Locked lesson.
About this lesson
Get that pixelated look into your image editing, or use the basics of this lesson to apply 2D images to a cube shape.
Exercise files
Download the Photoshop files used in the video tutorial and try the lesson yourself.
Create the Minecraft Icon.psd731.7 KB Create the Minecraft Icon.psd
731.7 KB
Quick reference
Topic: Create a Minecraft Style Icon
When to use
Get that pixelated look into your image editing, or use the basics of this lesson to apply 2D images to a cube shape.
Instructions
Create New Document and Guilds
- Create a new document, size 512 by 512
Go to Menu/View/New Guild.
Vertical: 5%
Vertical: 95%
Vertical: 50%
Horizontal 16%
Horizontal 36%
Horizontal 79%
Draw out Box Shape
- With a diamond shapes, draw out top shape, draw out left side shape, draw out right side shape and change colors slightly.
Create a texture
- Create new Layer.
Foreground Color: 332616
Background Color: a4744d - Choose Gradient Tool. Foreground to Background and set to linier, drag from top to bottom.
- Go To Menu/Filter/Texture/Stained Glass: cell size 27, thickness 20, Intensity 0.
- Go To Menu/Filter/Pixelate/Mosaic: Cell size 40.
Mess with the colors a bit
- Select the top 3 levels of the layer, and add a hue and saturation adjustment layer.
Blend Mode Linier Dodge
Hue: 80,
Saturation: 55,
Lightness: 0. - With pencil tool choose square brush with size that matches the layer color blocks
- Select adjustment layer mask and click on the block to turn some back to brown.
- ClickHold down Command/Control and click on the layer mask and add a levels adjustment layer:
Drag Highlight 200, Midtones 1.30, Shadows 13.
Moulding the new texture to the box shape
- Select the texture layers and create new folder.
- Command (Mac) or Control (Windows) + ‘T’ for Transform.
- Hold down Command/Control and drag the corners to fit with the left side of box shape created earlier.
- Duplicate texture Group and repeat (transform to right side).
Top texture
- Repeat texture creation:
New Layer
Foreground Color: 4e6e21
Background Color: 89b948 - Choose gradient tool: Foreground to Background and set to linier, drag from top to bottom.
- Go To Menu/Filter/Texture/Stained Glass: Cell size 27, thickness 20, Intensity 0.
- Go To Menu/Filter/Pixelate/Mosaic: Cell size 40.
- Command/Control + ‘T’ for Transform.
- Hold down Command/Control and drag the corners to fit with the top of box shape created earlier.
To add a little more Depth
- Left side texture. Command/Control click on the layer mask and add a levels adjustment layer.
Drag mid-tones a bit to the right.
Add to all texture Layers
- Go To Menu/Filter/Sharpen/UnSharp Mask.
- 00:04 Hello, Photoshopers and Minecrafters.
- 00:06 It was suggested that I create a tutorial on how to create the Minecraft icon
- 00:10 in Photoshop.
- 00:11 Let's get to it.
- 00:12 The first thing we need to do is to create our document and lay out our 3D shape.
- 00:17 In terms of the document size, I'm going to be starting with a 512 X 512 document.
- 00:22 Of course, you are free to use any size that you wish.
- 00:25 To make the creation of the 3D shape easier, let's go ahead and
- 00:28 lay out some guides to help our perspective.
- 00:31 Heading up to the view menu and then down to new guide,
- 00:33 we can tell Photoshop exactly where to put these guides.
- 00:37 We're gonna start with the vertical guides.
- 00:39 The first one will be placed at 5% to define the left edge.
- 00:43 The second one at 95% for
- 00:45 the right edge, and the third one smack in the middle at 50%.
- 00:49 For those wondering, I was able to set up a shortcut for
- 00:52 the new guide function in the keyboard shortcut editor, under the edit menu.
- 00:57 For the horizontal guides, the first one's gonna be placed at 16% for
- 01:00 the corners of the top box, the second one at 36%,
- 01:04 which will be the bottom edge of the top box, and finally, 79% for the final guide.
- 01:09 This will define the bottom corners.
- 01:12 Good, now that we have our guides up, let's create our shape.
- 01:16 When a design is complete, the shape that we are about to create won't be visible to
- 01:19 us, but it's definitely gonna help in the design process.
- 01:22 Go ahead and select your pen tool from the tools on the left, and
- 01:25 make sure that you have the shapes layer option selected at the top.
- 01:29 Now, draw out the top shape of the box.
- 01:32 I'm going to start in the middle and
- 01:33 create a diamond shape using the guides as a guide to where your point should go.
- 01:38 You might notice that your points snap to the guides.
- 01:41 This can be very helpful.
- 01:43 Now that the first shape is created,
- 01:44 I'm going to press the new shape layer icon at the top and
- 01:47 change the color, just so we can differentiate it between the other shapes.
- 01:51 Now, we can go ahead and
- 01:52 draw out the left side of the shape, again, using my guides as a reference.
- 01:57 Once that shape is done, click the new shape layer icon again,
- 02:01 change the color, and let's draw out the final shape on the right.
- 02:05 Don't stress too much over the colors of the shapes.
- 02:07 Again, you're not gonna be seeing these shapes once the final design is complete.
- 02:11 If you want to hide your guides now that we're finished, you can do so
- 02:13 under the view menu at the top.
- 02:16 Now that we have our basic shape, it's time to create the texture.
- 02:19 This process is going to be pretty bizarre, but
- 02:21 it's all gonna come together in the end.
- 02:23 Let's start by creating a new layer for our texture, and
- 02:26 we need to set our colors.
- 02:27 Our foreground color is going to be the darkest of the blocks,
- 02:31 which I'm going to set to 332316.
- 02:35 And the background color is going to be our light color,
- 02:39 which I'm gonna set to a5744d.
- 02:42 Of course, you're free to choose any colors that you wish.
- 02:45 With those set, grab your gradient tool from the left, choose the foreground to
- 02:49 background gradient, and make sure it's set to linear.
- 02:52 Once that's set, drag out a gradient from the top to the bottom.
- 02:57 This next step is gonna seem completely nuts, but
- 02:59 I'll explain why I'm doing it as we're going.
- 03:02 Head up to the filter menu, down to texture, and choose stained glass.
- 03:06 What I'm trying to do here is to get chunks of dark color
- 03:09 throughout the texture, which will eventually turn into blocks.
- 03:12 Creating contrast will be important when adding the next filter.
- 03:16 For these settings, the cell size is gonna be set to 27,
- 03:19 the border thickness all the way to 20, and put the light intensity at zero.
- 03:22 We've already gone ahead and set our colors with the gradient.
- 03:25 Now obviously, this looks nothing like blocks, but watch this.
- 03:29 Head back up to filter, down to pixelate, and then choose mosaic.
- 03:34 That's a lot better.
- 03:35 I've found that a cell size of 40 works quite well.
- 03:38 Our last stained glass filter gave the mosaic a lot of nice colors to work with.
- 03:42 That's why it was added in the first place.
- 03:45 Using a rectangular marquee tool,
- 03:46 make a selection around the top three rows of blocks.
- 03:49 These will primarily be changing to green.
- 03:51 Once they are selected, add a hue and
- 03:53 saturation adjustment layer from the bottom of your layers panel, and
- 03:57 change the blend mode of this adjustment layer to linear dodge.
- 04:01 Now, for the settings, I'm gonna set the hue to 80, the saturation to 55,
- 04:05 and the lightness I'm gonna keep at zero.
- 04:07 Now, if you've seen the Minecraft icon, it's not completely green at the top.
- 04:12 There are some brown blocks that poke through.
- 04:14 In your tools on the left, go ahead and grab the pencil tool, which should be
- 04:18 hiding with brush tool, and choose a square brush with a size of 40 pixels.
- 04:23 If you don't see square brushes in your list,
- 04:25 click the little arrow to the right and choose square brushes.
- 04:29 With that set, make sure you have the adjustment layers layer mask selected, and
- 04:33 start clicking on the blocks that you want to turn brown again.
- 04:37 It might be a good idea to zoom in so you can really see these blocks up close.
- 04:42 If you change your mind about a certain block or
- 04:43 you wanna add a few blocks below the three rows,
- 04:46 you can switch your brush over to white and paint those blocks back in.
- 04:49 There;s no specific design that you need to create, so have fun with it.
- 04:53 Once you're finished with these blocks,
- 04:55 there's one more adjustment that we need to add.
- 04:58 In your layers panel, command or control click on the layer mask, and
- 05:02 then go ahead and add a levels adjustment layer.
- 05:04 I'm gonna drag the highlight slider to the left, around 200,
- 05:07 the midtone slider to around 1.30, and the shadow slider to around 13.
- 05:12 This will brighten up the blocks just a touch.
- 05:15 Perfect, now you can either merge these three layers together or
- 05:18 stick them in the folder.
- 05:19 I'm gonna go ahead and select all these layers, hold down my shift key, and
- 05:23 click-on the new group icon to pop them in a folder all together.
- 05:27 Now, to mold them to the shape on the left that we created earlier, go ahead and
- 05:30 enter transform mode by going to edit and then click on free transform.
- 05:35 And then, with your command key on a Mac,
- 05:36 control key on a PC held down, drag the corner nodes of this texture to
- 05:40 the corners of the shape layer that we created earlier.
- 05:42 You'll probably notice that things snap really nicely into place.
- 05:46 That's another benefit of creating the shapes beforehand.
- 05:49 Once a texture is in place, press the return or
- 05:51 enter key on your keyboard to accept the transformation.
- 05:54 Now, from here, you can either duplicate the group and flip it horizontally or
- 05:58 you can create a new texture from scratch using the same process.
- 06:01 The advantage of creating a new texture is that the blocks won't be identical.
- 06:06 Because I just walked you through that process,
- 06:07 I'm not gonna waste time and do it again.
- 06:09 I've already got another texture ready to go.
- 06:12 The last step is to create the top texture.
- 06:14 We're going to use pretty much the same process.
- 06:16 Let's start by creating a new layer, and setting our colors.
- 06:20 The foreground color will be set to the darker of the greens, which will be 4E,
- 06:25 6E, 21, and the background color will be the lighter of the greens, 89, B9, 48.
- 06:33 Once again, grab the gradient tool from the left and
- 06:35 drag out a linear gradient from the top to the bottom.
- 06:39 With that done, head to filter, texture, stained glass.
- 06:42 And if you haven't used this filter since we created the brown blocks,
- 06:45 the settings should be stuck.
- 06:47 Press okay to accept the changes.
- 06:48 And once again head to filter, pixelate, mosaic and accept the changes.
- 06:54 Now, just like we did before, go ahead and enter free transform mode.
- 06:57 And using the command or control key, drag the corners of
- 07:00 our texture layer to the corners of the shape that we created earlier.
- 07:04 Perfect, we're just about finished.
- 07:06 From here, you can add additional adjustment layers to create more depth to
- 07:09 our shape.
- 07:10 I'm gonna add a levels adjustment layer to the texture on the right-hand side, and
- 07:14 drag the mid-tone slider a little bit to the right.
- 07:17 Good. And once last thing you
- 07:18 might wanna add is a sharpen filter.
- 07:20 Selecting your texture, head up to filter, down to sharpen, and then unsharp mask.
- 07:25 Go ahead and play around with the settings until you
- 07:26 can get a nice sharpness that you're happy with.
- 07:29 Apply this filter to all of your texture layers, and
- 07:31 from here it's completely up to you what you do with it
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