Tuesday 9 July 2013

Kitsch Chrome

In this tutorial i will show you how to create a psychedelic cartoony kitsch chrome texteffect.
Its based on monsoonami's chrome tutorial from youtube, but coloured instead of monochromatic.


01. Start with a canvas 800x400
02. Type your text - i used the font 'Xenippa medium' 184px white, and align it

03. Turn off the text and create a new layer....
04. Alpha select your basetext and fill it on the new transparent layer with a colour that you like (i used #ffd714)        
[*** see comments at the bottom of the page]


05. Deselect, then make sure the yellow coloured textlayer is activated and call up layerfx...

06. put in the values you see in my screenshot or use values that you like
make sure to set the opacity of highlight and shadow to 100%

and check 'merge with layer' !
this step is especially crucial if you use any other layer effects script
you need to end with the text layer and the background only !!
so if you still got seperate layers for highlights and shadow, merge them down !


I advise you not to use black and white for the shading, but lighter and darker variations of your basecolour.


07. Now comes the fun part: call up the curves tool, and apply a wavy chrome curve


The curves can have all kinds of shapes, experiment until you get something good - here are some examples:


Use the colour-picker that is a part of the curves tool to find specific points you want to tweak !

08. Your result may look a bit unclean or have jagged edges.....


we can fix that with G'MIC anisotropic smoothing
(the filter is now located under 'Repair' (Version 1.5.6.1)

set the 'Amplitude' to 100
'Anisotropy' to the max and 'Iterations' to 2
then play with the 'Sharpness' value until it looks good

Before you hit apply, set the 'Output Mode' on the left, to 'New layer'


09. Finally apply a Dropshadow and you're done !


Here is a pink variation for AnMal, that is based on green, lol.



And another version that uses a gradient instead of one colour and the whole spectrum of possible colour curves (RGB), instead of just 'Value'.





*** Comment:
so Akros asked why i have two textlayers, when one of them isnt used at all:

there are several reasons:

a) i like to have an unchanged backup of my basetext

b) alpha selecting the white basetext and then filling it with another colour, often results in a white border, thats why i use a new layer

6 comments:

Akros said...

Hi Esper!
I have a question.
I apply layerfx on the layer "Text" or the "Coloured Text"?

05. deselect, then make sure the textlayer is activated and call up layerfx

I understood that textlayer was layer "text", but my intuition told me that it should be colorful.

When in doubt made ​​both ways, and both were good. But using the layer "Text" had to work with the mode (Hard Light) Layer up.

Thx for the tutorial.

Espermaschine said...

Akros, you could start right away with text in the colour you like.
I just like to keep a basetext layer for backup and selection purposes.

So the answer to your question is: apply the layerfx bevel to the coloured text layer and make sure 'merge with layer' is checked, so that your bevelled text is on one layer only.

AnMal said...

hey, thanks for making me a pink one :)! i am rather busy at the moment but i will definitely try the kitschy chrome when i get the time.
about that white border when you fill with another colour: using lock alpha channel and fill instead of alpha select and fill gives no border, so for people who don't like having extra text layers that's an option.

AnMal said...

on my way to gimp chat to post kitschy chrome right now!

Anonymous said...

Thank you for this tutorial. This is very useful for creating Runescape, Unreal, Gothic type of text.

I also really like your teaching style. Every step has a number next to it. It is easier to follow than reading a long piece of text and losing your place. Excellent skill in explaining. Thank you

Espermaschine said...

Thank you Anonymous !

It makes me very happy to hear that people find my tutorials useful !

I just googled Runescape and now i understand what you mean.

Yes the effect has a certain epic fantasy vibe.