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Now open in wide theatrical release is a film that remakes one of the formative books of many a childhood. Typically that’s cause for fear that a special and rare experience hasn’t been done justice.

But in this case, Where the Wild Things Are has world class director Spike Jonze going for it as well as the explicit blessing and accolades of the author Maurice Sendak. It also has a very plugged-in and intelligent social media campaign going on to promote the film.

Case in point, a creative iPhone app (warning: iTunes link) and Facebook page that’s seen impressive growth up to at current count over 1.6 million fans.

In the iPhone app you can watch trailers and view photos of the film as well as hear the soundtrack. But most notably, the creative and delightful part of the app sees the Carol monster as a creature kids (and adults!) can interact with. If put to sleep at night he’ll gobble up your contacts’ photos from your phone — a playful and yet appropriately modern element that’s true to the spirit of the Where the Wild Things Are universe.

The Facebook page is also done well, with a continuous stream of updates featuring behind the scenes information, videos, media coverage, interviews and more. It also features a custom app where users can upload images of themselves to be inserted in place of Max’s face in one of the film’s promotional images.

It’s certainly not the first example of a mainstream film taking advantage of social media promotion tools, but it’s definitely an example of one done well. Did you hear about the film via its social media promotions or its more mainstream publicity campaigns?

So today I will guide you trough some different types of reflection in Photoshop  to make sure you always get it right.

We’ll begin with the easy-do  reflection.

I’ll use as an example a line of text on a black background.

Select the text layer and hit CTRl+ J on your keyboard to copy it on a new layer. You can name  this layer reflection. Now go to Edit/ Transform/ Flip Vertical. And lower this layer underneath the original. It should look like this.

Create a new layer and  get the Gradient Tool  choosing a black to transparent gradient.  Keep the Shift key down and drag a gradient like this.

Now lower the opacity of the reflection layer to a value of about 35. Here is the final result.

Now let’s apply the same principle to a phone (I am using a photo from stock Xchange) in order to create   the illusion that its standing on a somewhat reflective surface. The procedure is made more complicated by the fact that we’re looking down on the phone , resulting in a tricky three-point perspective viewpoint that actually looks pretty cool.

So start by removing the background of your object.

Then copy the phone on a new layer ( CTRL+ J) .  Drag this layer just under the original.

Now go to Edit/ Transform/ Distort and do some distorting on the image until it looks similar to this.

Repeat the steps from the first examples. Use a gradient and reduce the opacity of the under layer.

Finally we will give a reflection to a 3D looking object. The principle stays the same only we need to create the reflection from different sections of our object.

So as you may have noticed, it’s pretty simple to create a good and may I say healthy reflection. A little transforming, some gradient, and an opacity reduction and you are done. However, keep in mind that a good reflection isn’t only about the tecniques involved but it also depends on a good eye and respecting a few basic Physics principles. It may be tempting to try a revolutionary reflection but you risk ending up with an image that just looks weird. So be afraid, be very afraid!

You can also read : Create Stage Curtains In 11 Easy Steps

This is a very quick and easy mode to create stage curtains that you can use in your drawings and no exceptional Photoshop skills are required whatsoever. For this tutorial I used Photoshop CS3.

FINAL IMAGE

You can download the psd file at the end of the tutorial.

Let us begin!

STEP 1

Create a new document of a desired size and fill it with black by using Default Foreground and background Colors(D and the Paint Bucket Tool(G) and click on the workspace. This is usually the first step for many other drawings, so you should get used to this part. You can also add a gradient.

Now duplicate this layer by going to Layers > Duplicate layer… or just press CTRL+J. I recommend you learn shortcuts, they are a life saver.

STEP 2

Grab the Rectangular Marquee Tool (M) and draw a rectangle to cover about 80% of the “Background copy” layer like below.

STEP 3

Go to Filter > Render > Fibers… Set the Variance to about 23 and Strength to 5. Click OK. Now press CTRL+D to deselect.

STEP 4

Now go to Filter > Blur > Motion Blur. Set Angle to 90 degrees and Distance to 500. Should look like the image below.

STEP 5

Open the Levels window (CTRL+L) and play around with the cursors to give it more contrast.

STEP 6

Double-click the top-most layer in the layer palette to bring up the Blending Properties window and check Color Overlay tab. Click that tab and set Blend mode to Multiply.

Grab a color of your choice. I used (#ff0000 – default overlay color).

STEP 7

Duplicate this layer (CTRL+J) and move the curtain on the new layer to the right. Then duplicate it one more time.

STEP 8

Grab the Warp Tool (Edit > Transform > Warp) and curve up the top-most layer image. Then move it to the top right like below.

STEP 9

Open the Blending Properties window (double-click layer) and check “Drop shadow”. Use the settings below.

STEP 10

Duplicate this layer, then move it to the top left corner. Now go to Edit > Transform > Flip Horizontal. Reposition it to look natural.

STEP 11

Go to layer palette and create a new layer group and drag all layers in it. Drag that layer over the “New Layer” button.

Merge the new layer group (select group, press (CTRL+E). Turn off “Group 1″ layer group. We do this so we can be able to edit them later of we need to.

Done!