Colouring a Robot in Photoshop

By Troy Packer

9) More Chrome Effect

Colouring Robot in Photoshop 9

To give it that little bit extra, I used the Dodge tool to highlight the rivets and edges of the plate lines. This helped to separate each plate and gave the image a bit more depth, not to mention the eye candy value.

10) Add Glow Effects

Once the main section of the image was completed, I went about adding little things to bump it up. One was the use of glow effects. These are done by using a blurred brush.

Colouring Robot in Photoshop 10

I also lightened up the far arm and leg to give that foreshortening look.

11) Robot Shadow

The shadow for the robot was the last step, and like the rest of this tutorial, was easy. All I did was duplicate the Silhouette layer, and flipped it over by going to Edit>Transform>Flip Vertical.

Colouring Robot in Photoshop 11

12) Fine Tuning the Shadow

I then adjusted the look of the shadow by going Edit>Transform>Distort. As you can see there can be problems with the shadow matching up, but a bit of fine tuning and depending on the results, a bit of editing with a brush, you can get it looking right.

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Once you have it where it should be, give it a bit of a blur and drop the opacity down. As you can see the shadow is above the robot layer. To get rid of the sections over the robot area, we go back to the Silhouette layer. Again we Ctrl click the layer to select, and with the shadow layer still active we hit delete.

The End

Colouring Robot in Photoshop 13

And here you have it, an easy tutorial. You can use this technique on any type of character you like, it is quick and looks good, and who can argue with that.

-Troy Packer

Troy Packer’s Landscape Paintings Website

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