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ALPHA STILES GIF TUTORIAL

Another one? So soon? Yeah, well I originally made a werewolf!Allison gif tutorial, and it kind of sucked. So I revamped it for just a color porn gif tutorial and now I am making a much better werewolf eyes tutorial. Featuring the glorious and badass Alpha Stiles. Also, it’s the top gif from my most recent post.

MUST HAVE: knowledge of Photoshop and adjustments and of course know how to make gifs. This isn’t a super difficult tutorial, but it does require a lot of time and patience.

I will be showing all of you non-beginners, how to turn this:

into this:

First step, I extended the background. The end size should be 500 x 220, and you should be cropping to get rid of some of the top and bottom parts.

The white on the right side is blank space because I moved the layers over.

Next I picked a color from the background, for the background. It’s much easier to do it this way and then manipulate the color of the BG later on using adjustment layers. Make a new, blank layer and start filling in the right hand side with a round soft tipped brush.  The color I used is #d2ccb4.

Looking good right? I ended up with four layers for the background coloring alone by the way. So don’t be afraid to use a few.

Next some actual toning and coloring. I almost always start with a black and white gradient layer, set to the soft light blend mode. I kept the opacity at 100% for the contrasting.

I actually duplicated that gradient, and put the opacity to 14% on the copy.

Now a curves adjustment, output 143 and input 93. And selective color to mess with the background coloring. Focusing on Whites; the settings are cyan -1, magenta -8, yellow -9, black +15, set to absolute.

More selective color! This time, reds and yellows. Reds, cyan -13, magenta +10, yellow 0, black 0. Yellows, cyan -28, magenta -24, yellow -31, black -52.  Set to relative, instead of absolute this time. I also added a black focused selective color, +4 on blacks and nothing else.

I wanted to make the reds pop in this gif, so I made another selective color but this time I masked it only for his shirt. Reds, cyan -100, magenta +100, yellow +100, black +100. Set to absolute.

Yet another, selective color. Yellows, cyan -10, magenta -18, yellow -37, black 0. Relative setting; Cyans, cyan -38, magenta -7, yellow 0, black 0. Neutrals, cyan -8, magenta -12, yellow -12, black 0.

Make another selective color, separate from the last one; again focusing on Whites & Cyans. For the Whites, cyan -8, magenta +3, yellow +10, black 0; absolute setting. Cyans, cyan -100, magenta -100, yellow -100, black 0. 

I made another selective for the blacks again and masked it for the left side of his face. Adding deeper shadows and more contrast overall. (Black +12)

Next a vibrance adjustment; vibrance +11, saturation +18. Another selective color; Reds, cyan -12, magenta +15, yellow +17, black -20. Set to absolute. And another curves; output 126, input 109.

A subtle color balance next; 0, -3, +3. Another selective color; Reds, +10,+6,+5,0. Hue and saturation, 0,-7,0.

So far so good!

I  love the coloring as is, but now it’s werewolf time. I used this screencap from season 4, because the eyes are perfect for what I was planning. (the link is too a cropped and lighter version of the one below)

Make sure to color the image first, before copying and pasting the part of the eye you need! I used a few layers to do this, some curves and a gradient. After I changed the coloring it looked something like this:

Now using the lasso tool, I circled and copied the left eye and pasted it as a new layer onto the gif of Stiles.

Now select the very first frame of the gif, and make a new group. I just called it EYES. Then paste in the eye layer and transform (ctrl+t) it down until it’s the right shape and size for Stiles’ eye. I started with the right eye, just because it was less shadowed and easier to place.

You may need to erase parts of the eye layer; don’t be afraid to do so, but be careful not to get rid of too much. 

DO NOT MERGE THE LEFT AND RIGHT EYE LAYERS! Just don’t, it will make everything so much harder and it won’t look as good in the end either.

Duplicate the layer for the eye and place the other one over the other eye.

Now the first frame is good to go, but if you play the gif you will notice only the first one has the eyes. Or, all of them do, but on the other frames the eyes aren’t where they should be. So the cool and easy thing about this, is that you can go to frame 2, then click the layers and move them how you need them. Then go back to frame 1 and they didn’t move!

Keep doing that until you can’t anymore, which for me was frame 10 when he starts to blink and look down. With that one, go to the eye layers for the red eyes and duplicate them both. 

Now, I named the layers, left and right just to make it easier on myself, and I suggest you do the same. So I ended up with 38 eye layers, all duplicates and you will probably end up with about the same amount. There is a method to the madness though. 

Basically with the closing eyes parts I needed to duplicate the original layers so I could erase the top parts of the eye layer. That way it’s not overlapping on his lids.

Here is a super slow down to show you just how natural it looks. ^^

If you just tried to move the layers like before it would have worked, but you would try to erase the top parts of the eye to make it look better and it would erase those parts on every frame. Not good. So make sure to duplicate as needed and keep the eyes for the next 30-ish frames as separates so you can and make sure to manipulate the parts you need to without screwing the other frames over.

I always, ALWAYS save the PSD and of course sharpen. Best way to do this, and the fastest way, is to press the three line thing in your frames box (upper right corner, it’s a drop down) and convert to timeline. Then select all your layers, right click and convert to smart object; then filter > smart sharpen. Amount > 500, Radius 0.3, Remove gaussian blur, and make sure the More Accurate box is ticked.

A lot of time and effort later and you’re done! I’d say the end result is worth all that time wouldn’t you? As always, here is the PSD DOWNLOAD, and more examples of the werewolf eyes below: