Welcome to Gaia! ::

In this tutorial, I'm going to show you how to create flames around a character. In this case, Pheonix. What you want to do first is take an image of the character and either render it yourself, or find one that's already rendered. To render means to remove an image from it's background by way of the lasso or pen tool. Once you've got your render, place it in a new image with 10px below it and 20-30 px above it and to the sides, like so:


Next, make a solid black layer below your render layer and make sure the render layer is selected.


Now CTRL-CLICK on the thumbnail of the render in the layers pallette in order to select it with the "marching ants".


Now create a new layer underneath the render layer named "flames" and use the paint bucket tool and fill with white (this'll only fill the area below the render so you won't be able to see it).


Now get out the smudge tool and set it to 85% hardness and use the 13px soft round tool.



Deselect (CTRL-D) your selection and make sure you have the flames layer highlighted in the layers pallette.


Now use your grunge tool and drag in small strokes from bottom to top in different areas with a slight waver in order to create the licking flames.


Now go to LAYER > NEW ADJUSTMENT LAYER > COLOR BALANCE and hit okay.


Use the following settings for Midtones, Highlights, and Shadows, respectively.





Now you'll notice that you have those nice beautiful flames and they have that wonderful flame color.


There's one drawback, however. If you place a background like the one below underneath your image and it's flames, It'll be washed out with orange/red.



Now, CTRL+CLICK on your flames layer's thumbnail (just like we did to select the pheonix earlier), but this time make sure that the Color Balance layer is the one you've got highlighted. (make sure that you click on the white box on the right side of the color balance layer.


You should see something like this in your image


Now, hit D in order to set it back to default colors and Select > Inverse (CTRL+SHIFT+I) and go to EDIT > FILL and use the foreground color (which should be black).


If everything turns out right, you'll wind up with one of the below two, depending on if you use a background or not.



Please don't Rip

A bunny came to my house! <3

this isnt helping me whatsw a grunge?