More Than One Way to Skin a Cat: Create Eye-Popping Effects Using Aviary
5. I repeated the process from steps 3 and 4
to fill in the top outline of the figure. I set each splash segment layer’s Blend Mode to Multiply in the Layers sidebar. This way, when I assembled the figure, the segments weren’t obstructed with remnants of the white background found on your pasted splash segments, and only the water will be seen. Another good practice is to periodically hide the guideline layer to see how the figure stands on its own without it, redisplaying the guideline layer as needed.
6.
To create the beak of the dolphin, I used the same process as for the dolphin’s body. I had to be sure to find an appropriate piece in the water glass image to use for the beak, so I chose the pointiest segment of the water’s splash that I could find. I copied and pasted this segment onto a new layer (Edit > Copy and Edit > Paste) just as I did for the rest of the body. I set the layer’s Blend Mode to Multiply, as well. I used the Transformation Tool to rotate and align this piece to sit directly where I drew in the beak in the guideline and pressed Enter to confirm this transformation.
7. I repeated the process of copying segments
of water from the duplicate of the original layer to assemble the bottom of the dolphin figure. I tried to vary the sections of water as much possible to avoid having an obvious “cloned” effect on the splashes.
8. Just as for the beak, I had to find a seg-
ment in the glass of water image that most resembled the triangular shape of the dorsal fin. I copied an appropriate section of the splash onto a new layer (Edit > Copy and Edit > Paste), aligned it to the dorsal fin area using the Transformation Tool, and set the layer’s Blend Mode to Multiply. I also dragged this layer above the other splash layers in the Layers sidebar. Where the dorsal fin portion overlapped the dolphins’ back, the area appeared to be a little jumbled. So I selected the splash layer which the dorsal fin was obstructing and used the Eraser Tool to erase out the areas directly under the dorsal fin to clean up the area.
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