Tutorial: Explosive Audio Girl

For those interested in making an effect like I’ve done so in my latest wallpaper–which you can download here–I’ll be posting up a few screen shots taken while I was creating this wallpaper.

First off, I went browsing on iStockPhoto for a good stock image to use on this project. I wanted a girl with headphones on, and after a few searches I found an image that I thought would perfect for the wallpaper.

I first started by masking the image in quick mask mode and since I had just bought my new Wacom tablet, I went in depth with getting the details of the hair with the brush tool. You can also use the pen tool without being in quick mask mode to do this, but I’ll be using this method.

I went in an touched up some of the details from the hair and her body before I imposed her into the background I am going to begin building. I’ve adjusted any highlights that I won’t want, added or erased some hair, and so on.

Here I’ve placed her into my background which I’ve made black and added an oval shape which I end up rasterizing and blurring until I get a nice glow effect from it.

In Photoshop, I end up using some textured brushes to erase some of her body. I did this by first creating a layer on top of the image, using the Brush to paint on top so I can see what I was going to erase, then selecting everything I painted and erasing away some of her skin.

I then threw this image into Illustrator and began to draw out some skin as if it’s melting away, and added some splattered effects. After I created enough details to where I’m happy, I then drag the layer where I’ve created all my vector shapes, I drag this into Photoshop as a Vector Object.

So I’ve begun finalizing the image, the effects I used were created by first adding a Pattern Overlay to the glow behind her of thick bidiagonal stripes, then painting some splatter over that layer using some vector objects from Illustrator.

The colorful smears flying out were made by first creating a layer behind her and painting some white blobs which I end up smearing using the Smudge tool at about 96%. I used liked the effect I got from this using the Wacom tablet, and after enough smeared lines exploding out, adjusted the fading smears by desaturating the white and adjusting the levels until I got a nice clean fade into black and then slapping a Gradient Overlay.

To get the white glows from her arms, I painted some white spots with the Brush and Blurred them out. You can get a nice effect after blurring them, by using the Rectangle Marquee tool to select half of the circle, then using the Motion Blur effect to stretch out some blurry lines. Apply a few to them for a nice effect, and then add more paint on top while continuing to blur until you get a nice blur.

After I’m done with all that, I create a layer on top of everything and then fill it in with black. Once it’s filled in, apply a Lens Flare and make sure it’s centered. You can use this Lens Flare, set the Blending Mode to Screen, adjust the levels until you reach a desired level of flare, and place them over the image where desired. I’ll end up merging these flares and then painting white at about 7% or 10% to adjust the brightness of them, or use black to lower their brightness while still using the Screen Blending Mode.

I’ve added a few more details, adjusted colors and levels, and touched up the image before my final. So now I’ve canvas to the dimension I want, and since I started out using a huge image, I can resize it down to any dimension I want.

Give it a shot, might take some time, and next time I’ll take a few more snapshots so you can follow along better. Maybe I’ll do video too, but we’ll see what you all think.