Calamari [BLACK]MAGIC by Requiem

A small update on a blogskin I made for myself a long time back. Just looking at the stock photos that I used brings back memories. I took these photos at the old RJC Mt. Sinai campus while I was still studying there; my school used it as holding for a year while the school was under construction, but we still know it as the "RJC campus". It's a beautiful place.

There's two versions of this skin. If you keep refreshing you'll probably see another one sooner or later.

Of course, the sword was not there originally. The blood too. Those were a personal touch. The sword was an experiment in rendering relatively realistic 3-D looking objects in Photoshop rather than using 3-D rendering software (which I severely lack). I made this during a period of time when I was obsessed with vector based arrows and circles. Now, I understand that most people just do it using brushes, but I prefer to do it using pure vector work.

Blood, etc. are a combination of filters and brushing.

I'm going to include a short step-by-step thing of how the sword was made. They're all screenshots with small captions. I'm assuming that you already know the basics of photoshop. Don't worry, it's not too hard to understand, but it did take me quite a while to figure out how to get it done. So, please try to give me credit if you redistribute my "tutorial"... if there's any other details you need, feel free to just ask =D