Reply To: Anarchangel’s Archive

[Anarchangel]

Wolfram wrote:

Thanks for the tips before Anarchangel. Your “Ramblings” as you put it, did help quite a bit, I have a better grasp on shading than before. One last question. How do you blend the shading well on the character, as I have had a few that the shading doesn’t really seem to blend well on. Thanks.

It kind of depends on the character and what they’re wearing as shadows can fall in different places on different items. The gradient background can help a lot if you colour it darker and place it in the right spots.

A couple of tricks I’ve learned though. The gradient background can be a pain in the butt when it crosses over lines in a character as it can look quite messy but if you’re shading a shirt for instance and you put the gradient on then layer another shirt over the top but reduce the colour alphas to zero to make it transparent while keeping the line colour as it is, it looks a lot better. This can work on most items but does occasionally make the lines look thicker so it’s not perfect.

Also, if you look at the shadows under the chins of my characters, that’s just another head with the alphas reduced and changed to a nice shadow colour then masked to the body or clothes or whatever. It’s a different way of making shadows and can be used in different places but it can be tricky.