..: Glassy Critters Tutorial :..

We are going to create some glassy-looking critters with this tutorial. No outside filters will be abused during this lesson and each and every critter you create must be cared for and loved by you! ;-)

The only thing you will need besides Paint Shop Pro is one of Hood's beautiful rainbow bubble tubes which can be downloaded here with the gracious consent of the creator.

Through experimentation, I found that one of the bubbles works better than the others for this effect so we are going to isolate it and create a single bubble tube to make things easier.

Once you have downloaded and unzipped Robin's bubble tube, open the entire tube image in Paint Shop Pro...

... crop out the bubble indicated above, and export it as a tube. (Be sure to give it a name that identifies Robin as the creator, okay?) ;-)

All set? Okay... let's make some critters! :-)

Open a new canvas 300 x 300 with a white background and immediately add a new raster layer.

Call up the single bubble tube you've just created and click some bubbles on your new layer.

Don't crowd them, vary the sizes, and keep them away from the sides of your canvas.

There are no hard and fast rules, but here's the general idea...

Go to Colors>Greyscale and then Colors>Increase Color Depth>16 million colors.

Make sure the layer containing your bubbles is active. Go to Effects>Geometric Effects and let the games begin! ;-)

Distort your bubbles with any or all of the following geometric effects either singly or in varying combinations:

Pinch
Ripple
Twirl
Warp
Wave

Some of the other geometric effects will also be acceptable as long as you keep things down to a dull roar and avoid degrading the edges of your bubbles.

Play with the sliders... all the sliders... of each tool. Sometimes the tiniest nudge will render exactly what you are looking for.

After a stint with one (or two, or three) of the deformation filters, look closely at your image and decide if one of the resulting shapes could be something... like a leg, a foot, an ear, a tail... in other words, anything that might work as a "critter part".

In this example (which was pinched and then rippled), I thought I could use the selected bit as a chubby leg for a critter (once it's been rotated, of course) or maybe even the head of a chicken. See where this is leading? It's a matter of saving bits and pieces as you go along... even if you don't end up actually using them... it's all speculation at this point! lol!

So... when you see something that looks promising, grab the lasso tool, set it for Point-to-Point, feather 0 and antialias unchecked and lasso that piece. Then click right on the piece to get the selection up tight.

Go to Selections>Promote to Layer and give it a name. I named this one "chubby leg". Now left click, hold, and drag that layer to a clear area of your workspace as per the image below....

...which will pop it up into its own window, all cropped on a transparent layer and ready to be retrieved at a later time. If you are of the fearless persuasion, you can simply minimize this new window and ignore it for the time being... alternatively, you may want to create a new folder somewhere and begin saving these images... at least temporarily.

You can now hit the undo button as many times as you need to get back to your twisted and tortured bubbles... lol! At this point it is up to you to decide whether to undo right back to your beginning (pristine) bubbles, or continue to deform the already deformed shapes. This is what makes each critter absolutely original and unique... no two people will ever come up with the same critter parts and, as a matter of some fact, you would find it nearly impossible to recreate your own completed critters. So... hint, hint.... save often... ;-)

Following the above steps, gather up bits and pieces that you feel would make a neat critter (or even a flower or abstract design if you prefer), and when you've got all the parts captured and minimized (or saved to a temporary folder) we'll move on to part two and pull it all together... :-)

To Part Two > >

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