Topic: colors 3d shading and other techniques?

Expand

OK, here's the way I do cel shading (the one that's used in animation) in Colors. It's pretty easy and can look very cool if it's done well. For strict cel shading, you only need one brush: the hard round one at full opacity. I picked Kirby as an example because he happens to be made of a bunch of spheres, and that makes him perfect for this tut. This is not the only way to paint, just a few things I've picked up.

First, the sketch, on its own layer. I usually paint the canvas a greyish colour right away (here, it's beige), because there's not going to be any white in the final picture, and looking at pure white light for a long time hurts my eyes. Actually, here are the colours I almost never use in a painting:

• Everything from pure black to pure white (basically, the greys). Unless you're going for black and white, obviously. Otherwise, they really don't blend well with actual colours. In very rare cases, black is okay, as long as it's a solid colour--not used in a gradient or anything.
• Very saturated colours. They strain people's eyes.

On the colour wheel, that means: stay away from the left side and the right corner of the triangle.

The line art on another layer. I used a very dark brown (though it's one of the few times where you could use pure black) This step is optional. I didn't refine it much here, but I always use the eraser a lot to make the lines thinner in some areas. And if this wasn't Kirby, I'd use it to make the ends of lines pointy. Here, most lines have no end. After that, you can delete the sketch layer.

The base colours. The pink is on one layer while the red is on another on top. Don't worry about making them fit inside the lines, we'll see about that later.

Shading, now.
There are two things you should keep in mind.

• First, the key to making your shading convincing is to pick a light source. Always try to imagine where the light rays would hit your subject and where they would be blocked. In a piece that's not realistic, there's no need to obsess too much over this, but it should still make sense. Here, my light source is behind Kirby, somewhere to the left.
• Secondly, just picking a darker/lighter version of the base colour doesn't work very well in my opinion. There are always subtle hue variations in everything, and a material never has the same colour in full light as in the dark. I tend to deal with those variations by deciding the colour scheme before starting: warm light, cold shadows, or cold light and warm shadows. With the first option, it means my base pink are slightly more yellow/red than the basic "Kirby pink" while my shadows tend to look more blue/purple. It's subtle but it makes a world of difference when the picture is finished.
  Again, the tool I use the most is the eraser (or just a brush with the base colour if it's on the same layer).

Using the eraser, I cleaned up the edges. Then I painted a very quick background (should have done that first, actually... Oh well).

Here's the same drawing with a different light source and the "cold light, warm shadows" variant. As you can see, the atmosphere is very different (looks like a winter morning instead of a summer afternoon).

This picture is very simple, but it's a technique that you can use in more complex ones, like this one:

(I forgot to erase part of the shirt :/)

You can also use more than two colours for each area. Here, I used 4. You could use even more, but then it's not really cel shading anymore--but it can look cool. (Only the character is cel-shaded in this painting)

As for softer or more realistic shading, it's all about observation. Most of what I've said here applies to other techniques (picking a light source, seeing your drawing as a 3-dimensional object...). One piece of advice that's especially true for Colors: most of the time, don't use the airbrush. There are a few instances where it can look okay, but it's much harder to use than the hard brush and the third one (I use this one all the time, it's really well done).

Sorry if there are any English mistakes in this.

Here are the drawings I used if someone wants to see the full playback.
Kirby
Evening Storm