Incidentally,
if your only interest is achieving this effect (as opposed to
learning how to do it), you can download several of the presets
I created for this tutorial right
here. (They're mostly minor variations on the method we'll
use here. The one used in this tutorial is "Rubbing 7.")
If you're more interested in learning how these things work
in Studio Artist so you can create your own unique effects,
read on. This piece will cover a huge number of Paint Synthesizer
functions that will be useful not just for creating this rubbing
effect, but for creating others as well.
If you don't
yet have Studio Artist, make sure you download the demo. You'll
find it here.
(Studio Artist, at present, runs only on the Mac.)
We begin by
opening up Studio Artist and choosing for our source image something
that preferably contains some geometric design elements and a
decent amount of contrast. Make sure your Canvas is set to white,
and switch your color palette from Source Image to Color Squares.
(You can use any color for this tutorial, but greenish browns
will be best for the bronze coloring; black works best for charcoal.)
Now we go
into the Paint Synthesizer. I'm assuming that you're starting
with the default Paint Patch in the "General" category.
The first thing we're going to want to set is the way the paint
is applied to the Canvas. We certainly don't want to make this
look like it's been painted on. It needs to look "scratchy"
and pretty flat. So the paint needs to fill from "Paint Brush
Load," and we'll modulate it with "Paint Hue."
(This will create some slight variations in color even when we're
painting with a single swatch.) We're going to fill to the Canvas
Image, and then our fill option will be Multiblend with a Texture
multiplier. (These last two are required to generate any kind
of image whatsoever.) Composite options are up to you. I've chosen
Dif Darken because I like the softer look it creates. Play around
with the composite modes to achieve varying results.
At this point
you should be able to achieve some fairly interesting results,
but not exactly what we're going for here. This is mainly owing
to the fact that the strokes aren't working the way you might
work if you were actually taking a rubbing. So now let's go in
and change the way the strokes are applied. First, for the origin,
I'm going to go into the Path Start palette and make only one
change. I'm going to set the Generator to "Golden Spiral."
This will cause the strokes to be drawn from the center of the
image outward in a spiral patter. (You could change this to something
like "Border Clockwise" for another nice effect.) If
you test out the setting's you're creating right now, you'll see
how this works. (It will become less obvious later on.)
Now, we're
not going to mess around with the Path Shape or Path End palettes.
Instead, we're going to skip ahead to Path Application. Leave
Repeat Stroke at 1, but set Option, Mode and Spacing to Maximum,
Spatial Distance and 148, respectively. If you hit Action, you'll
now see a big difference in the way the strokes are applied.
They now appear to be dabs rather than full strokes. (Change
the settings one at a time to see how each affects the way the
path is applied. Basically, Maximum creates the dab effect,
while Spacing separates out the dabs.
Here we're
going to go in and change the Brush Source settings. The effect
of changing a brush's shape is fairly self-evident. Take a look
at my palette settings for Brush Source on the right. The main
difference is that I've beefed up the size and direction symmetry
of the brush, as well as added in some randomness (RndRadius).
Now we're
going to make the big setting that changes everything about
this Paint Patch. Go into Brush Type and switch the Brush Type
to Geodesic Rectangular. Change the Max Count to 30 and the
Iterations to 20. (For 20 Iterations, you'll have to type in
the number manually; the slider won't go that high.) Now hit
Action. That's pretty slick, isn't it?
All that's
left to do is to make a few subtle changes to make the effect
a little nicer. Under Brush Modulation, change Background Texture
Modifier to Image Orient. I also want to change the background
texture. So set the Orient Mod and Tracking to "Path."
Switch Turb Levels to 8, Turb Algorithm to 11 and Size to 4.
You'll see the changes in the palette as you make them. The
changes on the Canvas will be more subtle. Under Miscellaneous,
change "AutoDraw Pres" to Image Orient; change the
pressure range to 10 to 95; and change Region Spacing to 1.
And that's
pretty much it. As you've seen, the major settings that affected
the way this Paint Patch worked were the Brush Type (Geodesic
Rectangular), the Paint Fill and the Path Start. I've created
some variations on some of the other Paint Synthesizer settings,
but nothing too major. You can examine the differences between
various settings by downloading my collection of Presets here.
(Remember that "Rubbing 7" is the one used in this
tutorial.)
For more information
on Synthetik Studio Artist, read our review,
visit our user
forum or head over to our tutorials
section for some more insights. Synthetik Software is at http://www.synthetik.com.
