Well, after being away for so long, I figured it's time for me to write another tutorial. This time I have settled for those plastic tentacles you see all over the web; in interfaces, in signatures even. I, myself did several tutorials on this subject, and then I finally found a very simple way to achieve the same result.

For this tutorial you will need :

• Photoshop CS2 (I don't know about earlier versions as I don't have those. - If CS or 7 have the Artistic Filter Plastic Wrap then those work too)
• Patience
• A smile and maybe some good tunes

Of course the requirements are not that hard, most of these tentacle tutorials will teach you to highlight and add shadowing with an airbrush, since that is not my forte; I use layers and gaussian blur.

• Fire up your Photoshop, and open a document with dimensions of your choice; I opted for 400x400. The background can be transparent, but it's not necesary, infact it is more visible if you choice white or any other color (best not black though). Mine is #9FAABE
• With the Polygon Selection tool, select a triangle, fairly long and narrow.
  
  
• Make a new layer, and fill your selection with black. Do not deselect.
  
• Now make a new layer again, with your selection still active, and fill the selection on this new layer with #FCFCFC (which is an off white). Your image should now look like this. ANd you should have 3 layers, the background layer - which you filled with a color of your own choice, the black triangle layer and the off-white triangle layer.
  
• Here comes the fun part, where most tutorials start to include the hard stuff. Now with your selection still selected, go to Filters > Blur > Gaussian Blur and apply a blur of 4.0. That should make your image have that shadow - smoothness going
  
• You can deselect now (Ctrl+D) and then you press the lil eye icon on the background layer (the one filled with your color) so it becomes invisible, then make sure you have the white or black triangle selected and merge the visible layers (Layers > Merge Visible) or hit Shift+Ctrl+E.
  
• We're not quite there yet, however, we're getting pretty close. A few more steps and you have a brilliant looking tentacle Now, with the tentacle layer highlighted, go to Filters > Distort > Shear. You can play with the settings yourself a bit so it looks like you wanted it to. Here's the settings I used, and then a shot of how the image looks by now
  
• A step closer to completion Now we're going to add the plastic look to our tentacle. The creators of Photoshop must have forseen this, because they made a little filter called Plastic Wrap, now I still wonder why it's done with manually editting the highlights and shadows, since this is so much easier. Anyhow, with the tentacle layer highlighted, you go to Filter > Artistic > Plastic Wrap. I am still amazed that no one told me about this Also I am not sure if this filter is included in Photoshop versions lower than CS, so if you know, let me know.
  Plastic Wrap Settings : Highlight Strenght 9 - Detail 12 - Smoothness 2.
  Highlight strength does exactly what it says, the higher the strength the more visible it will be, so you can toy with the setting as much as you like. Detail is best kept high, of course it depends on the look you want to achieve, and the higher the smoothness the duller the surface of the tentacle will look as it seems to apply a blur on the highlight.
  One thing I noticed with this Plastic Wrap is that when you curl the tentacle too much it will leave you with a jagged highlight, so of course this method has disadvantages, however it's a nice solution for those - like me - who are not that great with shadowing and highlighting. So make sure you use the preview option with care, it is possible that you need to adjust the smoothness to avoid the jaggedness.
  
• Now that's it, you could add a Drop Shadow to it, which will make it look better. Do this by right-clicking on the layer and selecting Blending Options. Or you can use the lil F button on the lower left of the Layer Palette.
  

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial and found it usefull. Most likely this will be "mirrored" on my site.

 

 

 

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awesome that can even double up as Medusa's hair

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This looks nice, and it is not hard to make after I read this tutorial, well now I only need to think where could I use it, but I think I already now

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I think it is a really good effect, which would be useful for futuristic images, and especially in signature or logo making.

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not a bad tut moon, but owuld like to add a few thoughts to it though.

i know they would work well with splash pages but sigs no standard sig sizes won't give it much room to work with logos maybe, possibly flash animation and maybe borders but that would be about it.

only problem i see with it is that you would have to draw the lines and not use the marquee tool, due to the fact that its hard to do the lines straight with out them getting pixelated. of course my other idea would take a little longer with the use of more layers and the use of the distort and perspective tool as well.

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Firstly, the image can be used for anything, if applied properly.

I personally hate splash pages, as they are useless and provide no really substantial purpose.

And if you can do it better than, please make a tutorial about it. I like this sort of thing, and always wondered how it can be made with Photoshop and the likes, without the use of 3D software.

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The easiest method, to avoid the pixelated look would have exceeded the level of this tutorial, I personally use the Pen Tool to draw the triangle. Then I rightclick, fill path with foreground (while black is my forground color), then I make a new layer, right click - fill path with color FCFCFC (or just ANY color you pick). Then you Ctrl + Click on the top layer, which is the not black filled triangle and apply a guassian blur, you really can choose how much, just be sure to have it set so you see some of the black through (it acts as your shadowing). Then you deselect (Ctrl + D) and do the rest of the tutorial without jagged edges. But as I said, this covers more than what I planned for this tutorial, one on using the pen tool will be explained later on.

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Great tutorial Moon . I've actually been able to do the same thing in the GIMP (well almost). Of course, it's not as good as yours, but hey ... I'm just starting out in GIMP. Here's mine:




Just for the note, here's what you have to use in GIMP:

Photoshop<->Gimp

Filters > Blur > Gaussian Blur : Filters > Blur > Gaussian Blur
(To get the same effect as in Photoshop, give different values for horizontal and vertical. I used 10 horizontal and 3 vertical)
Filters > Distort > Shear : Filters > Distort > Whirl & Pinch
Blending Options > Drop Shadoe : Script-Fu > Layer Effects > Drop Shadow

Couldn't find any plastic wrap but, you can't have everything for free right .

 

 

 

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Hey Abhiram, I'll install GIMP again (or just linux all together LOL) and see if I can find the plastic wrap like, there should be something like it I think you did an awesome job at it though, so don't sell yourself short here

You could always write a tutorial on this in GIMP Just a thought of course

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Thanks , but it's not necessary. Anybody using GIMP has to just follow your tutorial and use the tools as I mentioned in the previous post.

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