Live or Die: Make Your Choice
Behind the Scenes: Saw VI Poster Creation
In celebration of the release of Saw VI you are going to learn step by step how to make a dirty and disgusting Saw movie poster.
Here is the new official Saw VI poster that inspired this tutorial.
Instead of gloves made out of human hands we are going to make boots made out of feet. This tutorial is not very complicated and should be easy to follow for all skill levels. You will need some grunge and blood brushes that you can find on the web or check out (www.deviantart.com)
Here are the source images I used.
First thing you need to do is open up a new document in Photoshop with a white background. Cut out the two feet you want using the Lasso Tool, Pen Tool, or any other method you like to get your selection. I highlighted the ones I decided to use in source image above. Make sure to resize them so the feet look close to the same size and clean up any of the jagged edges with the eraser tool.
Now carefully cut out the tops off the boots and position them over the feet. Resize and tilt use the Transform Tool (CTRL+T). Hide and show your layers so you can see one foot at a time, this will make it easier to focus on each foot. One trick I use to line up the boot with the foot is to turn the opacity down to about 60% on the boot layer. This will allow you to match the sides of the feet with the edges of the boot. Then turn it back to 100% when you have it in a good position.
Next you are going to want to adjust the Hue/Saturation of the feet to better match the color of the boot. You can try out your own settings and also adjust the boot a little to get them close.
Using the Eraser Tool with a medium soft round brush at a low opacity erase the bottom of the boot to blend the skin with the leather. Use small stokes only shaving off a little at a time starting from the edge working your way to the laces. Erase a little from the side and heel of the foot also.
Once you have both feet blended the way you want merge the boot layer with the foot layer. Make sure to keep the two feet on separate layers so we can add shadows and be able to move them around.
Now go back to the Hue/Saturation settings and we are going to desaturate the feet to give it that cold dead skin look. They should have some color but be really washed out dull and gray.
Next we are going to adjust the levels to get a deeper contrast and darken the shadows. You may also want to open the Brightness/Contrast controls and turn up the contrast a little.
Use the Burn Tool to darken up the edges even more. Turn the exposure down to 15% and brush with a medium soft round brush. Change the range and burn the shadows, midtones, and highlights. If it adds too much color use the sponge tool to absorb some of the color.
Select the back foot and go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur. Make the radius around 1 pixel. We wont the main focus to be on the front foot and this will add some depth.
Here is where you can take some creative freedoms. Go and find some different grunge brushes and textures and randomly add some filth to the skin. I turn the opacity on the texture layer down and changed the blending mode to Overlay. Also try Soft Light or Hard Light to get a different effect.
Now we are going to give the skin a leather like texture by adding some pictures with creases, cracks and folds.
Next you are going to desaturate the textures to black and white. This will make them a lot easier to blend in the next step.
Change the blending mode to Soft Light and turn the opacity down a little. Then take a soft round brush eraser and lightly blend away the hard edges. Also erase any excess that is not covering the foot.
Cut out a piece from the toe of the boot that has a lot of wrinkles and place it over the front foot.
And do exactly the same thing as in the last step to blend it in.
Next cut out an image of a floor and place it underneath the other layers. I resized it to stretch across the whole poster.
Go to Hue/Saturation and turn down the saturation to give the floor a dull and dirty off white color. Turn up the brightness some too. Then use a large soft round brush eraser with the opacity set to 15% and fade the floor into the white. Also you can decrease the opacity and fill to help blend it in.
Now we are going to add a shadow on a new layer using black with a light soft brush. Slowly brush around the foot and then use the soft eraser to fade the edges. Change the blending mode to Hard Light and turn the opacity to 60%.
With a darker brush on a new layer make it really dark really close to the foot. Change the blending mode to Color Burn and turn down the opacity and fill.
Find some blood or ink splatter brushes and add some blood drops to the floor and put some on the feet. Use a really dark rich red and change the blending mode to Multiply. Create a new layer on top of the blood and paint using a soft white brush around the outside so the blood looks like its fading like the floor.
Now just add the Saw logo and movie information at the bottom (you can invert the black inspiration poster to get the black text on a white background). And you can add the saw blade at the top from some of the previous posters. Now you have your very own Saw movie poster.
