Phil Parsons

Creating a zombie in Photoshop – skin texture and colour

This is going to be the first in a line of tutorials to create the half turned, Zombie girl like the one I was messing around with at the weekend. First part is going to be turning this girls soft, smooth peachy skin to veiny, blotchy, dried out and death ridden leather. Lets do it!!

Tutorial images:

Model by connalee | Cracked earth

Step 1:

Open the two images in Photoshop and drap a copy of the earth onto it’s own layer above the model. Move the earth image around until you have a nice alignment of the cracks on the models face. You will find it easy to do this with the layers opacity reduced, feel free to transform the layer to you needs – I rotated it a little but that was it. Don’t worry about her body for now we will concentrate on that later. Once in position set the earth layers blend mode to multiply and reduce the opacity to 75%. You can use a bit of distortion on the earth layer to get a more contoured look to it using a displacement map made from a greyscale copy of the model with around 8 pixels of blur applied, but it isn’t totally necessary (Displacement map tutorial).

Step 2:

Apply a layer mask to the earth layer and fill it with black. Now brush in the layer around the skin on her face to show the texture, use a brush with a fairly low opacity of about 40 or 50 and a nice soft edge. Next bring in another copy of the earth image to another layer and repeat the above process for the body skin.

Theres a few orange stones in the cracked earth image but don’t worry about them for now.

Step 3:

Now we are going to colour the skin with an adjustment layer. Click on the half black/white circle at the bottom of the layers palette and choose Solid Color from the menu. Choose a nice greyish green colour and click OK then set the layers blend mode to color. Fill the adjustment layers mask with black and make sure the layer is set it at the top. Again paint this layer in with a soft edge brush around the skin, use a lower opacity brush around details of the face for a realistic look.

Step 4:

Next make a selection of the lips using your preferred method, I used lasso with a little feathering added to the selection. We are going to add a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer this time with a yellowish colour and reduced saturation and brightness such as in the image below. Accept it and if necessary adjust the mask with a brush.

Step 4:

Lastly we are going to give the skin texture a little depth with the use of the plastic wrap filter. Select one of the skin layers, making sure the mask is not selected, and go to Filter>Artistic>Plastic Wrap and choose settings of around… highlight: 15, detail: 12, smoothness: 6…. and click OK. Now select the other skin layer and use the shortcut ctrl + F to reapply the exact same filter.

Ok so we have a pretty good base to work from now and a pretty convincing skin texture, next tutorial we will look at the face and start to make her a little more evil!! Some blood thirsty eyes, blood soaked mouth and teeth and a slightly mutated face. Watch this space&helip;

Posted on September 30th, 2008 under Photoshop tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.