Hikaru99's guide to light rays

This material originally appeared in an MT Story Discussion thread for strip 897 , posted on Aug 25, 2006, and written by hikaru99.

The starting point is a panel from MT strip 897 , colored by Ampersand.

Here's my go at it. Feel free to comment and ask questions.

To create the basic light rays:

  1. Create a selection and fill it with a gradient (orange-to-transparent). To create the selection in Gimp, use "paths to selection". In photoshop, use the marquee tool.

  2. Repeat for the white highlights.

  3. Apply Gaussian blur on the orange gradient and Motion blur on the white highlights respectively.

  4. Use a small brush and trace parts of the outline where the light hits. (change the layer mode to "Screen")

    5. For the glowy effect, try experimenting with the layer opacity and modes: Screen, Hard Light and Overlay. This is a trial-and-error process, so no hard rules in going about it.

    Extra tip (OT): To "bend" the shadows, consider the wrap tool (Photoshop only) or the Displacement filter.

    And the result of this work is ...