#Cel shading isnt my thing

[so-i-macedup-abit]

post before i temporarily lose consciousness

[bmpmp3]

the drawrings from the mesmerizer cover i just finished <3

but more importantly, i must now explain to you the hashtag situation i created for myself because of my foolish yet absolute refusal to colour it digitally:

SO doing animation on paper is fine. its normal, hell for me its easier than digital, i just use this shitty lil 15 dollar light panel and go to town you know? historically animation was done on paper and/or clear celluloid/acetate plastic sheets (thats why they're called cels after all) for decades and its still being done that way today.

but usually. nowadays. when animation is done on paper it is still coloured and shaded digitally. we are in the age of digipaint. and thats good. before digipaint we used stuff like poster paints or other flat, consistantly coloured paint and applied that on the under side of the clear acetate cels with the ink lines drawn or xerox'd over top.

but acetate sheets for animation are expensive and hard to source where i live. so. instead of something sensible like drawing all my lines and then digitally painting the final pieces. what i did was um. i still painted it with watercolour. so this was the situation:

faceless...........

i drew the main piece, and then on the same type of paper i used my lightbox to draw on new faces (to save paper i put them all over the paper, using things like quickly traced hair, etc to help line it all up later. for the paint i had to carefully try to match the skin tones around the facial features so when i digitally re-attached them they would match up........ hell of my own creation

i was chatting with my father about it, he doesnt know much about animation at all (his preferred art is b&w sketches and linework) so he didn't understand why i was complaining about the hell of my own creation so much as first. he was like "isnt watercolour what most animation was made with?" and i was like NOOO no no absolutely not <3 backgrounds, the final layer under all the sheets of clear acetate, sometimes may be done in something other than poster paint, gouache, acrylics, whatever paint they used to colour the cels: maybe something like oil or watercolour for stylistic purposes

but no one in their right mind would make even a simple barely moving PV with just watercolours <3 <3 <3 <3 <3

the bg was easy tho LOL took longer to dry than to paint :)

[socksandbuttons]

I’m a new digital artist do you have any tips for starting?

ALRIGHT SO. it took some days to answer this sorry. Do everything. Like just go FOR it. In how u wanna draw. Not everyone has like... a similar way to go about digital drawing. (Some people paint, I do mostly cartoonish and cel...shading??) So whatever feels best for you. Sometimes you learn a new thing its okay to evolve in your art thats normal! Style is... a hard consistency bruh. Stabilization... is your friend if you really want a nice smooth line. (I use it sometimes if something not going great, esp if you want to really follow that sketch!) Lining IS an option. Dont be held back by lining. You can use the sketch, just duplicate the layer and erase some of those lines and boom! lineart. You can adjust as necessary. LAYERS ARE YOUR FRIEND. I draw on a computer so layers are quite unlimited. I know apps that restrain you to few tho which is Dumb but like i guess its a mobile art program. But dont be afraid to use them. Or one. You can get away with one layer, thats how i started before i learned about layers. (Art programs came a long way since then.) SAVE. FREQUENTLY. Also please PLEASE back that up somewhere that ISNT the app itself. If you lose the app or the login... good bye to all that. I have the luxury of usbs and an external hard drive. Just find a way to back that up. Art is a lot of memory and storage just expect that. And yes keep them because then you have something to look back on and go 'dang. ive learned'

The clipping layer is also very useful. u want your lines colored but theyre a different color?? You dont have to redraw that! You can clip a layer over it and color over the lines and boom. Colored lines. Same with coloring layers too btw. Very useful art thing to use. yes even in painting. Also this does help once a while but you dont always have to draw on white, u can change the bg color to something different (depends on the program u can default it to something else so u dont have like.. open the previous file to get the color again.) Like i will change it to greys blues or something lighter cause it turns out. things look very different on different colors. (color theory hello... i cannot teach u that.) There is always a free option somewhere. Do not worry. Um thats basically what i got for ya. Some programs have different perks for you that others wont tho. Such as csp and its delightful vector layers (Sai has this too but i CANT change the pen type. vs csp where u can use any pen. BUT CSP DOESNT HAVE MY WATERCOLOR BRUSH... that i adore.) Animating is a different proceedure. but What it is that i used for a while UHM... Pencil2d. Then i moved to opentoonz. (they are... very different... but opentoonz does infact make some things easier)

[libbecnoir]

hey so why the fuck is princess lexa from the oathbound reality now???

(long post of me just kind of rambling)

so. lexa. right? (and also orin i guess this is about him too but i dont care about him at all sorry) she was the first fully original cel shaded skin (not counting cel shaded optional styles) it was their first real attempt at it so they looked kind of clunky and strange. which is like. understandable yeah sure. she (and orin also) come from some reality in which they are implied to be robots or cyborgs or whatever, specifically referring to someone as their “father.” its also implied lexa escaped wherever she came from and orin was sent to retrieve/rescue her. they were clearly trying to go for some kind of “anime girl thats secretly a sadistic killer robot” thing. and so their home universe is just kind of implied to be a cel shaded anime universe (similarly to other, non-original anime skins)

right. ok. so. WHY IS PRINCESS LEXA????????? NOT CEL SHADED ANYMORE?????? HUH???????????????????

this shit has fr been bothering me since she was revealed. how did that happen. what. AND THEN HER DIALOGUE WITH OTHER CHARACTERS WAS SHOWN AND SHE IS APPARENTLY FROM THE OATHBOUND MEDIEVAL REALITY NOW????????? HUH????????????????? like. i just cant stop thinking about it. and then i started thinking about it more in depth. and now im just wondering. can spending time in a reality that is not your original one (in fortnite canon at least) literally alter your fundamental appearance like that??? like. ok hear me out.

the anime legends pack. is something that released during c3s4. and it involves three random, relatively recognizable fortnite characters... becoming cel shaded

(for simplicity i’m only showing midas)

so this is something that already HAD been shown to be possible? an already existing character’s snapshot becoming cel shaded when they were not originally that way. except this also isnt the first time a previously cel shaded anime skin has gotten the ability to become un-cel shaded. the "Wish, Set, Match” quest pack from this same season also had erisa (cel shaded skin from c4s2 who is a cat princess) in a tennis outfit and also with the option to just. NOT be cel shaded. (cant find a good render that is non cel shaded but trust me it exists)

except this also ALSO isnt the first time they did this for a cel shaded anime-implied skin. because thats what they did with the academy champions set

WHICH, HEY, COMPLETELY UNRELATED TANGENT BUT: THE FUCKING ACADEMY?????????? AS IN. THE ACADEMY THAT LENOX ROSE (C3S4) IS LITERALLY STATED TO HAVE “ESCAPED” FROM????????? MULTIPLE TIMES OVER??????? NOT ONLY IN HER VERY OWN BIO BUT ALSO BY MULTIPLE NPC DIALOGUES FROM THE SEASON????? she is literally a character from some kind of television show that was putting her in danger, only referred to as “the academy.” and how she’s “The first to escape The Academy... But not the last.” (direct quote from her description) and then these mfs just come on out as the “academy champions”?????????????? what does that mean????????????? what does it mean to be the champion of this implied danganronpa ass anime show????? how did they escape???? what the fuck?? god i wish they had done literally anything with this

anyways. i dont know what my conclusion is. uh. so yeah i guess snapshots can just kind of Become cel shaded or Not cel shaded anymore. this has a lot of implications and i REALLY WISH THEY’D DO ANYTHING WITH SNAPSHOT LORE BEYOND JONESY!! im not even going to get into how much i’ve been obsessing over cuddle team leader/syd and her countless snapshots and the implications of ragsy or cuddle team master more than possibly being from mega city ANYWAYS I’M GETTING OFF TRACK! i need more people to talk about this kind of stuff with </3

[soxychu]

ice kween ∩(︶▽︶)∩

[ot3]

My approach to flat colors + limited palette drawings

This is a follow up to this post  i made about how i go about figuring out a color palette for my limited palette drawings. an anon asked me about my actual technique of finishing them so this is gonna be an explanation of how I work in a limited palette with flat colors. I ended up with these thumbnails for a sketch last time so we’re gonna work from here and I’m gonna sort of walk through how i got to the finished version

first things first: every part of this process is just developed as a result of me messing around. take my advice with a grain of salt and if you think you know a way to do something better/that makes you more comfortable. go with that over what I say.

I’m honestly a little surprised when people express confusion about how i draw like this because it’s SUPER simple - literally all you’re doing is just stacking solid color blocks of shape. its very imprecise despite how sharp everything ends up looking. 

First things first is that you want to decide how you will be handling your edges throughout the duration. Do you want your shapes to be ultra-sharp and precise, or do you want a little bit of a wobblier, grainier edge? Both can look good but it’s VERY much a matter of situational basis. i’ve been favoring looser and grainier shapes so that’s how i’m going to be working on this. 

on the left here, you can see the shapes made with precise rectangular selections and an untextured pen, on the right, freehand drawn shapes and a grittier pen. There’s something immediately pretty different feeling about them. So play around with that first - its not something that’s fun to change halfway through! But lets step back a minute. It helps to work large to small. The two biggest shapes here are these orange chunks and everything gets stacked on top of them so i’m gonna do that first. 

Now, a key feature of what i do: clipping masks. almost all digital art programs have them. What a clipping mask does is it constrains the pixels of a layer to the transparency of the layer below it. Here I have the light orange layer, and then on top of it the buildings and billboard are clipped to the orange. Most of you probably already know this and I’m overexplaining a bit, but there was a time when i didnt know how clipping layers worked and someone had to explain it to me.

now you’ll notice the shapes of the buildings are rough, and sloppy. here’s the fun part: since this is all about stacking shapes, only your exterior edges matter. this all gets filled in. be as sloppy as you want when you’re making your shapes. in fact, the outside edges get trimmed out a bunch to when i do this - i go in and erase them clean. Don’t be too finnicky about drawing perfect and precise! its a waste of time. As long as the silhouette is what you want, the interior can be a nightmare.

Working this way, it’s important to keep your layers stacked in a way you can make sense of. Right now there are four layers here: the background dark orange, the two main orange rectangle shapes, and then the buildings on one layer and a billboard on the other. I rack up a LOT of layers doing this and it makes it annoying in some aspects, but being able to freely recolor any one chunk without losing my detail is a key aspect of this.

So, I block those out

Next, I do the same for the smaller chunks that are still main shapes. There are once again, a lot of layers here. The top layer is the hair - you can see the head showing through it. The head and arm underneath the hair, same layer. Then the cup. Then the light green pieces of paper. Then the dark green ones.

The cup is technically farther forward than the head and arm so you would think it’d go on top, but the point isnt to recreate the foreground and background hierarchy with layers so much as it is to group things in a way i can work with. The cup goes underneath so it can be grouped with all the other objects on the table. 

now, i just go and fill in all the shapes. i forgot to do the blinds but i get them later. you might notice a lot of these shapes are pretty rough, which was harder to notice before they were filled in. Now that I can see better, I go in with an eraser and clean up the edges until they’re the shape I want 

sometimes erasing leaves little bits of ‘noise’ around objects like on this napkin here. i like to keep a little bit of this noise for texture, but if you dont like it make sure to get rid of it! if you’re working very crisp this will stand out a LOT

Next up is to add some detail onto the objects

I flipped the canvas here because the head shape was wrong - the ears were uneven and i wanted to fix it. I want to go about adding detail onto the billboard and buildings. i do all detail with clipping masks - but the objects are clipped to another layer and so nothing can be clipped to them. instead, i unclip them and just erase by selection for the same effect

all of the text on the papers is clipped to the papers below it. the buttons are clipped to the phone. the yellow photos and card are actually another independent layer on top, in case i want to recolor them separately. im indecisive and end up recoloring things a lot. For the most part these objects are starting to become recognizable as more than just shapes

i go in an add the details on the background and character now. theres some more stuff on the table. the lines of the face and ears are on one layer, and the flats of the eyes below that. Here’s what each group of layers is, and what they look like on their own

The background/bottom chunk. Just the table, window, and shirt.

The middle bit. All the stuff on the table and the blinds.

Finally, the top, which is just his head and arm. 

now this stage is the bare bones of the drawing. you can more or less tell everything that’s happening. it reads. but its very much lacking in something - it doesnt have a ton of depth or interest. and adding that additional detailing, the dept and interest, is where stuff starts getting REALLY tricky and subjective. 

im gonna take you to a much simpler scenario to show the sort of options i go through at this stage

ahh its our dear friend, sphere casting shadow. this is, more or less, the kind of image we have. you can tell whats happening but it’s lackluster. there are TONSSS of ways frm here that you can go add interior detail to a shape once it has been established. here are some quick and SUPER rough examples

from top left to bottom right: flat cel shading, softer airbrushed/gradient shading, halftone, and a textured brush. Each of these has their strengths and weaknesses. They can also be combined.

for example, here’s the solid cel shading being used to contain a gradient/airbrushed detail. This image - probably the single oldest piece of my art i still willingly show people - is entirely colored with gradients being contained in cel-shaded chunks. It has a sort of soft, luminous quality but without losing its crispness.

here’s a super quick bust with some variations of stuff going on. obviously this is no masterpiece but you see how different types of detailing can interact with each other and be used to distinguish materials too. 

With the mob psycho comic I did, the detailing that wasnt line was done using a variety of halftones of different shapes layered on top of each other

by contrast parts of my ace attorney comic use a textured brush and have a sort of blended, papery feel

any of them can work for pretty much anything as long as you are using it with intent. practice around. mix styles of finishing together. find a comfort zone. the more you do it the more intuitive it becomes and at the heart of it this process is a very intuitive way of drawing because of how far removed it is from realism.

Now here is the trick - light and shadow.

Everything up to this point has been very flat and adding detail helps but there’s only so much that can accomplish. To get HEAVY light and shadow you need to think about things differently. I think if there’s any part of this process that’s complicated, its this one. 

To truly get the most out of your palette, you need to pick chunks of an image to be in higher/lower light and then either ‘step up’ or ‘step down’ the colors in that chunk. here’s what I mean.

Here’s our ball with a beam of light on it. Everything Within the beam of light is one step in our limited palette lighter than anything outside of it. Here’s how I go about doing this: the shape of the beam of light is below everything else. Then, once I have the shape blocked out, i select it. With that selection in place, i go to EVERY SINGLE LAYER that’s effected, lock the opacity, and recolor that chunk. So what’s going on here is that there is only one more layer - the beam of light, below everything but the background, and the rest of this effect is just caused by every layer above it now being two-toned following the exact same silhouette. THIS is why it’s so important to keep your layers separate - if the shadow and highlight had been painted onto the base directly, i would not be able to do this without significant effort. 

This works with all of the finishing techniques I talked about above

A combination of cel shading and half toning, all stepped up to give the appearance of heavier light on one area.This is also how I go about rendering transparency in this style. All of my layers are fully opaque and I allow the colors to do the work of conveying transparent material

Here’s our ball with the patterned/textured brush  shading, being viewed partially through a window

it’s obviously not a very representational way of working, but as long as your audience UNDERSTANDS what you’re trying to convey, then you’re executing it successfully.

So with that, now we’re gonna go and finish this drawing.

For this one, I decide a big central shadow is necessary. In the original thumbnail, he was backlit, which I still plan on doing, and that wouldn’t make sense without casting a shadow.

I’ve had to change the colors of some objects entirely in order to get this to work right. This is what I mean when I call this an intuitive process - some stuff felt weird, so I changed it. This also involves a bit of problem solving. The newspaper is now unable to be separated from his hand. Sometimes changing the color of an object makes that object look better, but ruins its relationship with the objects around it. It’s up to you to learn how to adjust and finagle things until you get it where you want.The paper he has and the napkin underneath it also all blend together now.

The next few parts of this process are REALLY just trial and error, where I toss a bunch of spaghetti at it until it works. It’s hard to decide what to screenshot, because I don’t know what will or will not be part of the finished drawing. To that end, you can watch the recording of this drawing here. This video isn’t edited at all so it contains a couple of minutes of really shitty sketching, and then all of the color thumbnailing work i did in the last post. Actually getting started on these final colors begins around the two minute mark. It is also sideways, I am sorry I don’t know why. 

Now, here you can see where I’ve more or less worked things out. His hand’s not on the cup anymore because my friend pointed out it didnt have an arm attached to it. I added some halftoning to make a gradiating effect in the sky and on the table to give the impression of a sunrise. His eyes are different but as of posting this, I don’t like them and am probably about to go back and change them again. The Cup now has a shadow and some rim lighting. His hand is in shadow. The stain on the napkin is big enough to define the edge of the paper on top of it.

Little things like that. 

The more you draw like this the more the way you need to think about your space becomes natural. I hope this helps and I wish you all the best of luck!

[beesmygod]

possibly a weird question but like i find the juxtaposition between cartoony lines and realistic-ish detailed shading in AGS really interesting, and i wanted to know like how did you settle on that style and what inspired it? (i think youve said in the past that you were inspired by sam & max which rules but im sure that isnt the only influence)

ok i’ve been sitting on this question for 16 days bc it was sent right before i had to leave on a very long trip and it deserved a more detailed answer than i could afford it at the time. thank you for waiting! i am going to write a lot more words than i should bc i dont really get to talk about how the sausage is made. i dont talk about this kind of stuff a lot because all of my knowledge and fumbling attempts to make a comic comes from a place of complete and utter ignorance of the genre, medium and the tools i use. i hope by writing things about the process, people who want to make webcomics feel more at ease knowing that no one knows what the hell they are doing.

first things first: here’s a secret about the creation process of AGS. the soft shading of the comic is entirely because every time i do cel shading it looks like total shit. i have absolutely no aptitude for it even now. when i first started AGS i had no skill at soft shading either, but i could do slightly more interesting moody things with it pulling from media i had grown up with. i grew up watching a lot of old movies on turner classic movies, so a lot of the aesthetics demonstrated by directors that worked in a grey scale medium really stuck with me. i loved the noirs (welles was really good at this kind of work, especially in “the lady from shang-hai” and “touch of evil”)  that used heavy shadows to obfuscate and set the tone of a scene or imply the motivations of a character. these movies and old twilight zone episodes (which i think still stand as really spectacular triumphs in use of grey scale contrast to invoke an unnerving atmosphere) represent the kind of imagery i want to pull from in my comic, when its busy not being a screwball comedy of errors.

the line work inspiration is another thing where it was just kind of what my body was able to produce. it’s not something i tried to consciously cultivate, its just kind of how things wound up. the comics i grew up reading probably influenced me the most. i think a lot of kids who make comics now grew up reading their parent’s comic collections and for me that was “bloom county”, “calvin and hobbes”, “the far side” and, later in my adolescence when i started reading comics on my own, “sam and max”. 

i went through the anime influence pre-teen years and that has definitely stuck around in some ways. i also grew up in that time where cartoon network had the rights to air looney tunes cartoons and my favorites were the chuck jones and tex avery shorts. i never really set out to be like “i want a cartoony style” and if i had my way i would be drawing in a semi-realistic painterly style, but this is what i’ve adapted into so im trying to do it the best i can. purcell draws backgrounds the way i wish i could.

i hope this answers some of your question, even if the overall answer is “idk my hands just do that”

[gridoc]

Isnt cel shading for 3D models or is there like,,, another kind of cel shading?

Cel shading can be used for 3d models and digital art! It's the same concept to make things more 3d using hard shadows. Although in my technique we do soften them it still is cel shading!! So yeah kinda? Cel shading is a technique used in digital art not only 3d rendering.