Making the ZERO wallpaper

This wallpaper was made in Photoshop CS6 based on the character called ZERO from a popular video game called Borderlands 2.


I started off with an image of the character:

I used the pencil tool to give him an outline, right clicked to remove the anchor point and 'make selection'. With the marquee tool I right clicked on the selection right click to 'select inverse so everything around ZERO was selected instead and I deleted the background so I was left with the character. I wanted to give him a cold look so I got a steel texture background and enlarged ZERO to place in front of it. Then I selected 'FILTER - RENDER - LIGHTING EFFECTS' to give ZERO a shadow.

I changed this metal layer to 'pin light' and added a second layer as an 'overlay' to make this:

The wallpaper would not be a Borderlands wallpaper without the famous vault symbol so I placed it behind the two metal layers. I then used a text called 'Jacinto Sans' that I downloaded for a nice rusty style for the 'ZERO' then used impact for the large 'THE ASSASSIN'. On 'the assassin' I did ctrl T and held down ctrl (or CMD on MAC) and moved one of the corners of the object to give it the tilt.

To finish off I snuck my name in the corner.