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Alright, the aim of the game is to end up with something like this:
Start with a new image in GIMP. Since we’re going to rotate the slide around to get it at an angle, you’re going to want a somewhat large canvas, preferably square. For this tutorial, I made mine 500 x 500.
Create a new transparent layer and name it “top slide” in the Layers Dialog. Use the Rectangle Selection tool to make a rectangle roughly 350 px wide and 90 px tall in the center of the layer. Fill this selection with a very light grey color. I used #aaaaaa.
Deselect the rectangle and apply a Gaussian blur of 10 px. Then go to Layer > Colors > Levels, change the Channel to Alpha, and move all three of the triangles in Input Levels to the center. This should be your result:
Now duplicate the “top slide” layer. Name this copy “bottom slide.” Set the foreground color to a dark grey (I used #4f4f4f). In the Layers dialog, click the little box just to the right of the Layers mode section to keep the transparency. Then go to Edit > Fill with FG color. Your bottom slide should now be a dark grey. In the Layers dialog, move the “top slide” layer up so that it is now on top of the “bottom slide” layer. Select the “bottom slide” layer and use the Move Selection tool to adjust it so that the bottom and right sides of the bottom slide are just barely visible, like here:
Merge the “top slide” and “bottom slide” layers and set the opacity of the result to about 30. Now it looks more like a scientific glass slide.
Now for the blood. This is where you can get a bit creative if you choose. For this tutorial, I used brush 14 in the Shadow-GFX Blood brush set by ~Project-GimpBC at deviantART, which can be downloaded here:
http://www.deviantar...mpbrushes+blood
You can choose a brush from a different blood brush set or you can make your own blood using whatever method you are familiar with, but bear in mind that it needs to look like a DROP, not a smear or a spatter. Once you have decided on how you’re going to make a blood drop, create a new transparent layer and name it “blood.” Create your blood drop on this layer. For color, I chose #a40000. If you’re using the same brush that I did, you’ll find that the resulting blood drop is much too large for the slide. In this case, scale the layer down so that it fits inside the slide (I scaled mine down to 25%, or 125 x 125 px). Be sure to erase any spatter or parts of the drop that go beyond the borders of the slide, or even onto the edges of the bottom slide. Use the Move Selection tool to adjust the blood drop so that it is roughly in the center of the slide. In the Layers dialog, move the “blood” layer under the slide layer. You should now have something like this:
It looks good, but we need to make it look more like glass. To do this, we’re going to apply a bit of a glare. Select the slide layer and go to Filters > Light Effects > Lighting Effects. Under the Light tab, set the Light Type to Directional. Now adjust the pointer to make the light look realistic. Keep it subtle. I made it so that the light came from the top left and didn’t go beyond the top left quadrant of the slide. Experiment to your liking. When you’re done, you should have something like this:
The slide is basically done, but I find that it looks a little more artistic if the slide is at an angle. Merge the slide and blood layers. Make sure you have the resulting layer selected, then select the Rotate tool (Shift+R). Click on the slide, and in resulting window slide the bar around to get the slide at an aesthetically pleasing angle. I put mine at –25, giving me this:
And that’s pretty much it. You now have a blood slide as seen on the Showtime show Dexter. Get creative with it. Add another light glare. Try different angles and blood drops. Darken the bottom slide. Add an interesting background. I created the background seen here with a gradient:
I’d like to see your results. Questions and comments are always welcome.
