The purpose of this tutorial is to teach a technique of applying shadows in a simple way to create body contour for animal skins using a leopard outline. What you will create will be similar to the following:

Level of difficulty: Easy and fun!

Now this tutorial does require two filters. I can think of two great sources to retreive the pool shadows filter, one, Filter Factory A, and the other Gregs Filters. These are both filters I use often in creating different effects. Mura Meisters Filter, called clouds is superb. It has a selection of settings that I haven't seen anywhere else. It creates clouds, silk, skins and so much more. Also included in the zip is an outline I created and painted. I drew it from an ornament I have at home. I made it into a gold outline and saved it as a psp file.

Go here and download Gregs filters volume IIFor the Pool shadow or use Filter Factory A's pool shadow..this one seems to work better..

For only the outline, Download here

Go to Mura Meister's Site to download the Clouds 2.2 filter

Hope you enjoy this tutorial, have fun, and please show me what you were able to do with it!

Lets Begin:

First make certain you have these filters in their proper files, including the windows file required for most filters to work.

Open your PSP program, and open the outline psp file I included in the zip called: cheetahoutline.psp

Take your magic wand tool change the tolerance to 40. This helps pick up more space inside the outline. Feather 0. Click inside the body, holding down the shift key, click every part of the body except the end of the tail, and the pads on the feet. If required, use your zoom lense tool to enlarge your picture to view all of the areas. Check under the chin, the top of the paws, the back hind leg part, the hind leg upper thigh. Once you have everything selected, go to selections modify and expand your selection by 2 pixels

Now go to your layer palette, right click on this layer, create a new layer then move this new layer under the outline layer.

Now you can make this guy into a black panther, or a leopard. The facial features may not be exact but close enough.

Below under the lined Italic name you will find a skin, choose the one you like best. The panther is on the following page, if your going to do the panther go now to page two.

Page 2

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The Leopard

Change your foreground colour to #da8307. Then using your flood fill tool, solid colour no texture added flood fill your selection. Select none.

Look at your graphic, you will notice spots that need to be filled. Go to the outline layer on your layers palette, then using your magic wand select all the outside areas of your outline, again holding down the shift key. Then go to selections invert. Go to selections contract by 1. Go to your layer one where your flood fill is. Take your retouch tool, I would say, no bigger size than 13, hardness 18, step 10, opacity and density 100, change your tool to push. Then push outwards towards the outline all the areas which are not covered. Look over your leopard carefully make sure you have all areas covered.

Create a duplicate of this layer. Go to your layers palette, right click this layer, duplicate. Now go to your plugins, find your pool shadow. Change the settings as follows.

Apply.Then go to Mura Meisters cloud filter. Change the settings to Leopard and the blend mode to multiply.

Apply. Then go to gamma corection. Change the settings to 1.50, link, and apply. Then add a gausian blur of (decimal) .80, just to soften the circles. Then go to noise, uniform 12, apply. Select none. The above leopard is what you should have.

Now go to your outline layer again. Apply a drop shadow using the following settings.

Then add another reversing the horizontal and vertical to negative.

Now using your magic wand once more, select the tip of the tail and the pads by going to the outline layer and holding the shift key, then modify expand by 2. Then create a new layer below this and flood fill solid color, black. You are finished, merge visible. Now add a nice background and enjoy your pic!