How to apply make up to get THE JOKER look

[panchoskywalker]

Hello, I would like to apply make up on this picture in order to get THE JOKER look. I tried with painting brush on extra layer and setting the layer to soft light. And I got this result but my guess is that there's maybe a way to get more real looking result. Any Idea?

http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2720/4505152849_1bd929e516_o.jpg

[edgework]

Re: How to apply make up to get THE JOKER look

Gradient maps and careful masking.

Soft light mode will either lighten or darken the texture beneath with a uniform value based on the color applied. Color mode will apply a uniform saturation value, which never looks right. Hue mode retains the value and saturation of the underlying skin but with highlights and shadows, the color effect becomes too weak to register.

Gradient maps allow you to choose your main color, and spin highlight and shadow values off from that, then adjust them with the gradient sliders to customize the range to the underlying texture. It sounds weird trying to explain it, but if you just play around with a layer, start with a target color, then add lighter and darker versions to produce the entire range, you'll see how they work.

[panchoskywalker]

Re: How to apply make up to get THE JOKER look

Let me see if I get it. For the white skin I create a gradient map with only white in it, then I create a mask in order to limit the effect to the face...and then?

[edgework]

Re: How to apply make up to get THE JOKER look

Varying shades of neutral to account for highlights and shadows. Then do the same with red for the lips. I'd mask out the lip area from the white mask, then finesse the edges of each region.

[panchoskywalker]

Re: How to apply make up to get THE JOKER look

I made some improvement but I'm still not that satisfied with the red and the black, could u have a look at the psd file? it's just 11mb

https://mega.co.nz/#!KUd3XLQa!cU9nUE5dTS11lIMTKeX6rVf2nP8-jbbqLjW4mid-x3E

[Flashtones]

Re: How to apply make up to get THE JOKER look

I think your biggest problem isn't which blend mode or color tool to use (I'd probably use curves alone for the red and green, and curves plus desaturation for the white and black) but the artistry of your selections. You need to have your red and black areas work into the contours of the face. There's more going on here than just taking a soft brush and painting a happy face:

[Flashtones]

Re: How to apply make up to get THE JOKER look

Just to make a quick point, I left your green hair but used curves for the white, black and red. Look how much more natural definition of the skin and lighting is allowed to show thru. I just used your selections for speed.

[panchoskywalker]

Re: How to apply make up to get THE JOKER look

How that is cool, thank you. So the way to do it would be make good selections and then use curves on any selection, leaving the blend mode to normal on every selection layer? I'm not an expert sorry.

[Flashtones]

Re: How to apply make up to get THE JOKER look

Yes, all layers on normal (aside from your green hair layer in Soft Light).

The lips takes just a single curve to both darken and add red, as shown. For the skin and eyes, which I'm also desaturating, the lightening/darkening curves are in a folder with a Hue/Sat layer set to ~75% desaturation. All on Normal mode.

[panchoskywalker]

Re: How to apply make up to get THE JOKER look

Awesome! Thanks a lot!