Create a Medal
27 January 2007
Introduction
In this tutorial, you will learn how to use Adobe Photoshop to create fairly realistic-looking medals. What you do with the end product is up to you; I originally developed the techniques when asked to design medals for a role-playing game.
Let's get started, shall we?
The Strap
Open a new canvas at about 150 pixels x 200 pixels at a resolution of 72 dpi.
Let's start out with the strap. Double click the layer's title in the layer window and change it to "strap." Click on the Rectagular Marquee Tool (M) and set a fixed size of 100px x 75px. Now click in the layer and drag the highlighted area up to the middle of the top border. Now fill (Alt + Backspace) this layer with D70000.
In the top panel of the layers window you'll see the word "Lock" to the left of four icons. Click the first, checkerboard icon to lock transparent pixels. This will allow us to only draw on top of red rectangle we just created.
Open up the Pencil Tool (B) at 50px, 100% opacity, and 100% hardness. Set the color as 000FD7. Holding shift to keep the line straight, run a 50px strip of 000FD7 down the center of our red background.
Repeat the previous line-making process again, only this time use a 20px pencil of solid white, FFFFFF.
Now let's add some blending effects. One of the effects we're going to add is to give the strap a linen texture. To do this, we'll have to import the texture itself. You can get the texture (which is just an image of linen) right here.
Open up the linen image in Photoshop and navigate to Edit > Define Pattern. Name it "Linen" and click OK. The linen pattern/texture is now imported.
Now right click the strap layer and select 'Blending Options' and input the following settings:
Note that this is the Linen texture.
The image should now look similar to this:
// The Bar
Now we need a metal bar to connect the strap to the actual medal. Create a new layer (Ctrl + Shift + N or Layer > New > Layer) and name it "bar." Set the foreground color to 9F9F9F. Use a 16px Pencil Tool at 100% opacity and hardness to create two circles at each lower corner of the strap. Example:
Now connect the two circles with a 10px line of the same color.
At this point your layers window should look like this:
Open up the bar's blending options and use the following settings:
Extra shadowing can be added with the Burn Tool (O). Use a 15px brush set to highlights at 20% exposure and brush along the outer edges of the bar. It should now look something like this:
The Medal
We finally get to the medal itself. Create a new layer and name is "medal." Open up the Custom Shape Tool (U) and select the "Sherriff's Badge" from the shape dropdown menu.
Again using the foreground color of 9F9F9F, hold Shift, and draw the background of your medal.
Position the sherriff's badge shape a few pixels below the metal bar. Now go back into the bar connect the two objects using a pencil of 3 or 4 pixels.
At this point your layers window should look like this:
Open up the medal layer's blending options and use the following settings:
Gloss Contour settings:
Now open up the Burn Tool (O), set the brush to 50px and an exposure of 20%, and burn the upper right half of the medal. Now switch to the Dodge Tool and, using the same settings as the burn, dodge along the lower left portion of the medal. If done correctly, this will give the medal a nice shiny gleam:
Zoom out and burn/dodge to taste. From there you can add whatever emblem of symbol your heart desires, or just leave the medal as flat metal. Here's what I came up with:
Final Thoughts
You can use this method with other colors, shapes, and patterns to create any type of medal you want. Here are some examples:
