Segments

Bert shows his Times Square piece and focuses on McDonald's lights.

Create simple paths of the box in Adobe Photoshop. The paths for the actual lights are more detailed and will be handled in Adobe Illustrator. Fill your shape with a gray color and name the layer "base". After labeling the layer, hand-draw the path for other sides of the box. Use a gradient to color the selection made from the path, and use the dodge tool to add some shine and depth. Hand coloring and lighting is done to the shape. After you're done coloring, clip your color layers to the path and add details like borders.

Copy your box's path and go to Adobe Illustrator. In a new layer, paste the compound path of the box. Here, Bert shows how to create the neon tubes that simulate light using stroked paths. You can copy and paste these completed paths into Photoshop. The lights will rasterize, and this is OK. Clip the neon tube lights to inside the box, then add embellishments like the light hardware underneath.