Hi. First of all, I hope I'm not coming off as some arrogant dude thinking
he's a graphics God... I'm just a dude hoping to create some enthusiam
towards design in these forums as most people seem to be more excited
about photoshop effects and techniques rather than creating an Art piece.

I will be walking you through the steps of how I created my graphics and
hopefully it's easy to grasp using these examples. Each part with focus
on one graphic.

Note: Many of my graphics are about prowrestling, cuz I enjoyed watching
during Stone Cold and the Rock era when it was pretty cool. You don't have
to agree, but whatever. Anyway, the forum I used to post these in had
alot of dope graphics heads so we used to make posters of every PPV events
and we'd get votes on who had the best graphics... It was like graphics
battle royal and shit. It was pretty cool. Maybe we can do something like
that here, when we get more participation and skill level.

For our first graphic, we will go over how I came up with a piece for TNA wrestling event called Final Resolution. I wish I saved the PSD so that I
could have done step by step screenshots of the process, but that's a
no go. Sorry for that.

STEP 1: Deciding Concept

I think what I wanted to convey here was that this dude called Archangel
or something, was going to take over TNA. This dude is like a Gothic,
spritual character and TNA would write storylines where he was supposed
to be good and top of the food chain in the X Division. I don't know if that
was accurate or not, but that's besides the point. That was the message
I was going for.

Now that I know the message, it was time to get to work. Take an importnat
note here... Everything I do, will be centered around this message. Everthing.
Everything you do to a garphic will either enforce your message, or take
away from it causing confusion and wackness. Everything you do to a graphic
should have a reason. Not just to make it look cool. The reason has to deal
with your message.

STEP 2: Planning how to Convey Concept

First, I knew that I didn't want to just have his picture on it. I wanted to
do something more powerful to enforce the gothic motiff and to emphasize
his force over TNA. So I decided to draw everything instead of using pictures,
and to go with a slight grungy style. Then, I knew that I wanted to draw
a skeleton instead of himself to do somewhat of a "Death" character to drive
the point home that he's gonna get you. The wrestler wears that coat thingy
so that matched up well with the Death theme too. I also wanted gothic
symbols and wings to represent his character. I also wanted it black and
white with touches of red to add accents to the graphic, which conveys
death theme, and blood. You get the picture.

STEP 3: Laying Out Concept (using design principles)

Now I lay thing out. This is a general placing of things, like a rough sketch.
This is about the big picture stuff. Details really don't matter if you don't
have the big picture stuff down. You can simplify everything visual to
forms (dots, lines, shapes, textures, etc.). And colors, dark/light, contrast,
things like that effect how forms are percieved. So it's all about seeing
things as simple forms and laying them out. Once you do that, design much
simpler. It's like you see the Matrix and shit! You can control shit! So...
I knew that the wrestler would be the focal point of the poster. So naturally, he'll take up a good amount of space. I wanted him off center so that the graphic isn't symmetrical and boring. I also wanted a part of him merging
with a dark ground and also wanted gothic symbols to represent graves
behind him. Then I wanted like a ring above his head like some God like
dude. I wanted to use wings to do that, his name is archangel or someshit.
Then, I layout where texts should go making sure they balance out the
graphic around the main character. Also, the Total Non STop action text
in the background was put there to show that it's gonna be engulphed by
him. It's background noise. Get it?

STEP 4: Execution of Concept (Details, effects, etc)

So I draw the guy out according to the layout, add dark ground behind him,
I got a picture of that symbol, from the net and cut it out and made it solid
black, added some lines to it, and put some brushes on it to get that
grungy feel. I add the wings in a halo form, draw the clouds, add grungy
effects to them as well as to the white background. I add the red text and
the main texts. I used grungy fonts and effects to match the concept.

Here was the final work:



I hope you enjoyed this guide. I think what I hope you take away from
this is what it practically means to actually have a concept and follow
through with the concept instead of worrying about the details and
effects first resulting in random looking amaturish art. Some people can
follow a concept by start out with details, but that's because they
intuitively follow a certain direction without actually planning. That only
works if you're advanced enough to already know the process or
if you happen to make something good by accident. Why leave it to
chance? It's fun to just experiement with effects and stuff like that,
but that's for practice and don't expect to reliably create good stuff
that way if you're not already equipped with the power of the design
process ingrained in your brain.

Thanks for reading. I would appreciate any feedback.