Tributes Unite: Paint Yourself With The Mockingjay

It’s been an exciting day for Hunger Games fans with an epic poster dump ahead of Comic Con and to help celebrate, Jabberjays.net wants to help you join the rebellion. Jabberjay Luan has come up with a Photoshop tutorial so that you can take a photo of yourself and “paint” your face with the mockingjay.

If you don’t have Photoshop, don’t worry, there are free alternatives you can use that are pretty similar. Our suggestion is to download another image editing program called GIMP (which is free) and follow the same steps described below.

For starters, you’ll need to take a photo of yourself, preferably one taken in the dark with light on your face. Your full head should be showing (not just a super close-up of your face) to give yourself some wiggle room for editing. Then download our Template 1 and Template 2. After that, you can get started using the instructions below.

Step 1

Open up your desired image. Crop as desired.

Step 2

Download our ‘Tributes Unite’ text template here. Place this over the top of your image. If the text is too big, go to Edit > Transform > Scale and resize to fit your image.

Step 3

Place the Mockingjay over the top of the face of your image, and scale it appropriately. Download here.

Step 6

Click Command/Control + the icon of the mockingjay layer to bring up the “marching ants” that selects the mockingjay bird. Whilst selected, go to the bottom of the layer panel and click the ‘Add Layer Mask’ icon (a circle in a rectangle). This will create a layer mask that makes it easier to remove parts of the Mockingjay without deleting the layer.

Step 7

Reduce the opacity of the mockingjay layer to around 75 so you can see your face. Make sure the layer mask is selected in the layer panel, and use a black brush to remove the Mockingjay from anywhere outside of the subject’s face and on top of the eyes. This will make the war paint effect. (if you make any mistakes, use a white brush to paint the layer mask back over)

Step 8

When you have finished removing any blemishes from the Mockingjay, change the opacity of the layer back to 100%.  Go to the blending modes at the top of the layer panel and select “Soft Light”.

If you think the paint is not strong enough, you can duplicate the layer to make it stronger.

And that’s it! You should have your Tributes Unite image to share with the world! As you can see from my image, a photo in the dark with light on your face works best, but it’s still a great look!

If you make one, please be sure to share yours with us in the comments!