[Tut]Broken Avatar Case Study ~ Energy

Ok so first i start off with 420x150, and fill with a pink to purple/blue gradient.

I have my tablet here to create brush lines. I then added an outer glow.

I begin to add in circles here. I used the eliptic marquee and fill with white. In the layer styles, i drop the fill opacity to 0% and add an outer glow.

Repeating the previous step for more circles.

Added in a big circle here, then filled it somewhat with a white gradient.

Time to grab a stock. This is from part of an avatar wallpaper.

I set it to lighten in the layer mode.

Repeated the previous step by duplicating the stock and moving it.

And once more for luck.

Then i brought in another stock with some text on. I set both layers you see here to linear dodge.

Ta Da.

Third and final stock used. Resized and placed in the corner.

Here i used my tablet with a mask added and the brush tool selected. I erase most of the bg but keep some to give it the jagged look.

I use the same stock now, in the same place but i erase everything but the two lines coming off the blue guy. I then add an outer glow to both these new layers. On the right line i place a white > transparent graident overlay so it blends to that circle we made earlier. The top one i do the same but with black so it darkens as it moves away.

Here i add some colour balance and photo filter to blend the two elements together.

I added in some text here, don't really know why. I also put in another squiggly line with a blue/dark blue graident overlay.

Here i sharpened the image ( new layer > Image > apply image > sharpen). And also made it a tab brighter.

Black and white yay. This must have been the most pointless thing ive ever done. I went to image > calculations, and it added in an alpha channel. I then print-screened the image and pasted it on a new document. Yes energy but why didn't you just add a black and white gradient map? BLAH BLAH BLAH

The end.

Energy

Coming up! I'll tut this: