Attempt at a Lightsaber

[Zair Xanatos]

I'm not an artist or a miracle worker when it comes to Photoshop. I'm still I guess a noob when it comes to things like this.

Since this place is about Star Wars I was thinking of making a Jedi character but wanted to try and learn how to make a lightsaber, that way I won't have to poke and bug extremely good artist over and over again when I need to edit one. So I tried my hand at making a "lightsaber" followed two youtube tutorials and mix the two and got this result.

Was wondering what yall thought about the attempt. Also looking to hopefully better the skill so is there better tutorials you recommended?

 

[Tristram Senan]

[member="Odhran Schwarz"]

Just cut out the rest of the picture and have only the sword there for a sub and it will look alright. I've seen worse for sure.

My only suggestion would be to try to get that purple to blend better with the rest of the picture. There is a mist going on obscuring things but that blade just sort of sticks out with its brightness. If you could maybe shade some reflecting color around it in the mist or dull down the glow? I'm not much of an artist just giving my thoughts.

 

[Huxy]

Good job, better than I could do. As for making the image look better: make the sword blend in more with the image. As [member="Tristram Senan"] said, it's kind of misty up on the mountaintop in the image so overlay a mist effect and try to blend the colors together. Also, maybe make the color of the blade not as bright. The scene is kind of dark with the environment so try to make the color of the blade fit with the scene. Otherwise, it stands out far too much and looks off. Look at pictures of lightsabers from the movies to get what I mean.
[member="Odhran Schwarz"]

 

[Zair Xanatos]

I can take away the blue coloring in the background. Not sure if that will help.

[member="FN-2826"]

Attempt to darken/dull the lightsaber. Can't make it dark to like Mace Windu keeps fighting me on that.

Attempt 2

 

[Luther Lewis]

I agree with the others in that you have done pretty well so far. The tricky thing about lightsabers is they give off, well, light. And as soon as you start playing around with light and shadow it becomes that much harder.

For some reason they didn't have this effect in the prequel movies (perhaps it was never dark enough to exaggerate the light) but you can see it in the picture of Finn from the Force Awakens:

Spoiler

The lightsaber has a glow around the blade and lights up Finn's face. The background is a similar colour to your picture as well. The light of the sword is emphasized by the mist, which gives it a larger glow around the blade. See how the colour doesn't actually fade until it is quite far away from the blade.

Your blade is not near your character, but is instead embedded in the rock. Therefore, it would be casting a strong light on ground and, as it is very close, it would cast a strong light much like the light on Finn's face (opposed to the soft glow around the saber). You could also add a bright orange flair from the saber melting the stone, an example is below:

Spoiler

You can use some of these suggestions by adding more translucent layers to the aforementioned areas. Unfortunately, it might also require a bit of fiddling around.

Good Luck!

 

[Audren Sykes]

Been a while since I played with pure lightsaber blades. Like [member=Maxine] said however, they tend to give off light (there are a few outliers to this generality) so shading the area around if applicable tends to add to realism.

Also like Maxine said, the burn can add to the image too. That said, I can't tell if the blade is embedded in the rock or if the rock is eclipsing it. If it's eclipsing, there should be a solid cut, no overlap. If it's embedded in the rock, we should see some burn/melt.

The lightsaber blade is usually not wider than the emitter. Again, there are exceptions to this.

In general, I've found the Screen layer type with the black (neutral) background works well for most situations, and from there it's a matter of getting the blur sizing right. The ambient coloring works well with a hue or color layer and low opacity/flow with the brush, sometimes Soft Light or Overlay layers.