TUTORIAL | Lots and lots of balls

This will be a tutorial somewhat out of the ordinary; I couldn’t really figure out what to write about when it suddenly hit me, balls, lots and lots of balls, or ellipses as they are called in Photoshop. Being far more than a bunch of geometric shapes these little critters can when combined produce true magic; just take a look at the popular Sony Bravia Commercial. We will basically explore the mind in an small creative exercise!


Using the colorpicker service Kuler from Adobe we will start by selecting a color theme that will be the basis of our “ball-formations” (free of choice). This time I decided to go with a nice theme called Kobenhavn Pop (there’s an entire science behind picking the right colors, but at the end of the day it’s all left to your imagination). Now that we have five complementing colors in a nice set, we will transform them into formations of balls that can be used as logotypes or perhaps the basis of a cool animation.


Juice up your Photoshop and pay attention; start by creating a new PSD at minimum 500×500 (or any size really). Add one ellipse and duplicate it (Layer > Duplicate Layer) until you have five identical ellipses in a row (that is one ball for each finger on your hand). By now you might think that all of this is quite obvious stuff that need not be dealt with in a long and quite boring tutorial; well you might be right, but as long as there are people left dumb enough to swallow spoons or play golf there is always a need for good tutorials. Well anywho, let’s not get too far off-topic.


Now that you have five ellipses lined up we’ll change their colors according to the theme you picked earlier. Simply printscreen from Kuler and use the Eyedropper Tool in Photoshop (make sure you unchecked Only Web Colors), then use Layer > Layer Style > Color Overlay and start changing those grey boring balls. Do you feel the magic? Great, then let’s start playing around, this last step is really all about practice, just move, resize, delete (you can use less or more than five) and squeeze those balls until you have achieved the perfect combination that some would call a a piece of art. I’m no expert in this field, I just want you to appreciate the endless possibilities of color themes and a bunch of balls! If you have any questions just post a comment, and also feel free to share your very own “ball-formations”!



DOWNLOAD MY FINISHED EXAMPLE (PSD) FOR REFERENCE

http://www.eurogame.se/?p=58

 

nice work man

 

Um. I love the Sony commercial but I don't really see what the point of your tutorial is. You didn't make balls, just some circles. Maybe you could expand on it and turn your balls into a custom brush messing with the Scatter and Sizing options to get some more interesting results as well as show people how to make a basic brush from scratch.

On another note, golf is awesome

 

Point taken mate But circles in 2D could really be interpreted as balls Anywho this tutorial is really intended for beginners to get started playing with Photoshop and basic shapes and colors (also I wrote it in the middle of the night out of boredom)

Cheers