Step 38

Our mechanic horse is ready. Now let’s place him on some proper background. Open file “magical forest at night”. Add a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer and use the settings shown below. This step will fade out the details and leave us with the background we want.

Step 39

Open our horse document and select the upper group. Press Ctrl+Alt+E to make a new layer from all visible layers. Ctrl+click the layer to select opaque pixels, Ctrl+C to copy than paste it in our background document. You can close the horse document. Resize the horse layer to look like in the image below.

Step 40

Add a new layer below the horse layer and using a chalk brush ( or any other hard brush ) paint the shadow with black.

Step 41

Add a new blank layer and choose Filter > Vanishing Point. Make it look like in the image below than choose Render Grids to Photoshop from the options menu and press Ok. Double click the layer to enter advanced blending options and use the settings shown below. Move this layer below our horse layer. Add a layer mask and mask away the shadow area.

Step 42

Let’s add some lightning. Make a new layer and using lightning brushes from “Lightning Brush set 1” make some white lightning bolts. Double click the layer to enter advanced blending mode and use the settings shown below.

Step 43

Add a new layer and using the lightning brushes add some black cracks to make our metallic horse more genuine. Add a layer mask and mask away everything but the horse.

Step 44

Add a curves adjustment layer and use the settings shown below. Add a layer mask and fill it with black. Brush with white on layer mask to improve the general lighting.

Final Results

Author’s Comment

In this tutorial we used some basic Photoshop tools and one very advanced tool of our own – imagination- to create a mechanical horse. I must admit that I did not foreseen this result when I first started working on this, but I rather improvised along the way so the final result surprised me in a pleasant way. The lesson I learned while working on this was that you have to be flexible and try new things, even if they not seem to work first time.

You can see some of my other art deviations here . Have fun photoshoping!!

Adrian Scheff