Make a Sidescroller Game Scene In Photoshop

In this tutorial, we’re going to be making a scene that’s sort of like Super Mario. Except Super Mario won’t be in it.

Step 1. Open up a document of these dimensions:

Step 2. Make a new layer and call it “sky”:

Step 3. Use the Paint Bucket Tool to fill the layer black.
Step 4. Right click on the “sky” layer in the layers panel, and go to Blending Options:

Step 5. Make a new layer called “cloud”:

Step 6. Get the Elliptical Marquee Tool and draw a circle with it.

Step 7. Make sure Add to Selection is selected in the Elliptical Marquee settings tool bar:

Step 8. Now draw several more circles, each one overlapping another. Because you have Add to Selection selected, it will join all the circles together:

Step 9. Get the Paint Bucket Tool and fill the cloud black:

Step 10. Press Ctrl-D to deselect the marching ants:

Tip: If you feel that your cloud’s shape looks a bit weird, try following these 2 guidelines:

• 1. Try to keep the general shape of your cloud a triangle. Keep the bottom of the cloud relatively flat.
• 2. Use the SHIFT key while drawing ellipses to make them all circles, rather than elongated ovals.

Step 11. Go to the Blending Options for the cloud and give it these settings:

and these…

and you will get this:

Step 12. Go ahead and make another cloud of a different size. Make it a little different of course.

Note that when you create a new cloud and fill it in with black, you DO NOT HAVE TO go into the blending options and set everything up again! Instead, just copy the layer style from the original cloud onto the new cloud, as illustrated below:

and then…

Step 13. Having 2 clouds is enough for at this point, but if you want to make it look better, make some more clouds

Now we will make a rainbow that goes between the 2 goes.

Step 14. Create a new layer called “Rainbow”.

Step 15. Get the Rectangular Marquee Tool and draw a stripe like this, with the color indicated:

Step 16. Press Ctrl-D to deselect the marching ants, then duplicate the yellow stripe layer and use the Paint Bucket Tool to fill it in with #c0ff00. Then, move it downwards to reveal the yellow stripe:

Step 17. Do it a third time … you know the drill:

Step 18. Select all 3 stripe layers (Ctrl+ Click each of them), and click on merge layers. Now the raindbow is one layer.

Step 19. Go to Filter->Distort->Polar Coordinates:

Press OK, and you should have an upside down arch which is your rainbow.

A Tip: If you have Adobe Photoshop CS2 +, you can also do this step using the warp tool. To enter the warp tool, you need to press Ctrl-T to while having your rainbow selected. On the top toolbar settings for the transformation, there will be a button that when clicked, will allow you to enter the warp mode. Select a premade warp style.
Step 20. Arrange the graphics however you want to. You will need to use Ctrl-T to rotate the maybe resize the rainbow. Also you will need to, in the layers box, make the rainbow layer behind the clouds:

Now, let’s make some land.

Step 21. Download this striped graphic:

You can make your own stripes if you wish.
Step 22. Open up the striped graphic in Photoshop. Go to Edit->Define Pattern:

Step 23. Now you can close the striped file and go back to the file we were working on.

Step 24. Make a new layer and call it “land”.

Step 25. Select the Rounded Rectangle Tool and give it these settings:

• Foreground color to black
• Radius 15px

Step 26. Draw a solid black rectangle like this:

Step 27. For the rectangle, give it these settings:

Step 28. Make some more stuff! You should be able to do the following easily:

TIPS:

• The pipe is just 2 rectangles stacked on top of each other, with the same blending options. The gradient for the pipe is:
  
• The stars are made using the Brush Tool, with these settings:

Use different sizes and opacities for the stars.

Thanks! Cya next time