards you end up with something like this:

go edit>copy
next go effects>blur>gaussian blur>radius: 1.00
next go edit>paste as new selection and place it just above the blurred line.

In this tutorial its kinda hard to see what this line looks like properly so here's a small cap from a wallpaper i did to show you the effect.

if you want the lil light effect i have on my line that was done in photoshop, but can be easily done in psp with the spray can.


Ok one thing psp cant do very well is perspective. Photoshop does this very nicely. If you want your 2d work to have perspective you gotta use photoshop it just does it so well. Example of a piece of my perspective 2d work:

you can use perspective on near anything, this is just a common 2d object most people make, and heres how we do it.

ok we are not going to make the exact one above as all i want to do is show you the basics of how to do this. you can make the 2d for this in psp and then open it in photoshop or just make it in photoshop, both easy to use but for this tutorial as i've done it for psp we will make it in psp then just use perspective in photoshop to edit it.

ok remembering all the points above so i don't have to repeat myself to much.

File>new> width: 600 (pixels) height: 600 (pixels) background colour: black image type: 16 million click: ok Layers>new raster layer.

Click your pre-set shapes button and select ring. these settings:





draw out your ring till you have something like this: (hold down shift don't forget for perfect shape)


click selection:
in the tool options:
selection type: rectangle
feather 0
antialias unchecked.
then just cut a few selections out by selecting the area then going edit cut. Im not to fussed about guide lines etc for this we will be messin with the perspective anyway.



ok you can add as much or as little detail as you want, we are just gonna keep it basic. file>save>save it as a .psd
open photoshop.
open the psd file
edit>transform>perspective (note if transform is not listed under edit or not highlighted select the layer with the circle on and go select>all. now just move the axis to where you want the perspective be. Click off or on another tool and when it asks you to apply say yes if you are happy with it.

example


ok for people who don't understand how to get the black background off there 2d work or how to paste it onto a render read on: Because we have been working on one layer and have saved our work as .psp or .psd the layers are not merged meaning the black background is separate from our white 2d work. When creating your 2d work you can add as many layers as you want or create it all on the same layer.

To delete the black background hover over your layer palette and right click on the black background layer normally labeled "background" then select delete, this will delete the black background and leave you with just the 2d. Now if you have used several layers but want them all to be merged into one but don't want to merge the background, you need to do this: (after deleting the black background)

layers>merge>merge visible (note this will only work if you have more than one layer)

All your 2d work is now merged with no background and is ready to paste onto anything you wish and can be re-used or edited as long as you save it as a psp or psd.
Change the layer opacity if you want your 2d to be faded This tutorial along with many others will be posted on my own personal site when its all finished, which will include 3dsm/lightwave/ai/ps/psp/zbrush tutorials. If you are one of these people who totally ignore copyright, instead of just posting this tutorial on your site and me finding it then getting it taken down, plz just ask me first you, can mail me at Liamas11@aol.com for queries etc, or find me on my deviantart addy (below) If you mail me please include a "subject line" and dont send any attachments =) Enjoy!!