In the spirit of Halloween we’re going to turn a normal person into one of the nightmarish vampires in the graphic novel-turned-movie 30 Days of Night.
I was fortunate enough to find a pic of this distinguished gentleman already in black and white. If you’re working in a color photograph go ahead and take out the color by going to Image>Adjustments>Desaturate.
We’re going to start off by adding a layer of blood stain that’s already seeped into the skin around the mouth from past meals. On a new layer above the picture, change the blending mode to Vivid Light.
Now to make the wet blood around the lips and chin, paint in a solid black shape on a new layer around the mouth down the chin to the neck. At this point, you can even start blacking out some of the eye. Change the blending mode to Overlay and you’ll be able to see through the black and it will appear wet.
VexingArt has created these supremely evil blood-splatter brushes you can obtain here. Just open your brush options, then click on the little circle icon with the arrow in the middle and choose the menu option “Load Brushes”
On a new layer, choose one of the blood splatter brushes and choose black and paint around the mouth. I just left the blending mode on normal to keep the blood thick. Yes nice and thick!
Now that he’s a crazy bloodied man, let’s sharpen his teeth up and make him a vampire. The 30 Days vampires have more than those 2 little dorky fangs. They pretty much have rows of shark teeth much better suited for devouring human prey. Start off by drawing the outside area of the sharpened tooth with the lasso tool. For this part I just used the Smudge Tool to pull the darker colors into the tooth within the selection.
Repeat as necessary.
With the Lasso Tool, draw some areas behind the tooth to add some shading using a color of the tooth with a darker value.
With the teeth all finished up, it’s time add some details. You can darken the hair and eye sockets with the plain ol’ soft paintbrush. And add a few more blood splotches wherever you like. I drew my own stringy blood drip off the chin for a nice personal touch.
I have this image for you to show you what I just added. Everything solid black is on a layer with the blending mode set to Normal. And anything softly brushed is on Overlay.
Many 30 Days of Night movie stills and promotional images have a monochromatic blue tint to them. On a layer above all the flattened work, fill to a dark blue and set that to Overlay. I’ve used the hexidecimal value of #173869. You can pull the opacity of that blue layer to your taste as well. I pulled the Fill to about 40%. I also snatched the logo from the web and placed it.
This is what the logo looks like when a Color Dodge blend mode is applied.
And for the final touches, I flattened the art, right-clicked the layer and chose Duplicate Layer. On the duplicate, I chose Linear Burn for its blend mode. This should really deaden his skin and create some visual contrast. The Fill and Opacity both pulled down to about 50% to allow it to blend a bit. And lastly I went back to the blood-splatter brushes using a mixture of red, black and varied opacities for graphic appeal. Happy Halloween!!!
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