How does Evan Eckard do this?

TGxMister

Hope this is in the right forum, I couldn't find a specific forum for Photoshop.
So I was watching a video done by Evan Eckard of him creating TryHardNinja's new album cover. You can find the video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7XxJsyD9us. I want to know about a few of the effects he did and how he did them.
At 0:01 he tilts the text into the background. How would you do this/what tool would you use?
What font does he use (kind of a hard question, I don't need this one answered)
At 0:03 he removes the middle of the text to make it hollow. What tool is that/how do you get to it?
At 0:06 he starts connecting different parts of the text to one point in the background, how would you do that?
He connects all of the points, then puts on a gradient where the lines are. How would you do that?
He then goes and starts changing the color of the gradient and text. How?
Then he makes the edges a bit shiny. How would you do that, or did he just do a lighter shade of color?
At 0:40 he just goes and colors in the wave in the background, how would you do that? He seems to just do broad strokes until the whole thing is covered in blue without going out of the lines, how?
I know that's a lot of questions, but if anyone could answer them that would be AWESOME!
Thanks!

Mister Man

TGxMister wrote: »

Hope this is in the right forum, I couldn't find a specific forum for Photoshop.
So I was watching a video done by Evan Eckard of him creating TryHardNinja's new album cover. You can find the video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7XxJsyD9us. I want to know about a few of the effects he did and how he did them.
At 0:01 he tilts the text into the background. How would you do this/what tool would you use?
What font does he use (kind of a hard question, I don't need this one answered)
At 0:03 he removes the middle of the text to make it hollow. What tool is that/how do you get to it?
At 0:06 he starts connecting different parts of the text to one point in the background, how would you do that?
He connects all of the points, then puts on a gradient where the lines are. How would you do that?
He then goes and starts changing the color of the gradient and text. How?
Then he makes the edges a bit shiny. How would you do that, or did he just do a lighter shade of color?
At 0:40 he just goes and colors in the wave in the background, how would you do that? He seems to just do broad strokes until the whole thing is covered in blue without going out of the lines, how?
I know that's a lot of questions, but if anyone could answer them that would be AWESOME!
Thanks!

Right, I'll attempted to answer as many as I can.

The font looks like a standard one. maybe Helvetica? The reason it looks like it does, is because he has skewed the text (edit>transform>skew)

To hallow out the text like he did at 0.03 you just turn the "fill" to 0%. It can be found in the layerns tab of Photoshop, just beside (or under) transparency.

At 0.06 he connects the text to a single point by simply drawing guides to the corner of a box he created. Image you wanted to draw the same thing on a piece of paper, you'd draw guide lines to follow to add the depth to the text. I believe Photoshop CS5 Extended and CS6 have a 3D feature. I haven't used it myself, but it may create the same effect if you put some effort into it. You'll find the 3D tab at the very top of the application window. (Beside Filter)

As above, he's applied the grad. through the layer style settings (double click a layer) As he's drawn the 3D effect to the text, it's all just a simple layer style after that. It'll take some practice to learn that trick, but it's easy enough to do. Just stick with it.

Again, he's changing the colors of the text and grads. through the style settings for each layer. See above for how to access the style settings.

I assume you're talking about the flames that he makes a shine effect on? It's all down to just adding little bits of brighter colors in the correct places. Easy to do. Just make a new layer, pen tool the area you want to be shiny, right click, fill path, colour, and select a slightly lighter color then the base layer. It's hard to do well, as most people don't consider where the light is coming from, and thus, throw shine effects around everywhere. Again, lots of practice would be needed on that.

At 0.40 he's able to just fill in the outline he's created with the brush tool. The strokes you see, is just him using the brush tool to quickly apply a base layer. He then moves onto a darker color, to give it some depth. Then moves to a brighter color, making it looks nice. He could have done it using the pen tool, but at the end of the day, it doesn't matter when you're using Photoshop. Just person preference really.

Hopefully that should answer all your questions. To sum it all up, he really only uses some basic stuff from Photoshop to create it. He's just very talented, and of course, has used Photoshop, probably for years. Making it all look effortless. Put some time into learning Photoshop, and it's basic tools. Places like Lynda.com are great for professional Tutorials, but are quite pricey. YouTube is full of decent tutorials though. Sometimes a little dragged out, but it's free.