SAFARI
Tutorial by David Occhino • David
Occhino Design • The
SAFARI font
This is David Occhino from David Occhino Design and I'd like to share some great techniques for taking that SAFARI font you bought and making it look like the Indiana Jones lettering that you want. So, here are the steps in Illustrator and Photoshop that will get you there. I am assuming that you know your way around Illustrator and Photoshop, and know how to do the following:
- use layers
- create and use masks
- use filters
- use painting tools
- convert text to paths in Illustrator
- import Illustrator data into Photoshop
Let's get started.
1) Create a Photoshop file with the dimensions you'll need. Then, let's create a layer that looks like parchment. You don't have to do this, and maybe you have a better backgrund that you'd like to use. But, if you want parchment, choose a creamy light tan as the foreground color (I used R: 245, G: 241, B: 243) and a darker tan as the background (I used R: 226, G: 156, B: 30). Then, apply the Render Clouds filter until you get a pattern you like:
2) Add Noise 5%, Uniform, Monochromatic:
3) Apply Crystallize filter with a cell size that looks right to you (I used 5):
4) Apply the Stylize: Wind filter, set to Stagger and going from right to left.
5) Add Noise 8%, Uniform, Monochromatic:
6) Apply the Distort: Ocean Ripple filter to taste (I used a ripple size of 5 and magnitude of 11):
7) In Illustrator, use the Safari Regular font and type the letters you need. The first letter should use a capital, the rest should be in lowercase (caps and lowercase are different styles). Scale the font, then convert the text to paths and ungroup all lines:
8) OPTIONAL: To further customize the look, modify the letterforms to create the perspective that is associated with the Indiana Jones logo. Letters are swept from left to right and decrease slightly in size letter by letter. To achieve this effect you can apply a perspective filter or (as I do it) you can manually alter the shape of each letter until it looks right by tweaking the size and skew angle of each letter:
9) Paste the Illustrator art into Photoshop and position it to taste. Make a copy of this layer and place it under your original layer. You'll won't need this layer until Step 16, so hide it until then.
10) Lock the pixels for the text layer you just pasted. Then, fill the layer with a dusty red-orange (I used R: 235, G: 50, B: 0):
11) With the pixels still locked, use a soft-edged paintbrush (I used a 65-pixel brush) to apply orange (R: 250, G: 230, B: 122) about 75% up the letter. You could also use the Gradient tool to do this, but I like to do it manually because you can create a curved gradient that follows the letters a little better:
Using the same technique, apply a golden yellow (R: 250, G: 230, B: 122) about 50% up the letter:
And now, paint a white gradient to the bottom of the letters with a slightly bigger brush (I used 150-pixels). Note how more white appears at the bottom of the first letter compared to the last letter:
13) This is a step many people leave out, but it looks great. Using a small, soft-edged paintbrush (I used a 21-pixel brush), apply some white to selected edges of the letters. The white tends to drop off at 75-80% up the height of each letter on each side:
14) Back in your Illustrator fle, make the text transparent and add stroke of black to taste. Then, as you did before, convert the text to paths and ungroup all lines. You'll notice that some lines will overlap, so you'll need to knock out the sections of the lines that you don't want to appear. In my example, I had to knock out portions of the "A" outline, "R" outline and "I" outline:
15) Paste the Illustrator art into Photoshop and position it over yur text with the gradient fill:
16) Remember that spare layer you created and hid back in Step 9? Turn that layer back on and reposition it so that it falls as a drop shadow behind the text gradient layer. You may wish to alter the shapes of some of the shadow letters so that they fall in a more complementary way. I used a hard paintbrush with black to re-shape the contours of some of the balck shadow letters:
17) Copy your black shadow layer and position it just under the original. With pixels locked fill the layer with a dark brown, then apply a Gaussian blur to taste (I used a 9.7 pixel radius).
Turn all your layers on, and your artwork will sport that adventurous Indiana Jones style that you've been craving:
Did this tutorial help you? What other tips would you like to see on my site? Drop me a line and let me know. And, if you would like me to design something for you at some point, check out my Graphic Design Services webpage and consider hiring me to do the work for you.
Thanks!
David Occhino