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| Free gold! |
| Lies! There's no such thing! |
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| mmm gold |
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| Gimme gimme gimme! |
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| I like toast. |
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| I'll just pick this option... |
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| :: throws rocks at ThisEmptySoul :: |
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| Total Votes : 8 |
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 Posted: Tue Jan 08, 2013 7:00 am
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Posted: Tue Jan 08, 2013 7:08 am
Copy pasta from a tutorial Miro wrote on another forum 6 years ago... which in turn was copy pasta from yet another forum sweatdrop This is how Tes originally learned to ink. mrgreen
Someone on another message board asked me how I did my coloring and I typed out this really long explanation that I think might help others too so I posted it here.
Digital Inking
Basically this is the process of taking your scanned drawing and smoothing out the lines to make a clean outline. If you already know an effective way to do this that works for you then you can skip over this part.
First you take your picture and scan it at around 150 - 300 DPI. This will make the image rather large, but you can see the details better and you can shrink it later. Open in it photoshop and clean up the smudges and whatnot then darken it so it will be more visible when you shrink it.. this will also enable you to see spots you may have missed so you can clean them up. I darken it by going to image > adjustments > brightness/contrast then turning up the contrast... this can cause some areas to turn odd colors.. just go to image > adjustments > desaturate to get it black and white (ish) again.
Next hit ctrl a to select the whole picture and ctrl c to copy it then open a new file with a transparent background and paste it in there. If your computer has a difficult time working with large pictures, here you can shrink it to a more workable size, but not too small or it will be difficult to ink it without the lines coming out looking too thick. Generally I shrink it between 800 - 1000 pixels in height.
This part isn't exactly necessary, but the second part of it does help you ink. Go to your layers window and click on the channels tab. Click the little circle on the left at the bottom of the window (next to the mask button) to load the selection and press delete... this will get rid of all the white. Go to image > adjustments > hue/saturation and click the colorize box and change our outline to a light color. I usually use a light blue/green but it doesn't really matter which color you choose as long as it's light and clearly visible without you having to strain to see it.
Make a new layer and call it something like pen, ink, outline, or whatever.. something that will distinguish it as your outline. You may also want to rename your drawing layer to distinguish this as well. You don't -have- to rename your layers, but it becomes helpful later on to quickly figure out which layer has what on it. Set your foreground color to black and your brush to a hard round brush. The size will depend on the size of your picture, but generally 2 pixels seems to work fine for me. Now use the pen tool to go over your drawing to make nice, smooth lines... carefully choose the size of the portion you're going to do. If it's too large and you make a mistake somewhere, you may have to redo the whole thing. Draw out a path over your drawing with the pen tool, make adjustments by adding, moving, and removing anchor points to fit curves as needed.. when the path looks good, right click on it and select "stroke path"... make sure it's set to the brush tool and click OK. Right click on it again and select delete path. Continue to do this for the rest of the picture until you've got the entire outline inked.
If you choose, you may now delete your drawing layer at this time. If you don't want to delete it, then hide it because it's no longer needed.
Coloring
There is probably an easier way to do this, but this is how I do it and it works for me. Create a new layer -behind- your outline layer. Select the area you're going to color such as the skin by using the polygonal lasso tool and clicking around your outline to get a shape generally resembling the area you want to color. It doesn't have to be the exact shape, it just has to fit in the outline. Pick the color you want to fill it with, choose the paint bucket tool, and fill it in. Make a new layer for each part of the picture you want to color. (i.e. skin, hair, shirt, pants, etc.) Be sure all of these are behind the outline layer.
If you really want to, you can put all the coloring onto one layer, but putting them in separate layers enables you to easily change the color of one part of the picture without changing another part of it which may be of a similar color. For example, say I had a character with blue hair with a blue shirt on and later I decide I want to change the hair to black but keep the shirt blue. The color replacement feature tends to change all colors on the same layer of a similar hue.. you can turn down the fuzziness to try to avoid it, but this may lead to the color you want changed not being changed to the full degree you would like it to be. With the hair and shirt on separate layers, I can change one with the other being unaffected, even if they are the exact same color.
Shading
To be honest, I actually know very little about shading and until recently have barely even attempted to add shading to drawings.. but I do know what generally tends to look the best is 4 tone shading, which is base, highlight, shadow, darker shadow. The highlight is the part which is closest to the light source, the base is the color you put down in the coloring stage, shadow is the furthest from the light source, and darker shadow is the area that is blocked from the light the most. You generally want to use darker shadow and highlight sparingly unless you want your picture to have a dramatic look. Too much darker shadow will of course make your colors very dark and too much highlight will make them very light.
Choose your light source (which direction you want the light to be coming from) and shade accordingly. This can be done two ways. The first is the use the freeform pen tool. Choose the freeform pen tool and set the "curve fit" in the options menu to about 2 or 3 pixels. Draw an outline of the area you want to shade. Set your foreground color to what you want the shade to be, right click on the path and select fill path. Right click the path again and delete the path and make an outline for another area to be shaded and repeat. This will generally get you a cell shaded look if left alone which still looks good when done right. You can also smooth the lines between shades by using the smudge tool. I have not actually used this method (the freeform pen tool) but I am aware of it and it is probably a short cut to the next method.
The second way, which is what I have been using, going over areas with the burn and dodge tools. Use the dodge tool for highlights. Set the range to highlights and exposure to what you prefer... the higher the exposure, the lighter it makes your highlight. Burn is used for shadows Set the range to shadows and exposure to what you prefer... the higher the exposure, the darker it makes your shadow. Go over the areas you want shadows and highlights in with the burn and dodge tools... I generally leave the brush size around 5 but increasing the size for larger areas is helpful.. and a smaller size is good for finer details like the lip area. For darker shadow, you can just go over the same area a couple of times with the burn tool to keep from having to change your settings. Don't worry about trying to make it look perfect... I never do. sweatdrop You can smooth out everything with the smudge tool.
The major disadvantage of using the burn and dodge tools is you're not picking the color of your shadows and highlights yourself... they are merely manipulating your base color which is fine for regular lighting.. but if you have a special light source (like how sunsets make shades orange, or a green light source would make your shades a green color, etc.), then this will make the picture look off for not reflecting the light source. If there is a way to use the burn and dodge tools in this manner to reflect your light source (which is possible), then I am unaware of it. I have not experimented much with these tools so I am not fully aware of their capabilities.
The burn and dodge tools also don't show up very well on really dark colors and really light colors. The closer it is to black or white, the less visible effect they'll have.
Smudging
I'm sure there's different effects and looks you can do with the smudge tool with experimentation, but so far I have mostly used a soft round 5 pixel brush at around 30% strength in normal mode. When using it with fingerpainting on, make sure your foreground is set to either your base or shade color because the initial click of it will paint a spot on your picture the same color as your foreground.... this does not happen with fingerpainting.
With your smudge tool set, pull your shade out the direction you want it to go all along the line between your shades... I usually just click and hold and pull it back and forth all along the line to save on getting too much "history" that I can't go back if I find out one of my smudges looks off. Also, with fingerpainting on, this keeps from getting too much extra shade or base color added into your picture. The result of pulling it back and forth will look rather rough... smooth it over by going over it with the smudge tool again, only this time in the opposite direction. For example, if you were pulling a shade horizontally (right and left) with the first use of the smudge tool, to smooth it out you would go over the area vertically (up and down). Repeat pulling and smoothing until you're satisfied and do the same with the other areas.
This blends the two shades together so it tends to lighten your shades and darken your highlights. If you find it has made your colors duller than you would like, simply go over them again and smooth it over.
You need to be careful with the smudge tool because it actually pulls one part of the picture into the next... that means if you use it too close to the edge of your colored area, it will pull the edge into your picture leaving areas exposed to the background. When this happens, you'll have to color the exposed area again and reshade. Or, one thing I have begun to do is color the area behind the layer with the base color... generally with a layer behind that is the same color, you won't really notice when the edge has been pulled into the picture for some translucent shading will remain in the exposed area.
Final Touches
This isn't really necessary, but can give your picture a more "realistic" look. Click on your outline layer and lock transparent pixels by clicking on the checkered box near the top of your layers window.. under the blending mode drop box. Set your brush to around 5 or 10 pixels... changing the size depending on how tight of an area you're coloring. Use the eyedropper tool to pick out shades close to that area of the outline and brush over the outline. With transparent pixels locked, this will color only your outline without messing it up.
If you want some parts to look more "shiny" than they are, click on the layer and go to image > adjustments > brightness/contrast and adjust the brightness slider down and contrast up to give it a more shiny look. Similarly, you can turn the contrast down if you find an area looks more shiny than you want.
If you right click on your top layer and select "flatten image", this will merge all your layers onto a white background. Selecting "merge visible" instead will merge it all onto a transparent background... good for using your picture for wallpapers, avatars, and signatures. When you save for web, it automatically gives you a "flat" image with all your visible layers which is best if you wish to keep your layers separate for possible editing in the future.
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Posted: Tue Jan 08, 2013 8:56 am
Fine then! Don't include my tutorials! See if I care!
.... *cries in the corner* emo
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Posted: Thu Jan 10, 2013 9:22 am
Drops this by.
Braids are hard and I really have no idea how they are constructed. When I go to reference I prefer to use a tutorial that makes use of things as they appear in real life, if it's available, because trying to make a drawing based on someone's drawings based on something else can get messy sometimes and it gives me less influence in how I choose to render the details in lines so it ends up being more my style.
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Posted: Sat Jan 12, 2013 12:59 pm
A little tip I was given at some point and decided to share regarding doing line work by hand: for smoother, cleaner lines, draw with confidence. Using the tablet, where mistakes are more easily corrected, has gotten me to understand what this really means.
If you trace a line slowly, trying to make sure it follows it exactly, it's going to be shaky no matter how much you try to keep your pencil/pen straight. However, if you just do it and get it over with in one swift motion, it comes out much much smoother.
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Posted: Sun Jan 13, 2013 1:21 pm
There, updated... you big baby xp
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