Step 13: Smudging the Fur

We want Dogman to look as realistic as possible, so this step will allow you to give his fur a slight tweak so that it looks like real hair instead of just color inside black lines. Read along carefully!

This step involves using Photoshop's Smudge tool to smudge around the image to create a fur effect. Let's take a look at what the Smudge Tool does...

	Here's a sample image. Imagine that this is a useful part of fur or hair or something like that. The blue area is the background, and everything else is on one layer.
	Here, the smudge tool has been used to smudge down the middle. Pay attention to what has happened. The Smudge tool is a bit like having several different colors of paint on a table and sticking your finger in it and dragging your finger. You end up streaking the paint - this is what the Smudge tool does: it takes everything with it as you drag. This isn't what we want at all. We want our line work (the black line around the stripes) to stay.
	So let's try it again with the black border on its own layer. Now we see that the smudge is taking transparency from beyond the border and pulling it inside, and colors from inside to the outside. That won't do at all.
	Now we've locked the transparency on the layer. It won't take any colors from inside to the outside anymore, but where it can't drag colors in, it's assuming a background color of white. This is another step towards what we want, but it isn't quite there yet.

We need a way to select just the color we want to smudge and not the black line work. Let's take a look at how to do this using his tail...

	Turn off all layers except Soft color and Color (in other words, you only want to be able to see the Soft color and Color layers) Zoom in so that all you can see is his tail (which at this point should have dark and light brown on it - see graphic at left - if you failed to put light brown on his tail during the soft color step, add it in now) Activate the Magic Wand tool Be sure the settings are: Tolerance: 32 Anti-aliased: Checked Contiguous: Checked Use All Layers: Not checked Click the Soft Color layer
	Click in the light brown area of her tail - it should become selected (see graphic at left) Click the Color layer On the Magic Wand tool's option bar, uncheck the Anti-aliased checkbox: Remember, when Anti-aliased is checked Photoshop will grab all pixels of that color in a specific area, by turning it off we are telling Photoshop we only want the solid color and nothing surrounding it
	Click the dark brown color of his tail - it should be added to the light brown selection Select the Smudge tool (it looks like a hand with a pointing finger: and may be under the Blur tool [which looks like a drop of water] or the Sharpen tool [which looks like a triangle]). Make sure the Smudge Strength is not 100%. Try to keep it below 75%. Select the Soft Color layer YOU MUST SELECT THE SOFT COLOR LAYER OR YOU WILL BE UNABLE TO SMUDGE THE LIGHT BROWN COLOR
	Change to a Brush with lots of bristles, like the one shown to the left (remember that to edit your brush click Window then Brushes; note that you do not have to use the same brush that is selected in the graphic to the left, just choose something you are happy with, but if you do choose the same brush as me be sure you check the Other Dynamics box as this will give you a more dispersed brush.) To change your selection of brushes, remember there is a dropdown menu in the top right-hand corner of the Brushes menu. I went to Thick Heavy Brushes, but there is a good selection in Natural Brushes as well.
	Using short, quick strokes, click in the light brown color area and drag into the dark area to create your hair-like smudges. Remember NOT to over do it or go crazy with this - you want the subtle look of hair; too much and it will just look like a big smudge Repeat the above procedure to add fur to his face and chest

But this will only give us nicely defined fur where the soft color and color meet, and our Dogman would like to have nicely defined fur all over. We can accomplish this body-wide transformation by using the Shade layer...

If you still have part of his body selected, click Select then Deselect Activate the Shade layer (you should now be able to see Shade, Soft Color, and Color) It is not necessary to use the Magic Wand to select the shade color as there should be no black lines on this layer Select the Smudge tool and begin to click and drag the shade color to create fur over the rest of his body A brush with thicker bristles can be used to make longer-looking fur, and you can even smudge the shade over the tail to create more detail (see graphic at left) Again, be careful NOT to over use this - you still want only the subtle appearance of fur

Remember that areas of your character with no smudging can appear dull and lifeless, but be careful not to go too far - smudging him too much will make him look stretched and as if she is made out of taffy. Yes, taffy is a wonderful candy and is very tasty, but a taffy Catgirl would just be wrong...especially when she goes outside and began to melt and got all sticky and got grass all over her and then had people tried to eat her...the carnage would be unbearable. Smudging can be a really powerful effect, and if done correctly can really be worth the effort.

When you have finished smudging, you can run Filter then Sharpen then Sharpen again once or twice to bring out the detail. Sharpening tends to make detail stand out more and make them sharper and more obvious. Try it once to see what happens, and remember that you can always undo it if you do not like what you see. Don't use this too much or the noise (random pixels of gray) will start to show through as well.

That's pretty much all the work we'll need to do to the character. Make sure at this point that your layers are in the correct order and that she looks like she is supposed to (she should look something like the image on the right). If there are any errors you want to correct or places you want to add detail before we proceed to the backgrounds and effects, do that now. We've come a long way, but despite all this work, we still haven't done anything for a background. That's coming up next.

Save your Cartoon file!

At this point, you will need to save a separate version of your Catgirl so that your progress up to now can be graded. Follow these steps:

22. Click File
23. Click Save As... [be sure the Format: box reads: Photoshop (*.PSD;*.PDD)]
24. Surf to your Cartoon folder within your main folder
25. Name the file Progress-3 (be sure you name it correctly - if you name it wrong you will loose points!)
26. Click Save
27. Close the Progress-3 file
28. Remember NOT to work with this file in the future - it should be left with your Catgirl with smudged fur - when you move on to Step 14 you will need to open the Cartoon file back up and continue working with it

Now move on to the next step...