DOG TAG TUTORIAL

written by Dani (Glitter Frosting) on August 15, 2007

No part of this tutorial may be replicated! Link back to this tutorial if you know people who also want to learn!

Today you will learn how to make your own dog tags:

There are a million ways to make a dog tag, here is one that worked for me!

So lets get started. What you will need:

* Patience and your favorite drink at hand
* PSP 8 or different version of it (the tut is written in PSP 8)
* the dog tag shape I made from scratch, get it HERE
* Eyecandy 4000, get it HERE

1. Open your shape file in PSP

2. With your magic wand, click on the black shaoe, (if you don't have Eyecandy, flood fill the area with a metal gradient from your palette)

3. SELECTION --> Promote Selection to new layer

4. SELECTION ---> Modify ---> Expand and use the following settings, hit OK

5. With your erasor delete the grey area (remember the real tag is on the layer below)

6. Flood fill your selection with black

7. SELECTION --> Modify --> Contract by about 12 pixles

8. delete the inside with your erasor, you now have a ring, which will be our silencer

9. The whole thing looks too edgy for my taste, so we will smooth it out with the Soften Brush and these settings:

10. EFFECTS --> 3D Effects --> Inner Bevel with these settings

11. EFFECTS --> Plug-Ins --> Eyecandy 4000 ---> Gradient Glow with these settings (or EFFECTS--> 3D --> drop shadow and play around in there)

12. Now lets move back to the grey tag layer at the bottom, and apply a Chrom effect with Eyecandy 4000, using these settings:

13. Lets add a new layer on top of the metal tag for some shade: LAYERS --> New Raster Layer

14. With your paint brush apply some shade lines, this is where you make it a one of a kind piece!:

15. ADJUST --> Blur --> Montion Blur, with these settings:

16. Now that is a little much shade, so we will take down the occupacy by a little:

17. Now go back to the metal tag layer and with your erasor tool make a hole so we can later on add a chain, take the hardness of the erasor down a little so we avoid edgy-ness...lol.

18. To make it look more real, apply the same gradient glow from Eyecandy, we used on the black silencer

19. Save your dog tag!

20. EDIT --> copy merged, close that file

21. open a new canvas EDIT ---> paste as new layer and arrage your dog tag where you want

22. open a second new canvas, time for some balls :)

23. With your shape tool, having the inside set to grey, and the line width set to 0 draw a small ball like that

24. LAYERS --> Convert to raster layer

25. Now apply the following chrome settings from Eyecandy 4000

26. And lets add the same black gradient glow we added to all our elements

27. Copy the ball and EDIT --> paste as new image

28. Now we will make the ball part of your tubes :) FILE --> Export ---> Picture Tube, give it a name and click ok

29. Go back to the dog tag canvas we have been neglecting, time to get chained up.

30. Chose the new ball you just made from your tubes: and use these settings:

scale: 90, step 14, placement mode: continuous

31. Add a new raster layer to your dog tag LAYERS --> New Raster Layer

32. And now place the balls, keeping your mouse clicked down, drag it over the canvas and see what happens, after some practice try to make it look like that:

33. Now we have to edit the chain a bit to match our perspective, use the erasor tool with low hardness and graze along the edges:

34. Save your result! If you want to, merge the layers LAYERS --> Merge Visible

Hooray, you now made this:

Hugs