Hallo my friends! So… color and shading XP Look, I really don’t know how to explain this to you (I had a lot of trouble learning this s***) but I’ll try my best. As always, if you don’t understand let me know in the comment section! So, the color related things I know are very few but here we go.
Before we continue, I think it would be convenient to say that this is a digital tutorial… I’M SORRY but I promise that if you can do it in digital you will be able to do it the traditional way. Also if you want the same app I use to draw it’s called IbisPaintX (gud app I must say, you know if you are like me who can’t get a drawing tablet or pay an expensive drawing program) Either way, this works with whatever program you use 😊
Giving colors to your character can also help you to build their personalities. For example, a character with soft colors can make you think that that person is sweet, kind and other sh**ty cute things. Meawhile, a character who likes to wear dark colors can be interpreted as a more mature personality. Flashy colors scream ENERGY.
Sometimes, when giving colors to your characters you may find that some are quite… “eccentric”. When this happens, I usually modify the saturation of the color, which means that it will be more “grayish”. This is up to you, but personally I would to this:
But I guess It really depends on your likes :P lol So anyways, for the coloring part is very simple. First, you need to sketch your character and then make the lineart. After that, you’ll open a new layer and position it below the layer that your lineart is in. That way, you can splash some color without having to worry about getting your line art messy.
Also, I highly recommend to have a layer with a color that will let you see better the other colors you are going to use. That way, if you are painting with white, clear background will make it difficult to define what areas you are painting. So, to prevent this “blind paint”, it’s best to use a colored background.
Now, I usually start painting the skin. You have to remember to work with layers! For example, use a layer for skin, another for hair, other for clothes and accessories, etc. Don’t worry if you end up with 20 layers. You might even end up with 50 or 60 too :D that’s normal! (At least for me it is XD). After the skin, you can color hair in another layer below the lineart and the skin layers. Finally, paint the clothes and other things your character has (weapons, jewelry, etc). Remember, these are your base colors.
Finally, the part that everyone was waiting for: SHADING. That disgusting and horribly difficult thing to do but that it has a beautiful effect on your drawings (or not…) I spent like 3-4 years struggling with that s*** and I’m telling you: I STILL DON’T KNOW HOW THAT WORKS. I remember when watching tutorials that people would say things like “Just shade”, or “Imagine how it would look”. I was like “My people… THAT DOES NOT HELP AT ALL”.
So, my first advice for this would be to look at some reference if you want cel shading (mostly in anime…). Don’t be like me, who threw herself at the tablet and expected that somehow just splashing color everywhere would be considered as shading. My friends, I’ll tell you the truth: I learned shading from copying other artists. But before you hit me and call me a thief for that, I want to show you what I learned from it huehuehue (also don’t forget the usual practice)
Let’s divide this in two sections. Shading and ummm light effect? Idk just call it whatever you want. Ok, so first If celshading is what you are looking for, then hair is kind of simpler than clothes. So, what you gotta do, be celshading or another shading technique, is to define your light source. For example, I want the light to come from the left upper corner, therefore all my shadows should be mainly on the contrary side which is the right bottom corner.
Shading skin is pretty simple, as you can see, I like to shade a lot under the hair, ear, under the nose, the jawline, the eyelids and under the eyebrows, also below the jawline and the bottom lip too. Finally, make sure to shade under the clothes. You can see in this example how:
Anyways, hair is a little bit trickier but once you have the hang of it, you’ll be shading Finn’s hair from Adventure Time. But if it doesn’t work, GO COPY THAT ANIME. First, color the hair with a base color. Now that you got it all good, you’ll open another layer and clip it to the base layer with the clip button. Also, make sure the layer is set on multiply. The base color for the hair will be darker in that layer!
If you don’t like the shade of the color then you can just change it in the sfx settings
For the real shading this time, what I want you to know is that hair has volume and depth. So, what you gotta do is that with some soft pencil you’ll try to paint the hair to create “highlights”. I usually achieve that effect by using a soft tip. Notice how I shade the roots of the hair and the other parts where I had to shade completely because the hair has depth. Also, see the pattern I use to shade the chunks of hair, as you can see, I paint the tip and then the root; kinda like this:
See? I used a pale base color and then applied the multiply effect and decreased the saturation a little bit. Remember that shadows in hair can be found in the roots and at the end of the hair. You may visualize this better when you see this thing:
Finally, clothes (OMG) It’s much more simple (that’s what she said). As always, define your light source and try to shade on places like twists, wrinkles and folds. But if the surface is kind of “smooth”, like this character’s bandages and collar, then a clean line of shading should do it. In the end, you’ll have something like this!
For the final shading effect, or lighting thing (HA!) you’ll want to make a transparent PNG of your character. (You can make this by pressing the double layer icon and then pressing the second option) Now, open two new layers and paint a gradient of whatever color you want in one and in the other paint something like a sunlight. If you find that difficult, I’ll leave these for you. These two shades are what I use to make this effect.
Clip these two layers to your transparent PNG. Now that you have all of this settled, change the blend mode for them; press where it says “Normal” and then pick for the sunlight one “soft light” and the other one “overlay” (the first one) like this
Now, paint or import your background and after all of that, you want to add another layer above everything else. This will have the “add” mode. With the same base color you used and using an aerograph brush, start adding a slight glow to the hair, eyes and other shinny things.
Finished!
In the end, I just added a screen texture with an overlay mode. So, hope you enjoyed this and managed to learn at least something of this humble tutorial.
“You don’t have to be an expert, to become a great artist!”
-Rui Torres, Art Attack :D
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