The birth of a zombie... (a zombie art tutorial)

[kidnemo]

So I start with a zombie sketch. This is an old sketch that came about back when I was working on developing the style and story for kristy versus the zombie army.

I love using clicky mechanical pencils (0.5 lead), so that's what I use. I also use plain old printer paper (24lb super white), but I do have a soft spot for those cool gummy erasers, that's about the only "special" equipment I have.

After finishing the sketch, I normally ink it on the paper using some micron pens, and erasing the pencil lines. This time I just opted to scan the picture as is:



I scan at 300 dpi grayscale and open that sucker directly in Photoshop CS.

This time I inked everything in photoshop. I zoom in really close and using a 5 pixel aliased brush, go over all the lines. I also didn't really like the face (it doesn't match the current art in the strip), so I redid it in photoshop, leaving us here:



The next update will deal with coloring this sucker!
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let's be honest, the zombie army is here

[kidnemo]

Woop woop, the quest continues.

Now onto coloring. I like to lay out my flat colors first. Using the polygonal selection tool, I selection each area and assign the color to a new area. For example, I select all of the shirt, fill it with a color and I name that layer "shirt". I do this through the entire piece, making new layers for each area.

At this point, these aren't always the final colors, but after you have everything blocked out, it's easy to go back, select the layer with whatever area you want to change, and drop in a new color.

Easy-peasy.



Next step shadows and highlights!
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let's be honest, the zombie army is here

[mep]

HURRY UP I LIKE TO SEE THINGS I ALREADY KNOW BEING DONE TO BADASS STUFF.

SHADING AND BACKGROUND DAMNIT!
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sup

[king istrom]

[kidnemo]

Just something I was messing around with today, figured I'd throw up a quick thread about it.

I've been trying some new coloring techniques, which is how this came about. Just doodling you know!
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let's be honest, the zombie army is here

[Xezial]

Go on...
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I'm french and I would play to final fantasy XII in american. However I do not know what patch I need to download, I already downloaded a patch but it freezed certain videos on my HDD. Could you please guide me through this problem.

[byronhulcher]

Shading is what I need help on. HELP ME TO HELP YOu TO HELP ME KIDNEMO.
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[kidnemo]

Alright, we are back for the next stage.

When I'm doing coloring for the za strip, I normally only do one "step".

Meaning, after I block everything out with the main color I want, say, blue for the shirt, I open up my color picker and select a blue color a few shades darker.

Even though za is a fairly dark comic, I still like to use lots of sharp contrasting and "bright" colors.

So after I have my next darker color, I use the polygon select tool, and select the shadowy areas, which I then fill in. Depending on the shape, sometimes I'll use the brush and freehand it, or even use a gradient (the fingers on the one hand for example).

So after I go ahead and do that for each area, picking a color a few shades darker than the main color. Remember, you can add more "layers" of shading if you want, it just takes more time.

That puts us here:



You'll also notice I blocked out the rest of the areas that didn't have color as well.

Next up we'll do highlighting!
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let's be honest, the zombie army is here

[kidnemo]

Bwoop! 'nother update.

This time I went ahead and did the highlights. The process is the same as how I do the shading. Select your main color with your color picker, go up a few shades, then use either the brush or the polygonal select tool to select the areas you want to highlight.

Fill with your highlight color, and blamo.

You'll notice I don't use a lot of highlights, that's just how I get down.

Also, for the zombie flesh tone highlights, I did them as little groups of roundish spots. I selected the highlight color in the same way, but instead of just blocking it out like I did with the other areas, the little circles gives the skin a more sickly (or toady!) look.



Next up, finishing touches...

And 'ze blood!
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let's be honest, the zombie army is here

[kidnemo]

Final update!

So here we go, let's put some finishing touches on this brain hungry spawn of the undead.

First up is ye olde blood. If you've kept up with my work, even for a short period of time, you'll notice that I love the blood. Simply adore it, that blood.

Though, I'm a fan of cartoon blood, so that's how I do mine.

In a nutshell, you start with a big round brush and block out the main area where the blood will be. Then you decrease the size of your brush a bit, and move out from the center of the bloody area. Do this a few times, moving further out from the certain, making less and less dots so that the blood is kind of faded or streaked.

After that, I drop a little shading and highlighting on, like I did above and we are set.

The other integral part to a kidnemo zombie (I'm not the zombie, I'm just making the zombie you see), is that spooky green glow. All you gotta do is select the area you want to "glow", and if you're in photoshop drop a little outer glow on the area with the appropiate color (bright green in this case), mess with the settings a bit and you are good to go.

I dropped in a simple background so that the colors would stand out a bit more which takes us to the final piece:



Hope you guys enjoyed reading it!
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let's be honest, the zombie army is here

[Xezial]

Err...can you go into more detail about the glowy-dealie? I'm really really dumb and yeah...
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I'm french and I would play to final fantasy XII in american. However I do not know what patch I need to download, I already downloaded a patch but it freezed certain videos on my HDD. Could you please guide me through this problem.

[king istrom]

i dont understand how you did the blud but this is a really cool tutorial and i really enjoyed it.

[blasphemousmoos3]

[blasphemousmoos3]

Double post heresy!


I just stole the inked in photoshop one and made a kidnemo zombie :O! hope you like it ^_^! (it took me an hour in photoshop because the shading's a BITCH D
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[king istrom]

cool, i likes it. but the double post is dirty. you should never double post. if you ever find i double posted i will have my post count lowered. double posting makes your keyboard filthy. Filthy McDirty