Tutorial: cell shading

I have many techniques for coloring but one that a lot of you probably noticed has been my cellshading used for knuffels. This is actually a fun and easy coloring style that you can do to.

Now, I generally recommend doing stuff in real media first. The real media equivalent of my cell shading is actually heavy inking. External Image
You have to really embrace shadows and adding a lot of them. However, if you aren't really keen on doing shadows this might be a good introduction to dramatic shadows.

The obvious first is the lineart.
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At this point I add in the base colors

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You get to add in a lot of the gradients and makeup in this stage.
This also allows you to see if the colors work well together.

Now on a new layer you are going to choose a nice dark color (in this case I chose a really really dark green) and you will put that green absolutely everywhere you believe a shadow might be. This is going to be a flat color and won't look overly great but trust me, this will make life easier later. This is also why its very similar to inking.
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Because this is on its own layer you have a lot of freedom with it. If you want a lot of dramatic shadows you can just lighten the layer just a bit. (in this case about 80%)
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If you aren't after as much drama you can instead lighten it up more (in this example about 20%)
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I tend to prefer about the middle of the scale.

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At this point I wanted to give the cloths a bit of a shiny to really define the fabric. You can also use this for shine on the eyes. Basically on a new layer you add a bit of flair.

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Now for highlighting. At this point you can repeat what you did for the shadows but I prefer to use an airbrush technique to soften up the light a bit.

What you want to do is on a new layer get the lasso tool and select all the areas you want lighlights to appear. You are going to get a soft brush and put the coloring to low (like 12% or less) You want to lightly go over the areas you want to lighten up. Even sometimes a few times to get it about how you want it.

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At this point you probably think you are done. However I like to add something else for added depth. An interesting fact about light is that in a lot of situations theres a backlight caused by a bounce back from the original light on other objects around the character. Also sometimes theres just a second lightsource in the area. So you can have fun with this and add more color to your picture.

For this I use the same technique for making the shadows however its a bright color.

And viola.

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