It’s time to show our tree hugging side with a poster tutorial for an imaginary panda saving campaign. We’ll be doing some nice shapes, some brushing and a bunch of pow, in-your-face factor so click the link, read on, learn something.

While the future of the Giant Panda is, to this day, uncertain, this wonderful species has become a symbol for all endangered species, mostly through the efforts of the WWF, who wear the panda as their logo ever since they were founded, in 1961. Thus, we consider this tutorial our statement for all animals facing extinction because of reasons outside the realm of natural selection.

On with the tutorial. Apart from a (really faded out) texture we’re going to apply at the end, this poster’s all about making things yourself. It’s become somewhat of a trend that I’ve noticed around the web to use an extreme amount of stock photography in tutorials. Don’t get me wrong, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. But if you’re going down that road, at least have the courtesy to call it a collage, not graphic design. But I digress; perhaps this should become the subject of a new Grinder post.

01

Let’s start with the panda itself. It’s not about being perfect, just try drawing what seems to you like the face of a panda. That’s what I did. I suggest using the Pen tool over a Brush, since you can modify the shape more easily in case you’re not satisfied. Make sure to draw assuming where the ears are going to go. We’re trying to make a panda’s face, not Bugs Bunny.

02

And here come the ears. Don’t worry about colors at this point, getting the shape right is key now. Fortunately panda ears aren’t that pretentious. Strangely enough, mine look a bit like a cow’s, don’t you think?

03

Keep in mind that panda eyes are droopy and a bit Rorschach-ish. Like me, you’re probably not going to draw them (with the Pen tool again) spot on right away. Tip: draw the eyes and modify their shape until hey look right to you and then position them on the face. This type of “concentrate small first, large second” approach is handy in many cases where you’re working with subjects that are not primitive shapes (rectangles, squares, triangles, circles, etc.).

04

Simple shapes can carry a lot of information and emotion as long as you know what your goal is.

Once the eyes are set, the nose and mouth follow more easily, because you’re constrained by the shape of the face and the position of the eyes.  The way I see it, the distance between the nose and the mouth is about 1/7th of the distance between the nose and the top part of the eyes, so that’s a handy little scale you can use. Also, the nose should be about as wide as the height of the eyes.

05

Ah, but here we begin to set a tone to our poster. I was going for a “mad and sad” kind of look and I think I’ve pretty much got it. What’s that? Why, you so candidly ask? How would you feel if all the people you know and love were killed and there was the very real danger that your entire species would be forever wiped out? Mad and sad, my point exactly.

As you can see from my example, you don’t need to over do the eyes. Simple shapes can carry a lot of information and emotion as long as you know what your goal is.

Also, I added a gradient to the ears to give off a sense of depth, that the ears are further back than the front of the face. I could have spent more time brushing or adding detail but they are not a focal point in this poster, the expression of the panda is.

06

Still, it’s apparent that the message I’m trying to convey here wasn’t so clear. So just another simple shape, nothing fancy, a tipped brow and the mood changes to an inquisitive one. The point is to question what’s going on and why. To raise a brow denotes introspection and demands a closer look at the situation. There are a myriad of expressions you can play with to give life and meaning to your design, because design for design’s sake is merely an exercise and not proper design.

07

Now, the point is that this has to instantly be recognizable as a panda, and apart from the black eye patches, pandas are known for being furry. Really furry. So, here’s how you achieve that fur effect: take a standard Rounded Bristle brush from your software of choice, they all have something like that. You need to make the size pretty small, about 10px in width and lower the opacity to about 20% at first. Use white for color and carefully trace around the shape of the face in one continuous stroke. Do this multiple times, but varying the way you follow the line of the face and changing the opacity every time (but keep it lower than 50%, otherwise you’d kill the effect). Essentially, you’re defining the actual shape of the panda’s face and creating the idea of fur, all the while keeping the focus on the panda’s expression, which, as we talked about earlier, is the key point in this poster.

08

To draw even more attention to the facial expression, I’ve added some fur (using the same technique as above) around the eyes, using black this time.

09

Let’s add some type at this point, something punchy, both in meaning and shape. I used Urban Sketch (#91857c) for “Save the” and white Arial for the rest. Keep the tracking of the type at low levels (around -100) to convey that punchy feel. In no way are we threatening the people that remain oblivious to the whole panda issue, the message is a wake up call and should, generally, trigger some sort of emotional response.

10

I’m a big fan of splatter brushes and they’re pretty much the only ones I use, other than the default ones. I like to make my own shapes using the Pen tool and raster masks and not rely on ready made brushes but I must admit there are times when brushes are quite inevitable. And blood is one of those times. I used the Dried Blood Splatter brushes and a range of colors: #f80b16, #8f061c, #cf0428 and #ca0427. Be sure to put the blood layer above all the other layers.

11

Again, using the Dried Blood Spatter brushes, I added a single dripping white line from the “S”. This way, there’s a clear indication of a spatial order between the text (in the back) and the blood (in front). It also sends the message that the pandas are the ones that are bleeding.

12

Remember we were talking about stock photography earlier. Well, here’s where that element comes in. I’ve used this nice fern photo, courtesy of Mayang’s Free Textures library. Together with SXC, Mayang’s is the place I usually go to when looking for textures on this and that. Highly recommended.

You’re probably wondering why you can’t really see the texture in the picture above. That’s because I set it to Hard Light blending, toned down the opacity to 5%, applied a Color Overlay of #1d455c set on Color blending and a black, very soft Inner Glow. It’s very hard to notice at this point, but it will become a lot clearer in the next step. The fern layer should stay directly above the background, and below everything else.

13

Make a new raster layer above the ferns and take a really huge white soft brush, like 500px or something like that, and click about 5 times centering the brush behind the panda’s head. You should see a really big, soft, white glow. Good. Now set it to Soft Light blending. This should bring out details in the fern just around the panda’s head, which is another good way of setting some depth to our composition. If you’d like to make the ferns more visible, just increase the fern layer’s opacity (in the last step we set that to 5%).

14

We could just leave things as they are, it’s looking pretty sweet already, but I a lot of times I  find myself saying that there’s something missing. And, usually, that something is a Curves layer. Feel free to experiment and see what kind of extra, subtle over mood you can throw on your poster.

Thanks for sticking all the way to the end of the tutorial, and I hope you learned a little something from my ramblings, and, perhaps, from the pandas as well.