Inspiration for digital creatives

NEW! Topic Zones

Digital Arts cover

Buy latest issue NOW!

New Directions in Animation
Creative Suite 6
Projection Mapping
Happy Illustrations
Make a good impression
Interactive apps using paper

EDIGIT SIGN-UP

The twice-weekly newsletter with all the latest creative news, reviews, and features



More info...


The Artists Guide to Photoshop

Follow step-by-step as the world’s best illustrators reveal the secrets of their best work – so you can produce yours.

Photoshop & Illustrator Tutorial: Create mile-high type art

Wednesday 18 Nov 2009

Fantasy images don’t need to include cheesy damsels, dragons and generously proportioned elves. What they do need, however, is carefully considered, painterly colours, moody lighting and detailed texturing.

In this tutorial, Fabio Sasso shows you how to achieve that glossy, detailed fantasy look through careful compositing, and control of layers and blending modes. You’ll extrude type in Illustrator and then composite on textures and other details in Photoshop.

Finally, you’ll add the stranded princess figure and a couple of details so that she fits seamlessly into the image.


Click here to win a BlackBerry Curve 8520 with Digital Arts' BlackBerry Advisor. Plus: hands on with a virtual BlackBerry Storm2.



Step 1
Open a new document in Illustrator and type ‘DA’. Helvetica Black is a good font to use. Go to Effect > 3D > Extrude & Bevel. Set the axis to 23º, 25º, and -45º respectively, set the perspective to 145º and the extrusion to 865 points.

Play with the lights until the sides of the extrusion have good clear light and dark areas.



Step 2
Copy the 3D text from Illustrator and paste it into a new Photoshop document. Position it so that the DA is in the middle of the document. Next, import a brick texture; this one is from Shutterstock (tinyurl.com/fabiosbricks), but you can download free versions from tinyurl.com/bricktextures and tinyurl.com/bricktextures1. You’ll need to duplicate it to make it tileable and fit the height of the 3D.




Tutorial continues...

Jump to page : [ 1 ] [ 2 ] [ 3 ]

Read more tutorials by this author

Read more Photoshop Tutorials

Read more Illustrator Tutorials

Learn about our amazing creative tutorials as soon as they're published -- click here follow @digital_arts on Twitter.


Share This Article:

What is this?


Who: Based in Porto Alegre, Brazil, Fabio Sasso is a graphic and web designer. As well as running Zee, a small web-design studio, Sasso has an arts blog, Abduzeedo, which he uses for digital art experiments and tutorials.
Contact: abduzeedo.com
Software: Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop CS2 or later
Time to complete: 2 hours