13 horrifying Photoshop and Illustrator tutorials for Halloween
By Digital Arts Staff on October 29, 2013
With Halloween just over a week away, you're no doubt looking to tap your creative talent to produce artwork and decorations in the unholy spirit of the season. Here we've collected 13 of our favourite tutorials that detail effects that'll help turn your most disturbing ideas into truly nightmarish visions – plus an inspiring guide to that mine of messed up artwork, heavy metal album covers.
Click on the images to get to the tutorials.
Bring the wolves to your door
Dan Mumford reveals how he created this lycanthropic poster for punk band Gallows.
Celebrate the Day of the Dead
Bring Mexico's Día de los Muertos to wherever you are.
Design a highbrow horror-movie poster
Karim Fakhoury explains how to create a creepy, unsettling piece of poster art
Paint a fire sprite
Create a fiery figure from a photographic model shot.
Skeleton on a fixie -- hell yes!
Ollie Munden details how to create a mix of horror and hipster that could be called Funny Bones: the Shoreditch Years.
Create a stylish modern cyborg
Fabio Sasso shows you some techniques for creating a cyborg from photographic sources in Photoshop, tapping into the movie heritage of the cyborg, but mixing it with the glossy ‘Bleach-Bypass’ look of modern sci-fiTV shows such as V and Battlestar Galactica.
Conjure a nightmare vision of a wolf in a boy's clothing
Mix natural and unnatural elements to produce a disturbing but melancholic piece.
Skulls and owls
Joshua Smith, aka maverick illustrator Hydro74, has a style that’s instantly recognisable – combining the thick, clean lines of graffiti with the iconography of tattoos and the symmetry and patterns of vector art.
Here he takes you through how he created a work based around his regular motifs of skulls and swirls mixed with that illustration icon, the owl.
Make a skull out of type
Unlock the power of Photoshop's Distort tool to create this enigmatic image.
Creepy chimeras
Chimeras – a mix-and-match approach to animal part favoured by Greeks for many mythical monsters – are great for Halloween. Here Fabio Sasso puts a new spin on Alice's Cheshire Cat.
Build a fairytale asylum
How Stephen Chan and Andriana Katsiki (AKA Wundercloud) created this unusual artwork.
X-ray specs
See your insides revealed with the quick guide to producing X-ray effects.
Plus
If you're looking for inspiration, check out our guide to the latest generation of heavy metal artwork for album covers, posters and t-shirts, which has reinvented the genre to make rock art hip again.
* We're joking about the blood. Unless you cut yourself with a sharp pen or pencil..
Intro
Flash Pro tutorial: Create monochrome character art
Keep things clear with black and white artwork, with Paul Shih
By Tigz Rice
In this tutorial, character art guru Paul Shih shows how to create a detailed black-and-white artwork – using Flash. Shih says: “I personally find Flash’s drawing system work best for the style we are making. It’s fun and easy.”
You’ll learn handy tips for drawing in Flash, focusing on some essential drawing tools that make creating this artwork quick and simple. Starting with Flash’s unique Line tools, we take this tool a step further by converting lines to create fills for a comic book-style ‘focus lines’ effect.
You’ll also pick up tricks on maintaining visual clarity in a detailed black-and-white artwork. Feel free to embellish and add your own twists to the artwork as you create.
Time to complete
8-10 hours
Software
Adobe Flash, Photoshop
Project files
Files for this tutorial are downloadable from here
Adobe Illustrator tutorial: Texture tricks with vector artwork
Jeremy Bowman explores how you can add texture to your work
Intro
Texture can really add depth and a tangible quality to vector illustrations. In this tutorial, illustrator Jeffrey Bowman discloses the techniques he uses to create texture and then explains how he adds this to his work.
You’ll learn how to take scanned textures and turn them into vectors using image trace, then effectively apply them to your illustration using clipping masks. Jeffrey will also explain how to add brush strokes to hard vector edges, so as to give a hand-drawn feel to your artwork.
To help you follow along with this masterclass, Jeffrey has provided some sample vector shapes and textures in the project files.
The techniques featured in most of this tutorial can be applied to almost any version of Illustrator, but the texture vectorisation process in Steps 10-11 require CS6.
Time to complete
4-5 hours
Tools
Illustrator CS6
Project files
Files for this tutorial are downloadable from here
Adobe Illustrator tutorial: Master dynamic gradient techniques
Colouring this good takes time and patience – Alexandra Zutto shows you how
By Alexandra Zutto
Intro
Many works that look complicated are really made from simple elements. In this tutorial, Russian artist Alexandra Zutto shows how to build up complex, beautiful images by patiently layering and building up small, straightforward segments, always varying them to prevent monotony.
For this piece, which Zutto created for the Blood Sweat Vector exhibition in Berlin, she says: “I tried to reproduce the tundra’s atmosphere, with its pale sun and soft lighting. It required looking closely at a lot of references to understand how I can achieve these kinds of effects.”
In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to build up many elements to create a vector image with real depth and richness. Zutto explains: “I spend most of the time picking out colours that match each other to form harmonic colour composition. It takes a lot of time, but it’s worth the effort.”
Time to complete
2 days
Software
Adobe Illustrator tutorial: Bold pattern design
How the graphic designer and illustrator brings the cities he visits to life in an abstract fashion.
By David Popov
Intro
In this masterclass, London-based David Popov will take you through the process he used when creating his ‘Round the World’ series of graphic artworks.
“I initiated this project because I wanted to have something that only I would have to remember my travels by,” explains David, “not just the photos that everyone has of Paris such as the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre and the Moulin Rouge.” Instead, he produced more abstract pieces based upon the patterns and textures of the city’s architecture.
Here David will be focusing on how he went about creating his composition in Illustrator using colour and pattern swatches. He will also discuss the influences and experiences that informed the patterns and colours of the artwork’s final design.
Time to complete
4 hours
Tools
Illustrator CS3 and above
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