We are All Luminous Beings

Surely you realized it was only a matter of time before I posted SOME kind of Star Wars picture, right?

This sketch was actually done a few months ago (it's listed as sketch 16 amongst the files, putting it between Ed and Shaun), but it's been sitting around waiting for me to learn enough about Photoshop to color it decently. I won't say that it's been colored the way I want it, but I like it pretty well. The sketch itself is pretty straightforward: I wanted something action-oriented, and two lightsabers. I wasn't looking for an exact likeness (obviously), but something more in line with a comic-style version of Luke Skywalker, rather than the actor Mark Hamill. I'm pleased with it. it's relatively actiony, for me, and did its job.

The coloring was quite the ordeal. I found a surprising number of tutorials for creating lightsaber effects in photoshop- or perhaps not surprising- but I opted to go my own route with them. basically it involved treating them as a separate layer and using a number of built-in effects to get the color and 'glow' of the blades. The coloring was done by coloring on several layers below the actual drawn layer (which I treated as a transparency), thereby giving the picture an inked or 'comic book' look. This was the most time-consuming part of the project; making the layers and sorting out what went where. I followed up with the shading, this time using my Wacom tablet rather than blocking areas to fill (trust me). My favorite parts are the boots and the lightsaber hilts, which i did by drawing highlights in black and white using the tablet. Overall, this took about 6 hours to do, not counting the original sketch.

For those of you slogging through the explanation, thanks for reading! Hopefully that was illuminating for you- or perhaps you can give me some Photoshop tips instead, which would be greatly appreciated.

Anyway, that's about it for this turn around- hopefully I'll have something else amusing or distracting for you by Friday. Till then, cheers!

Music: "Duel of Fates" - John Williams