# Halloween Digital Art Tips & Tricks



## Brooklynhaunt (Feb 4, 2018)

The season is getting closer and I love to surround myself with imagery to get into the spirit. There are a lot of creepy vignettes and vistas to sink your teeth into online, but I thought it would be fun to try to put together my own. The challenge for my first composition was to fit every classic icon into one image. This is the first time I’ve tried to simulate a night scene from assets that were primarily taken in the day time. What I found was that it was not only easier to find assets online this way, but it was easier to blend and control these assets when making darker adjustments. There are countless video tutorials out there which can tell you in good detail how to create Halloween digital art, and I will link to a couple that helped. I’ll make this a mini tutorial focusing on the few tricks or processes that I did over and over to get the final result. My hopes for this thread is that others will post any of their Halloween digital art and any tips they have that might help your work get your desired look. For me, I wanted something that harkens back to classic Halloween, so nothing too gory or shocking. The hopes were to be more about creating a eerie curiosity. I might try a gruesome scarier one in my next one.

When starting to look for image assets, I needed to consider what the end result would be, like would I want this to live just on the computer/internet or would I want to print it? There are millions more lower resolution images on the internet than there are quality high resolution. Printed images need a recommended 300 ppi, where screens typically use 72ppi. Because I didn’t want to hunt too hard for images I opted to format for my image to live on screen. I created a document at 1920x1080 at 72 ppi. I work with adobe photoshop and illustrator all the time for work, but not for any compositing or photo manipulation. I found many of the photos I wanted to use on Pixabay.com. The photos were all free to download and there was enough for me to choose from. I searched “autumn field” and “old house” to find my basic background and the mansion I wanted to make haunted.

















I then made a selection around the parts of the house I wanted to keep and then made a vector mask by clicking on the icon below the layers.









This will create a black and white mask that attaches to your layer. Once you click this you’ll notice another panel appear to the right of the layer you had selected. This will be a black and white image that shows the visible (white) and transparent (black). If you click on this vector mask you can then use your paint brush to “paint” back any of the masked layer using white, or conversely hide anything you don’t want showing using black. If you use any shade of gray you will have translucency. That can be a good way of blending the selected layer, and the layer below together. Masks are amazing, I use them on almost every single layer because it allows you to keep parts of your image hidden, without having to delete it forever. You can learn much more by watching this:





So my biggest helper from creating light to dark are the adjustment layers. These are layers that go just above a layer(s) that will effect the layers below. My favorite for this project was “Hue/saturation” adjustment layer. Click on the black and white circle icon just below your layers, then select “hue/saturation from the dropdown menu. By default adjustment layers will affect every layer below it…I usually don’t want this. So you have to click the icon that below the sliders that looks like a white square with an arrow coming out from it. Now that it is only affecting my house layer, I clicked the “colorize” box and slid the Hue slider until the house changed to a bluish color I was satisfied with. Then I used the light slider to darken everything. 










See this video to see more about this process:






It already looks so much better and looks like it could be night. I will repeat this process on almost every single asset I bring into the composition. Even though you can have one adjustment layer affect all that are below it, I usually avoid doing that because the pictures I have chosen were all taken at different exposures and need their own lighting slider adjustment.

So masking and hue and saturation do a lot of what is needed to get us there. But my last tip for now will be about selections…or rather not having selections. If you are looking for assets that have already been “cut out”. There are many free images out there that you can use. When google image searching I typed “ tombstone png.” PNG has become almost synonymous with “images with transparency.” Because jpgs don’t have the ability to have transparency, just try searching for whatever you like and “png” at the end. You will find many assets that someone has already done the hardwork of cutting out for you.

Here is the finished image. Hope you like it. I will add more tips later if needed. I just wanted to share and hear from you as well. So please put up your favorite Halloween images and artwork, and any tips you have in creating it!


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## Frankie's Girl (Aug 27, 2007)

Just lovely! You are really gifted!

I'm a graphic designer/illustrator IRL, so this kind of work is just fabulous to see on the forum. 

I am unfortunately of the "shoemaker's children go barefoot" type of designer lately... meaning I rarely do artwork just for fun/personal stuff any more. But I'm sure there are plenty of other talented arty peeps on here.


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## Brooklynhaunt (Feb 4, 2018)

Frankie's Girl said:


> Just lovely! You are really gifted!
> 
> I'm a graphic designer/illustrator IRL, so this kind of work is just fabulous to see on the forum.
> 
> I am unfortunately of the "shoemaker's children go barefoot" type of designer lately... meaning I rarely do artwork just for fun/personal stuff any more. But I'm sure there are plenty of other talented arty peeps on here.


Hi Frankie’s Girl. I totally agree. I'm hoping there a few that enjoy this kind of thing too. We have so many great prop tutorials that I love, but was hoping there would be more about the hobby in the digital space. (I’m not even sure if I should refer to it as a “hobby”or “lifestyle”.) But certainly if it is a lifestyle there is room for digital content creators. I totally understand being too busy for side work. Do you have any work from the past or work in progress you could share? Or even better some professional advice you could give?


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