Reply To: asubtledagger's characters

[JR19759]

Ok first thing I would suggest for when zypping is lower the Alpha setting on the highlights a bit, to maybe around 60- 75% (sometimes lower depending on the colour), because unless you’re going for a latex look, no fabrics shine like that. Secondly, watch your lines when highlighting. If a shine crosses over the top of a line, especially an border between colour changes, item changes or the body’s natural boundaries, it doesn’t look right. There are a number of ways you can avoid this. Firstly masking the highlight to the object, which is quick and simple, but can build up the layers if you want to mask multiple highlights to the same object, as you’ll need multiples of the same object. Second, if you want to have a large section of highlight over an item with a lot of detailing lines, is make the one highlight large enough to cover the whole area, then add another multiple of the object you are covering over it and make the Alpha settings on the first and second colours of that object 0%, leaving just the black outline. Or thirdly, make your highlights small enough to fit around the lines.

In some places, especially the neck and shoulders, your highlighting seems a bit random, I’d maybe go back and change a few bits. The highlight on the neck needs to be wider and shorter, the two symmetrical highlights on the shoulder piece need to be longer so they cover more area, and you need to get rid of the diagonal highlight on the right shoulder, because it just doesn’t look right and isn’t repeated on the left shoulder.

Also, you should consider adding shadows to your character if you’ve added highlights, it really makes the character pop. It’s the same principle as highlighting, but you just use a darker colour (usually a lowered alpha setting black) instead of a lighter colour. Always look to shade where there would be a shadow cast on the body by natural light, so under the chin, under the arms and between the legs are the basic places, then where ever your costume would cast shadows, so there would be shadows from the body/ legs on the cape for example.

Hope this helps.