"It's Urgent" - Recreating the Title (Part 1)
One of the most important things in the movie poster is the title. When we did a short editorial exercise using InDesign last term, our lecturer stressed out the importance of using either vectors or a very high-res image when it comes to logos, and the same rule applies to titles, subtitles, the like.
So that's my first mistake here. I tried to circumvent it by merely moving the alphabet around, but the first print came out all wrong and low-res. Regardless, I thought I'd share it with you anyway.
One of the reasons I write these blog posts is because I'm bound to forget shit, and should that happen in the future I can always retrace my steps. So, future self, if you're reading this, REMEMBER VECTOR OR HIGH RES. Okay, you can move on with your life now.
Photoshop Trial 1. Use the magic wand to select the black background off the title, right click and Select Inverse, then Layer Via Copy. This is what you get.
I added this black background thing in a seperate layer, just so I can see the title easily while I'm working.
Next thing I did was go through each and every word, or at least every section that I want to modify like the "I", "T", "URGENT", with the Quick Selection tool. Layer via Cut and voila. Note the pile of layers. I should really start grouping them.
Looking for the perfect apostrophe.
And there you go.
Funnily enough even the apostrophe isn't very high res. I guess you shouldn't do these things in Photoshop anyway. Illustrator is a much smarter choice. Or you could make it in Photoshop and move it to Illustrator and use Image Trace.
The "final" title, excluding the neon strobe.
Toying with Effects.
Photoshop has a Pen tool, and it's quite satisfactory though again, if you could do it in Illustrator why not? In fact I moved all of my final files to Illustrator before the final print because I trust it to not trick my eye better. Experimenting with Outer Glow:
Looking good, though too pale.
I sort of based my shenanigans on this tutorial, though you know me, I stopped watching halfway because my hand was itching to get some action, dammit.
I went over the strobe with a navy-pruplish brush. Experimenting with the different layer blends. This is Overlay. That looks damn nice and I'll be sure to remember it for future uses, but it's not what we're looking for right now.
Darken. Too subtle, not neon enough.
That looks better, though the strobe did get thinner.
Linear Burn. A combination between Darken and Color Burn, it seems. Maybe they had an affair and this is their wedlock child. Photoshop should make a soap opera. I'd watch it.
Whoa, calm down.
Saturation. This actually looks really nice, but doesn't resemble the original colour at all. The problem with Saturation is that it always looks really nice but it always, always takes the basic colour of the colour you're trying to use. Does that make sense? Say you're going for dark mauve, Saturation will turn it pink or something. Can you layer layer blends?
Difference. At this point I was willing to believe that elephants are pink.
That's all for this post. Like I said, the first print turned out to be shit so I redid the title, which will be detailed in the next post. For now... may the Flying Broccoli God be with you.