Practicing How to Cel Shade Part One

I’m trying to work on my cel shading. One, because I want to do a web comic, and another because I want to animate. Cel shading is a simple, pretty, and quick way to shade an image, and there are many different ways to do it.

So I thought I’d share some of my process in figuring it out! I suppose you could say that this is my process in learning to do a new form of art.

To me, learning or practicing a new way to do something in art is in itself a creative process. Just like personal trainers have to come up with ways to stretch each muscle, artists too have to come up with ways to strengthen their work. If you don’t have an art teacher to give you these exercises, then you kinda have to figure it out on your own. Which means it’s a creative process! Art is basically problem solving, only without math.

I like to think of it as a training regimen.

Here is part two!

Just a note, this post is pretty advanced. It assumes that you know the basics of using an art program (I use SAI and Adobe Photoshop) as well as the basics of light and shadow.

Gathering Reference and Tutorials

First I Googled and searched “cel shading practice,” to see what other artists were doing. I looked through and found some methods that appealed to me, and which I thought would help me figure things out. So, based on those, I created my own practice regimens.

Here are a couple of the tutorials that caught my eye:

http://celesse.deviantart.com/art/Photoshop-Cel-Shading-Tutorial-9731752
http://nashya.deviantart.com/art/Cel-shading-03-Faces-173281456
http://www.deviantart.com/art/How-I-cel-shade-things-528499342
http://benderzz.deviantart.com/art/celshade-smoothing-tutorial-184199676

So I looked through those and picked out methods that would work for me. For instance, I don’t have the time to go in and shade each color individually. Not only is that wasteful of time, it also creates huge PSD files, and it just doesn’t appeal to me. I need to figure out a process that allows me to shade well, and quickly. Doing it one color at a time is NOT going to work.

So, I went with the layer blending mode method. That way, you can just mask the flat layer, and then change the mode and opacity of the shade layer to shade all the colors. Of course, there are so many choices in blending modes that this gets kinda confusing. Later on I’ll show you how I compared blending modes to see how the colors were affected. But for now, the basics!

After finding tutorials, I went in search of reference images. I actually used a lot of fan-colored artwork from Naruto to get an idea of what I liked. Namely these pieces:

http://colored-manga-naruto.tumblr.com/post/99895087035
http://colored-manga-naruto.tumblr.com/post/99895097020
http://colored-manga-naruto.tumblr.com/post/100490057805

Analyzing References

So I took those pieces and a few others, and noted a few things in common:

• Very thin lines
• Lots of contrast
• Details are all very simplified
• Two layers of shading (dark and darker)
• Pretty minimal highlighting

After studying those for a while, I started working on my own. First I wanted to see what the difference was between very thin lines and thicker ones when cel shading is added.

I’ve usually done kinda thick lines with lots of varying line weights, which works great for plain line work to increase interest. But once you add color, the line thickness becomes a different story. The line thickness can really affect a colored piece.

Finally, Trying out the Line Art

So here’s my basic line art on my character Cor. Just a note, Cor may change soon, because I found it pretty hard to draw him XD. I need my charries to be easy to draw, dangit.

Adding Color

So from there I added some very neutral flats. Neutral as in, more grey, less colorful. Using neutral colors allows you to gauge the shade color for effectiveness (to whatever you’re trying to convey, be that emotion, etc), and you can always adjust the color to make everything match.

Cor’s got a very dark color palette, so next time I’ll have to play with a lighter character. The shade might work differently.

I could have maybe upped the brightness, but eh. This is practice.

Then, using those Naruto images as a sort of reference, I did some shading (setting the layer to Overlay in SAI Painter). Of course, you have to know the basics of how light and shadow work, so if you’re not sure, you might want to look up “principles of light and shadow in art,” which is a whole topic in itself. There are plenty of resources online!

I only refined the shade on his face, so his clothes are a bit messy.

And here I looked at both and sort of compared. The only thing I changed between these was the line thickness.

Thin Lines:

• Gives a “lighter” feel
• Makes you pay more attention to the characters expression, as the eyes are the thickest lines
• Allows the shade colors to create more of a boundary around the character
• Little details (like the cheek marks) add to the shade

Thick Lines

• Heavier feel to the image, almost makes the colors darker.
• Sort of distracts the eye at the borders, particularly around the chin area.
• Makes the shaded dark areas seem even darker
• Draws the viewer away from the eyes and expression, because the eyes are the same width as the other lines.

Both line weights have their merits, but I found I really like how the thin lines look. So I chose to go with thin lines for the next step of my little training session.

I took the lines and added some color to them. I didn’t go in and match the colors (saves time) so I was looking for a single color that would work on each section. That made the colors tend towards the dark.

I can see all kinds of uses for each color, and this was a great way to finally compare things. Now I can come back to reference these, and choosing these colors and lines might help me set a scene in a comic or animation.

Now, on to part 2!