In this tutorial I'll show you how to make "hand drawn" goalie pads. This is the way how I have created most of my pads.

I'd like to thank Drezz for his pads that got me inspired to use Photoshop and Unorthadox for helping me to write this tutorial.

You'll need to know how to use:- line tool

- pen tool

- marquee tool

- smudge tool

- eraser

- sharpen tool

and how to create different layers.

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Starting

Get a picture of a goalie pad (goaliemonkey.com, thehockeyshop.com, Google etc.)

Copy the pic and open it in Photoshop.

Open one of mine or someone else’s pad so you can see the correct mapping for your new pad. Flatten image and apply the copy over it.

Lower it's opacity so that you can see through it well.

It's also helpful to add guides before next step.

Now you can delete the layer you used to find mapping lines.

Select marquee tool and select a part of the pad you want to resize.

Scale it to right size and reply until your pad is mapped right and delete guides.

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Base and design

The next step is to make base lines. You can use the pen or line tool. With pen tool you can make pads shapes curvier but it's not necessary to do so. A very simple base is good enough.

Ok, now you can start to do the design. I use pen tool for this (paths, new path) but you can also use shape layers or normal layer.

When you have your design ready, it's time to do the design stitching. You can create a new brush that looks like real stitching or just select brush (1px) with white or any other color and make a new layer. Go to paths. Select one and right-click it and select stroke path with brush tool. Select eraser tool and fade your stitching so that it wont cross the base lines. You can brush it more or lower opacity so that it wont look too bright.

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Lighting and shading

You should now have a pad with base lines, designs and stitching. Let's make some lights...

First fill your color layer with black. Create a new layer and name it "light". Go back to your base layer and select one part of the pad with magic wand.

Go back to light layer and select brush or line tool with white color. Look at your original picture for a guide and start to add lights on your pad.

Remember, this is just one way to create lighting effects.

Select smudge tool and start fading you white lines. Eraser tool is also helpful. It takes some practice to make them look good enough.

After you've done one area, go back to your base layer and select a new part from the pad and repeat previous step. You can also copy and merge your lighting to other areas if you want.

After you are satisfied with your lighting, make new layer and add highlights on it. When you have your both lighting layer completed, select sharpen tool and go over both layers with it until it looks good.

If you think that your pad doesn't have enough lights, just duplicate layers and lower opacity enough.

Select eraser tool again and go over the stitching part so it looks like it's a bit lower than the actual design.

Now it's time to create shades:

Make a new layer under your lighting layers and fill your color layer with white. Do exactly like you did with the lighting. Select base layer and use magic wand to select area from your pad, go back to the shade layer and begin to shade.

So, now you have a template for your pad. Add some shading around it so it doesn't look plain white in the game. The last thing to do is adding logos, puck marks etc.

I hope that this tutorial was easy enough to follow. Feel free to use parts from my temps if it helps. If you have questions, post them here and I'll try to answer as well as I can.

Have fun