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LastHowl In reply to lessthanhuman [2005-02-16 15:35:15 +0000 UTC]

Well, it's hard to explain, but if there's one thing I've found it's that there's no one trick to doing fur, especially if it borders on flesh like that.

Generally I rough out the general shape in the darker colors using a speckled brush at about 25% opacity. I then go a shade or two darker at the same opacity with a single-pixel brush and start hashing out the texture of it. Once I've got a pleasing shape and texture, I clean up the edges with the eraser at 25% using another speckled brush. Then I slowly work dark to light on my shades using colors picked from the stock photograph's hair with the single-pixel still on 25%, or 10% if I need a softer contrast.

After I've built that up through the highlights, I do adjustments on the colors, because they don't always layer right. I usually do a color range select on the darkest color with some fuzziness to catch the shadows, then colorize. I follow that up with the highlight color, and the midrange color if it's still looking weird. Most often I have to do that with blondes, as they seem to be the trickiest to get right in this respect.

Stock photographs with darker hair are the easiest to do using this method. Lighter hair requires a little bit different approach. In this photo for example, I actually hashed out the shape and texture with my mid-range color so it wouldn't clash against her cheek. I then worked my way from that down to my darkest using the single-pixel, then worked my way back up as I would have normally. Little extra work, but dark hairs on 25% opacity look really bad against skin this pale.

Bottom line is it's somewhat of a pain due to the amount of layering required, but to get the individual hairs to be that distinct, it kind of has to be.

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lessthanhuman In reply to LastHowl [2005-02-16 17:40:22 +0000 UTC]

Thanks for the tips. I found it easier to create fur in Photoshop 5.5 than I do using 7.0. I need to try your method and see how it goes. You do a top notch job with the cheek fur!

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LastHowl In reply to lessthanhuman [2005-02-16 21:53:56 +0000 UTC]

Yeah, the method I mentioned is all in 7.0, but it'd probably work in earlier versions.

I might do a tutorial at some point. While it's time-consuming to do it this way, it's very easy to illustrate the steps. Takes a bit of practice to get an eye for where highlights go, and what direction fur should go in. It's important that it not look like a fuzzy mess.

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lessthanhuman In reply to LastHowl [2005-02-18 18:16:10 +0000 UTC]

A tutorial would be really useful if you get around to it. If I every get to look good I'll let you know! Thanks again.

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