Ken Mitchell

FYI: I am submitting this post to the “Geeks Are Sexy Ultimate Howto Contest”.

Note: Some shortcut keys have changed in new versions. For instance, Ctrl-K should now be Delete.

Introduction

I done this for a friend the other day. He asked if I could do a quick Halo 3 logo with his number inside instead of the “3″. The hardest thing is getting the texture. I still don’t think it is quite right, but it’s as close as I could get it.

Setup

Grab the “Halo” font from your favorite font repo. You can simply google “halo font” if you need to. Start a new canvas 400w x 250h. Make sure the background is black.

Step 1 - Create the halo

Take the text tool with the color set to “white” and size to “300″ and place an uppercase “c” on the canvas. Center it with the move tool, and rasterize the layer Right-click>Discard Text Information. With the “Rectangular Selection Tool”, select the dot in the center and delete it Ctrl+K. Select none Ctrl+Shift+A. Now do a quick flip horizontally AND vertically Image>Transform>Flip Horizontally, Image>Transform>Flip Vertically.

Step 2 - Create Numbers

Again with the text tool, leave the color set to “white” and set the size to “175″ if you are using two digits, or “200″ if you are using one digit. I used the number “19″. Place the digits on the canvas and center it within the halo. Merge the top to layers Right-click top layer>Merge Down, and rename double-click the layer it “Emblem”.

Step 3 - Create Texture

Create a new transparent layer called “texture”. On that layer, do Filters>Render>Clouds>Solid noise Set the Detail to “15″ and the X and Y size to “5″. Now, goto Filters>Enhance>Sharpen and set the sharpness to 75. You should have something similar to this.

And you should have these layers.

Step 4 - Colorize the texture

Now is the fun stuff. You can play with these colors to make it look different, I chose the colors that matched the original logo as close as I could.

Make sure you have the “texture” layer selected. Go to Layer>Colors>Levels and set the black input level to “45″ and the white input level to “205″. You should really see a change in contrast. Feel free to play with those values a little too. Now make your background color “#214054″ and your foreground color “#5a7d99″. With your gradient tool, ensure that the gradient is set to “FG to BG”. Now go to Filters>Colors>Map>Gradient Map. That should add some color.

Now, change your foreground color to “#393d45″ and your background color to black or “#000000″. Create a new layer on top of the texture layer. Take the gradient tool on that layer from lower-left to upper right (or backward depending on if “reverse is checked”). Change the layer blend mode to “addition”, and you should have some light. Merge that layer down.

Step 5 - Bring it all together

At this point, you should have three layers. From the bottom up, “Background”, “Emblem”, and “Texture”. If you don’t, then I haven’t done my job. Right-click on the “Emblem” layer and select “Alpha to Selection”. A quick Ctrl+I as in eye should invert the selection. Now, make sure the “Texture” layer is selected and hit Ctrl+K (or Edit>Delete). That should remove the texture layer from the surrounding area, leaving you with the texture in the shape of the emblem. Select none with Ctrl+Shift+A.

Merge the “Emblem” layer to the “Background” layer (right-click “emblem”, select “merge down”). Add a “Gaussian Blur” Filters>Blur>Guassian Blur at a radius of “7″ to the “Background” layer. Select the “Texture” layer, and go to Filters>Map>Bump Map. Select the “Background” layer as the bump map and “Sinusoidal” as the map type. The rest you can play with, but here’s mine.
I don’t think you should change the X and Y offset..

Now that you got that outta the way, you can clear the “Background” layer by selecting it then Ctrl+K. Now, paint it any color you want, or leave it transparent. I hope you enjoy!

This entry was posted on Friday, September 21st, 2007 at 6:41 am and is filed under Gimp, HowTo.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.