Photoshop tutorial to create a kaiju poster

1. download all of your source images from : http://www.corbisimages.com/Search#p=1&q=fire+breathing+Dragon http://www.corbisimages.com/stock-photo/royalty-free/42-51235820/youngwomans-face-portrait?popup=1

2. Open all of the images in Photoshop CS6; we will be working on the girls face first. We will start by changing her hair colour; this is because in Neon Mage the main characters distinctive feature is her lilac hair so I want this poster to have a girl with lilac hair on it. To do this you create a new layer as shown on image A, get a brush with hardness 0 and an opacity of about 50% make it an appropriate size for the hair and proceed to colour in her hair the colour you wish to make her hair be sure to get all of the small hairs across her face. 3. When you have coloured in all of the hair you then go over to the right on the tool bar where your layers are, be sure you have the layer with the hair colour on it then where it says normal click on it to get a drop down menu and shown in image B, try out all of the different blending mode till you get one that makes it look nice, for these source images I found that soft light looked best.

Image B

4. Now that the hair colour is correct then next thing we will do is put a dragon reflected into her eye to get that feel of panic! To do this on the file you have the dragon open on click the top icon on the tool bar on the left with the cursor and the 4 axis and drag the dragon onto the tab with your girl on it and put him there.

5. Now that he is in the picture you will notice he put himself on a new layer, this is handy as later on we will have to change his blending mode. but for now Press Ctrl + T to get up free transform mode, this will have given you a new tool bar on the top of the Photoshop window you will see a chain link click this as this will allow you to scale the image uniformly. Make the dragon slightly bigger than the eye to give the impression he is massive. then change the blending mode to whatever makes him appear best then use the rubber tool to run out any bits that don't fit in the eye. Repeat for the other eye.

6. Next we will adding the final features of the image, The veins that carry the Arcana around her body, draw these free hand using the brush tool we used before to make the hair a different colour to draw on jagged Arcana veins in a light blue/ cyan colour. Then just like before change the blending mode to whatever you think makes it look best but I used Overlay.

7. Now for the final touches, click the fill adjustments layer button on the bottom right under the layers you have created and out a black and white adjustment layer just above the original image making only the face black and white. Just above this add a brightness and contrast layer to make the image look "darker" I chose, Contrast - 19 and brightness -100. You now have your final image, well done.