I've been trying to create a bubble around a pet as you can see below. Can you guys weigh in and tell me which looks better?

Also, if you have any experience making bubbles, do you have any tips? I've been looking at a few tutorials and experimenting with what works best for my purposes but I feel it could be better.

Thanks!

Option 1

Option 2

Maybe something like this?

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I painted a mask for the inner and outer surfaces of the bubble. Masks are applied to folders where I just painted in a colorful, oily surface on one layer and a highlight on another. One copy of the outer surface folder is in front of the feli at 55% opacity, another behind at 50%, and the inner surface below those at 45%. I was kind of sloppy though, so the edges aren't well defined and look questionable. You could probably replace the masks with clipping layers.

I'm not very confident with masks and no idea what clipping layers are (will look them up later), but that looks really good! Especially for something you say you were sloppy on. How did you get the oily effect? Was that just part of the mask, or was that a paintbrush setting, or...?

So to start, make a circular path by selecting pen tool, use the oval option, and pull your path while holding shift. Make sure you double click your path. You don't have to name it, but just leaving it as 'work path' risks it getting deleted without warning or ability to recover. Make a folder, place an empty layer and another folder in it. Convert path to selection, stroke path with white line on the layer. Convert path to selection, use it to apply a mask to the folder. Name your layer and folder something.

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Then make two layers inside that folder. Name them something like outer surface mask and inner surface mask. Using reference of a soap bubble paint in where you want the reflection/color to be on the bubble. This isn't just to convey the fact that you are seeing reflections on two surfaces, but to make your pet look like it's properly inside the bubble rather than in front or behind. Keep in mind that the bubble is a round surface when painting your masks.

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Make two folders. Name them outer surface and inner surface. Select the outer surface mask, turn off visibility, then apply the selection as a mask to the outer surface folder. Do the same for the inner surface mask and folder. Place three layers inside each folder, and name them something like color, saturation, and highlight. Again referencing an image of a soap bubble just paint the oily color pattern. Eye drop colors off your reference if you need/want. Don't blur, don't use a filter, don't use smudge. It'll be obvious that you did and will look unnatural. Don't forget it's a round surface.

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Set the saturation layer to overlay, and using a warm off white color and soft brush daub in areas to being up the saturation of the oily layer to make some areas of it pop. Keep the highlight layer as normal, and using slightly off white and a soft brush, daub in the highlight. Use a blur filter if needed, repeat for both inner and outer surface layers. Highlight layer should be on top of the saturation layer. Adjust the saturation layer as needed using the HSV silders.

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Duplicate the outer surface folder. Set the top one to 55% opacity, the second one to 50% opacity. Set the inner surface layer to 45% opacity.

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It looks crummy, but when you place the character inside it'll work OK and have reasonably working transparency so you can use the overlay/art with a profile of any color without much issue. Unless you have an environment to draw your reflection shapes from it's always going to look a little stilted an unnatural. You can sort of get away with that due to widespread use of generic soap bubble graphics, which makes people excuse the weirdness of out of place/artistic reflections.

Thank you for that detailed explanation! I'm gonna try it out this weekend and see what I can come up with. :)

I might be convinced to part with the file if you need/want it.

(in all fairness, I think I spent maybe 20-30min playing around to get that)

Good luck on making the bubble! I do think from your two options listed, I like number 1 the most, but I'm happy for you that you got a tutorial!

Thank you! I've given up on the bubble for the moment, but I'm excited to try out 's tutorial when I have a little more free brain power to try new things. :)

I like number 2 =)