I've been working for awhile now to come up with a way to make those light burst backgrounds we see in the show with Photoshop and I've finally had success! The technique I've come up with requires no drawing skills at all, which makes it perfect for someone like me. :) The burst effect is generated using a series of filters and transformations in Photoshop. Here's an example of one:



I even threw in the cliche lens flare effect. I'm sure Nerd Corps generates them a totally different way, but they have more skill than me and I think my technique works pretty good. I wrote a tutorial on how to make them yourself if you have Photoshop. There are a number of steps involved, but it's really quite easy. I posted it here on my photoshop-dragon.com web site:

Create your own DB style light burst backgrounds.

And in case you don't have Photoshop, I made a few in different colors that you can use with your fan art if you want. They're located here in my photobucket account:

Click to view gallery of pre-made backgrounds.

Feel free to use any of these if you want; you don't need to ask permission, just take them. They're all 1000x1000 pixels. I made them big so you can crop or reduce them to the proper size to fit you fan art. For example, in the show they frequently don't use the lower half of the circle, so you can get that effect by cropping the images just below the half way mark to create a sort of rising sun effect.

Finally, if you have any feedback on the tutorial I wrote, please let me know. I'm trying to write those so they're fun to read and try. I also try to teach a little about what the filters are doing without getting overly technical. I'd like to know how well it all comes across.

Have fun!

Thanks. I always thought those bursts of light in the background were awesome. Especially in the episode "The Track of Doom" when Beau bashes into some of the orange dragons.

Thanks Furox for letting mr use them there oh soo DRAC!!! Thanks soo much!!!

:*: Allye

Glad you like them. I had a lot of fun figuring out how to make them. I just added another dozen or so to my photobucket gallery. Have fun with them! :)

oh got an idea make a rainbow coloured one if anyone makes chromatic dragons lol

Tanx Furox, those backgrounds are drac.

oh wow they are awsome!!! I'll for sure use them great work furox!!!
~Shearkin

I made some more backgrounds, this time with horizontal lines instead of the circular light burst pattern. We see these in the show a lot to accentuate horizontal motion, so I thought people might like some of those as well for their fan art. I made them in all the primary colors.

Click here for a sample

If you have Photoshop or other image editing tool, you can alter these further to fit your art. For example, if your art has some sort of angular motion to it, then you can rotate these to match the angle and crop them down so you have a nice rectangle again. And if they're not quite the right color for what you need, just use the colorizier to fix them. Go to Image->Adjustments->Hue/Saturation and click the Colorize box, then fiddle with the sliders until you get the color you need.

Another thing you can try is to squeeze it vertically. I made these pretty bigger so that large pieces of fan art would fit, but they're probably too tall for most things. So instead of cropping off the excess height, try scaling it down vertically instead. This will squeeze the lines together and change the look which can make a nice effect.

And if there's any kind of perspective in your art work, you can use Photoshop's Edit->Transform->Perspective tool to make it look like the lines are receding into the distance.

All the backgrounds are here in my photobucket account.

Have fun!

yay awesome more fun with fan art ^^ *Dances with Aquarius*

Um, my version of Photoshop lacks the Render->Fiber effect. :(

That's OK. Using the Fiber rendering filter is an optional step that is there to provide a way to get more variation in the designs. Just use the pattern fill with the bubbles as described in "Option 1" of that same step and skip "Option 2".

Very nice, Furox, very nice. This should be a great help to everybody!! :plot:

I was wondering where people got all those! Now I know. Those are cool. Thanks, I really needed to use some!
~Alexis

Do you think this would be possible in the Gimp? I'm fairly new to Gimp and haven't looked at the tutorial yet. I could always get Gimpshop, but I kinda wanna know if I can do this with the regular Gimp. Anyone know?

I don't think Gimp has all the filters and features I used in Photoshop. You'll have to check and see. If not, there's probably an alternate way of getting a similar effect, but you'll have to spend the time to figure it out. If you're new to Gimp, you'll probably have to invest quite a bit of study time to work out an alternative.

umm where is the cntl button?

The control key is the one on the lower left and right of the keyboard. Depending on who made your keyboard, it could be labeled "control", "cntl", "ctlr" or some other variation.

What version of Photoshop do you have to have to do this?

Most versions should work. I'm using version 9 (aka CS2), but all the features you need should be available in older versions going back to at least version 7 or maybe 6. I include a feature list at the top of the tutorial, so just check if those features are available in your version.

If you take the grey, bubbly pattern off the internet (photoshop Dragon), andpase it on a 400x400 new doc, you can get to the stage where you put the wind effects, but I can't get the grey wind effects on mine...

Do you know what to do, The Furox?

I take it you don't have Photoshop but are using gimp or something else? If it doesn't have a wind effect filter, then your only option would be to draw the effect in by hand.

By the way, there are two fairly cheap ways to get Photoshop: if you're a student, they offer a very generous student discount. Places like www.academicsuperstore.com sell it. You can also go on ebay and buy a used copy of an older version pretty cheap as well. It's legal to buy a used copy as long as the seller gives you the original install CD and manuals.

No, I've got Photoshop, Version 5.0.2. And it's got the wind thing, but it just doesn't work... I'll mess around with it for a while to try to see if anything else does that.