Preserved Topic: burnt waves experiment

This is what I came up with concerning one of my suggestions about flat text and burnt (not exactly aged) paper. I went with burnt because someone else asked about NeoFrog's tutorial. I guess it's kind of an experimental marriage of techniques.



New doc. Render clouds. Several difference clouds. Save the file for use as a displacement map.

New doc with same dimensions as above. New alpha channel with a white square. Black text saying "WARJOURNAL" touching the bottom of the white box. Blacken some areas, like the middle of the "A" and the center of the "O" and various other parts. Spatter with spray of 6 and smooth of 8.

Now for the layer palette. New layer and fill it with the alpha channel using a light tan color. Preserve Transparency on. Big air brush with a dark brown and opacity around 30%. Weather the edges. Once you get it where you like it, turn Preserve Transparency off. Now displace with default setting using the other doc as the map.

Now for the final touch in this experiment. Go back to the doc used for the displacement map. Select all. Copy. Go back to the second doc and paste onto a new layer. Clip it to the paper and set to overlay.

Not bad, I think. Any questions?

BTW, I would use it as a sig, but the file size is a bit too pricey for me (18K).

Well the paper doesnt look bad, its the actual text that I dont like ... it just looks horrible.

The font is Machine Something-or-other. I pretty much picked it at random since this is only an experiment. It is rather illegible.

I've done another quick mock-up to get the shading to match the warping. I did an exaggerated warp, then did a C&P on the displacement into an alpha channel, gaussed at 4.0, and used that in lighting effects. Does the warp and the shading seem to match at all?
http://www.tir.com/~lhalmich/warpjournal.jpg

Actually, I'm somewhat pleased with this technique -- not the graphic mind you, but the technique. Time to add another trick to my bag. Here's to fiddling and learning.

Ooo, yes, that 2nd experiment looks great.

First experiment needs a bit of help though. The actual paper looks cool, but first off the blurry edges don't work well with the burnt concept. The edges of the lettering where it's burnt need to be more jagged and blackened at the edge. I would actually try simulating the burning process by first making the text blackened fading back to the paper color rather quickly near the edges of the text. Then knock out the most solid black parts leaving small jagged edges as would happen if you really burnt some paper then cleared out the extremely burnt part. Gotta have those crispy burnt edges around the text or it won't look real.

yes I agree the 2nd experiement looks awesome. A lot better then the first!