Basic Fire-Ball effect

[rhstanley3]

Hello, and welcome to my first photoshop tutorial. In this tutorial, i will show you how to make a basic fireball, using nothing but the standard paintbrush and a standard smudge tool. Lets get started. First thing that we'll do is obviously open up a canvas. For this tutorial, we'll be using a 800x800 pixel canvas at 72 DPI.

The next thing that we do is to select the paintbrush tool. If you want, make a new layer like I did. this mainly makes it easier to place the fireball on different places in an image if i were going to use it again. I'm going to go with a blue fireball, although you can do this with any color. First thing to do is open the color pallet, and then put the mode into "only web colors" if you don't have this selected already. Then select the second darkest color that you chose.

Now, make your brush diameter 600 pixels. You can do this easily using the hot key "]" which enlarges the brush for each time it is pressed. Make sure your brush has a hardness of 0%, and then click towards the bottom of the canvas.

next, you decrease the brush diameter, which can also be done with the hot key "[", to 500 pixel diameter. *NOTE: It is better to use the brackets to increase/decrease brush size as it does a great job of keeping the circles even.* Now go back to the color picker, and pick the next-brightest blue in the row.

After you have picked your color, click in the middle of the first brush. this will make the center brighter, and the color will die off and get darker as it reaches the edge of the circle.

Keep repeating this, moving up until you reach the top, and then moving left towards white. when you get to a brush size of around 175, if you use the brackets you're going to want to decrease by two sizes instead of one. This is what you should end up with.

Now, for the final step. You're going to switch to the smudge tool. Instead of telling you how to find it I'll show you where it is. To make the pop-up menu in the picture appear, when you click on the tool, hold down the left mouse button until the menu appears.

Finally, use the smudge tool at around 90 pixel diameter. click in the center of the ball, and drag out with a wavy-like pattern. use different brush-diameters to get different flame thicknesses. also, pull in the excess color on the bottom flame in, and then do the same wave pattern to get that heat-wave effect. Here's what mine looks like after about 5 minutes worth of work.

The great thing about this tut is that it doesn't only have to be used for fireballs. you can make a floating light for a fantasy-based image, or a fairy, or a plasma ball, or many other things. using this with yellow and a lowered opacity, you can make a light source. you can also make more realistic fireballs by integrating more colors. (i.e. using red, orange and yellow following this same principle to make a more realistic fireball.) I hoped you enjoyed this tutorial, and may you use it well

[Ultiman]

nicely done mate good tutorial

[iDad]

Not sure bud, but you way want to move it here
Official October 2010 PSG Contest Sponsored by StuckInCustoms.com HDR Photography
in the contest for tutorials just a thought just say the word, one of staff will be glad to help if you wish to enter it
check out the link for more info

[Dezigns Unlimited]

It's in the right place to be entered i believe..

Create and post one or several Graphic Design/Photoshop Tutorials in either the Forum Tutorials or Photoshop Tutorial Videos or Quick-Tips and Techniques sections of the forum.

Nice tut btw Stanley, thanks for taking the time to lay it out!!

[rhstanley3]

your welcome! thanks for the comments guys As more stuff pops into my head, I'll be sure to post tutorials for them. as for laying it out, i've seen some tutorials on other websites that don't go deep enough into the subject with pictures, etc., and I'm more of a visual learner, so I make tutorials in the same way I learn. xD But sure, can this be entered? That would be cool. I guess I will enter it as a link since I have enough posts, or what?

[Dezigns Unlimited]

Yuppers!! You did good man. I totally agree about going in depth, taking the time to do it right always pays off!!

[rhstanley3]

Thanks well, I came up with a tutorial that I'm working on right now. it's considerably longer however, definitely not a 5-minute tut xD I don't want to put too many pictures in it though... im already up to 7 and I cut out a ton of stuff, and i'm not even 1/4 of the way through... any suggestions?

[Dezigns Unlimited]

Make videos!!! It would make life so much easier!! But if you can't, the only thing i can suggest is keep plugging away. Maybe try and just keep it to the basics and make the tut only on what you need to get the desired effect. Sometimes i tend to go off the path to explain a tool or a short cut how to do something and i wind up adding more content than needed but like i said, that can be a good thing...

[rhstanley3]

its an overall tut that will help introduce ppl to some of the basics of photoshop. If I were to put it on video it might take like an hour, possibly, as I'm writing the tut in a word document as I'm working.

[Dezigns Unlimited]

o0o, well that changes everything!! Hell Stan, maybe making that particular one would be good at an hour!! I always tell folks how important it is to get familiar with UI and basic tools that photoshop offers. It really does make a world of difference..