Leugi's 2D Leaderscene Collage Hints

So, before starting, you need to get to know your leader and the civ it represents. its personality, its most usual dwellings, its achievements (specially, architectonical, as that may be useful later as a background.

For Yaroslav, the obvious part is that he was a wise man, he's also almost always depicted with the Cathedral of Saint Sophia, which Yaroslav determined to imitate in stone as a sign of gratitude to the citizens of Novgorod who had helped him secure the Kievan throne in 1019.
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So, the very first part of our work is, of course, getting as many references as possible! For this, Google Images is an amazing source. Think both in the leader as in the possible backgrounds. The background is specially useful if big, so you can use it betterly. So remember the bigger the images the more useful they'll be. If they are detailed enough they may even be used in the leaderscene itself, so search as much as you can. Look also for colors you may use.

For Yaroslav himself, I have found these nice pics as a reference:


As per the background, I have decided to use an image of Saint Sophia's Cathedral at Kiev, sadly I couldn't find a good interior image, so we'll go exteriors!. As I said before, these images better be big. Whenever you search for a background, you also have to think in perspective. What perspective would the leader look good and fitting?

Also, remember the file of a leaderscene is usually 1600px*900px, so if it's bigger or near that, great!

But... what if I can't find references for either the leader or the background?

Well, if there wasn't any image of Yaroslav, you'd have to imagine how a Kievan Rus' leader would look like. To that end, read a lot on how leaders of that civ dressed like. It's what I did to make a Nazca leader, as there's not really any registry of one:



If you find no images of a background, or at least, no big images, well, you're in trouble, you'll have to compose one yourself. You can do that by merging images, like I did in the case of Saladin, or make a 3D model like I did in the case of the Harrapan leader:

So... this is the part where having images of the Civ5 leaders comes in handy. We now know how does Yaroslav looks like. The key parts of representing him are the cape, the beard, the fancy hat and a book. Look for whatever you may rob from an existant leader!

There are some leaders I always use as a base, because they can be more easily used in many circumstances. ... If it helps these ones are:


So, in this particular case, I'm going to use Suleiman for the hands and the book, some of Isabella's cape, a bit of Gandhi's robes, and Washington's face as a base. Also, I'll use Attila's hat as a base for Yaroslav's hat. And as a base I'm going to use Enrico Dandolo.

Aside from CivV's parts, you should also gatter some other parts that may work to make your leader more historically correct. I have searched for a crown that looks like Yaroslav's for example:

So, before you start, you must think on how to compose everything, now that you have your parts. Will the leader be in the middle? Or on the sides?

Something very useful for this is the law of thirds, which can help you balance your composition, simply use a 3*3 grid and place the elements on the intersections:



However, some leaderscenes also use the leader right in the middle. This is good specially if you want to generate a feeling of epicness, like in the case of Suleiman. For this to work you also need to use the thirds to balance the image out (the columns and the position of the hands help achieving that, note that the Thirds aren't an strict law, and rather a guideline)



In our case, thanks to the perspective of our background, we'll go with having Yaroslav in the middle, like Mr. Suleiman.​

Getting Started
Ok. Now on to the real work, since we have our tools ready. The first thing to do is correcting a bit the perspective of the image, although we want a nice and epic perspective, the one we have right now it's too exaggerated. You can do this with the Transform tool, or with the Lens Correction in photoshop:


Now, backgrounds in Civ are actually models too, and they have some nice filters going there to look nice. In order to do this, we must separate each plane of the perspective in different layers, so we can do a better perspective effect, here we have some bushes in the nearest plane, then the road, then the Cathedral, then some other bushes

You can help your selection with the Magic Wand, and other tools:


Now, most backgrounds also tend to have some clouds in the sky, if there's any sky, so, let's search for some nice clouds on the web and add them. Since we already sepparated the layers, it will be easier to put the sky behind everything


Now, we must add some light source and a shadow, you'll be able of checking this on the .psd attached file, but I usually simply add a huge blurry circle for both, with a lot of transparency, the transparecy usually changes while building everything up:


Filtering!

So, now that we have all this, we must filter each layer to fit more the game, so it doesn't look so much like a photography. Many people attempt to imitate whatever filter Civ5 uses for its textures with a Watercolor filter, but in fact that's not just it. I prefer to use "Paint Daubs" plus some blurring.

Most certainly, the layers that are more near should be less blurred than the ones in the background. Paint Daubs is useful too because it can also work out some of the blurring. Also, while we are at it, it can be good to increase the saturation of some parts. Using Surface Blur can also help in making a background look more like a model, as it makes it look more like a thing with polygons. Golden parts tend to be also truly strong, so let's increase the contrast at the domes.

In this process one tends to notice some things are lacking or wrong, so I fixed the perspective a bit more, and added some lights, also inverted the position of lights to go more with the background:


We have a decent background now, so on to Mr. Yaroslav!​

Ok, now on to the fun and hard part. We have everything we need, probably. As we said, we're going to use Enrico Dandolo as a base, so we need to cut him and put him in front of Saint Sophia's Cathedral.

While we are at it, let's increase its light a bit to fit our colorful background (I use Levels for that)


Now, let's add Isabella's cape! When adding things the Transform (Ctrl T) tool (or whatever it's called in Gimp) is your best friend, as you can deform whatever you're pasting to fit your base. While adding the cape, we also remove some of Enrico's old cape, so it doesn't interfere.


We're lacking a neck here. I think that Gandhi's neck is going to be a good choice, beause of the clothing and also of how clear it is. For now I have also removed Enrico's Head. I have also changed Gandhi's neck-clothing to red using Multiply with a brush.


Let's add Suleiman's book. I have also replaced the other hand with a different pose by copying the left hand and removing the other one:


So, let's leave the body for now, we'll focus on changing colors and textures later, but we must now go with the Head! (on the next post)​

So... the head is the most important part, specially when you have someone recognizable. I like actually using a statue or render as a base (if it exists), if not, it's a matter of mix and merging Civ5 faces.

First, we'll put the statue's head as his head. We'll also increase it's whiteness, I use levels.


So, this looks funny, I know... The only reason to do this is to have a base though. Now, look at Yeroslav's factions. We need to find a face that looks similar, plus the nose the beard and the hat.

So yeah, Enrico Dandolo's face is still a good start. Then, we could have Nebby's nose, and Washington's eyes. We could also use Bismark's eyebrows. And Suleiman's beard will come in handy:







I know what you're thinking ... So yeah, this is the part that can't be truly explained, rather than showed. This process is the blending process, making everything fit. You'll probably have to add more pieces to the mix while in the process, and even redraw and sharpen some aspects

In this process Liquify and Smudge are your best friends!, that way you can blend the pieces together:












Well, we now have a more decent face! ... Follow pretty much the same process for the fancy hat. We'll use Attila's as a base, and then add our references. For the Fluffyness I suggest using a brush.





So, we now got our head... Time for the hardest part!
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This is what we have for now:


It doesn't look bad, but of course we still need to make all colors fit with Yaroslav and with each other. Also, we need everything to be the same level of Sharpened.

Now, if we remember our references, it seems that Yaroslav's tunic should be white, and that its cape should have some fancy pattern. And just so it fits betterly, we'll change the book's color to brown! So, let's take care of that first.

To do that you can use a brush with Color, Multiply and Overlay Modes. it is also very useful to lock the transparency of our layers now, so we can color safely. This is the result:



(for the pattern I'm using this set on multiply as a Clipping Mask (Ctrl+G) )

While we are on it, we can now move what we have and fix some of the lighting and all that:


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So... now we are near! What we must do now is making the shadows and lighting make sense. For this, some overlay with black and white will suffice, it's mostly a matter of seeing well. This is also the final chance of making changes. I decided to leave Yaroslav's beard longer, and remove the cross on the hat (because most of the references don't show it)