how to shade an anime character

by Rudolph Krajcik DVM 8 min read
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How to Shade an Anime Face in Different Lighting

  • General Lighting Anime Face Shading. This shading option is usually suitable to most common lighting conditions where there is no particularly strong one directional light source.
  • Side/Top Lit Anime Face Shading. When the light is coming from above and to one side of the character the shadows will be cast on an angle.
  • Side Lit Anime Face Shading. When the light is coming directly from one side you will pretty much have an evenly split (down the middle) light and a dark side ...
  • Bottom Lit Anime Face Shading
  • Top Lit Anime Face Shading. Top lighting will basically be the reverse of the bottom lighting described above.
  • Back Lit Anime Face Shading. Back lighting will pretty much create a sort of “outline” of light around the character. ...
  • Conclusion. While Cel shading is fairly easy to apply as long as you have a general understanding of where to place the shadows.

Top Lit Anime Face Shading
  1. Forehead – will be completely lit up as it curves towards the above light source.
  2. Nose – the upper side as it faces towards the light.
  3. Cheeks – the upper area of the cheekbones.
  4. Upper Lip – as it sticks out just a little bit and will catch some of the light.

How to shade for complete beginners?

Who this course is for:

  • Complete beginners
  • Students with some experience (but who need fundamental drawing skills to progress)
  • Hobby Artists
  • Students setting out on the journey to becoming an artist, illustrator or designer
  • Crafters who want to go beyond pre-made designs
  • Adults and Children (10+)

How to shade an anime face in different lighting?

Anime face shading different lighting Anime and manga generally use a technique known as “Cel” shading which is shading without gradients. Cel shading is generally much faster and easier to apply to a drawing than realistic shading which makes it great for shading quickly shading multiple frames of an animation or many panels of manga.

How to color skin anime?

Table of contents

  1. How do you add color to skin in Photoshop?
  2. What colors make anime skin color?
  3. How do I recolor skin in Photoshop?
  4. Is Adobe Photoshop good for drawing anime?
  5. How do you add skin color?
  6. How do I make all skins the same color in Photoshop?
  7. How can I change the color of my skin in a picture?

How to shade manga hair two ways?

How to apply transparent hair

  1. Apply gloss. Apply gloss with a hair gloss pen. ...
  2. Paint highlights. Create a new layer on the gloss you drew earlier. ...
  3. Apply gradation. Create a new layer on top of the undercoat layer. ...
  4. Fatigue. Lock transparent pixels. ...
  5. Finish. Since the color seems a little light, create a new hue correction layer to darken the color. ...
  6. Complete. It was completed. ...

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How do you do shading anime style?

10:3515:46Anime Style Coloring Tutorial EXPLAINED - YouTubeYouTubeStart of suggested clipEnd of suggested clipOr create the spots that you want to have filled. In obviously based off a light source and thenMoreOr create the spots that you want to have filled. In obviously based off a light source and then once you're done you can turn everything. Back. On now at this point for most anime.

How do you shade anime digitally?

0:0215:19DIGITAL ART KILLER TIPS COLORING ANIME ART STYLESYouTubeStart of suggested clipEnd of suggested clipHere. So what I do is I hit the W or. However. You can select around the characters. And then invertMoreHere. So what I do is I hit the W or. However. You can select around the characters. And then invert that way you're only capturing. The silhouette of the characters.

How do you shade a character?

2:1112:35How to Shade Characters With a Pencil [*4 ways] SIMPLE - YouTubeYouTubeStart of suggested clipEnd of suggested clipFor the shadow. Start with a thin light strip touching the bottom of her feet. Because the shadowsMoreFor the shadow. Start with a thin light strip touching the bottom of her feet. Because the shadows are on the right side of her body darkening to the right is accurate.

How do you make anime skin color?

2:286:29How to Blend Anime Skin TUTORIAL - YouTubeYouTubeStart of suggested clipEnd of suggested clipSo i'm basically just going to make so i'm just going to make a really subtle shadow like this i'mMoreSo i'm basically just going to make so i'm just going to make a really subtle shadow like this i'm going to eye drop this shadow again and then i'm going to shade the skin beneath.

What does Blue Hair mean in anime?

Blue hair: typically signifies a quiet, soft-spoken, intellectual, sometimes even introverted character – albeit often one with a surprisingly strong will. In addition, such characters tend to get portrayed as refined, tradition-oriented and feminine, quite often even as examples of the Yamato Nadeshiko ideal.

How do beginners learn shading?

1:1513:29How to Shade with PENCIL for BEGINNERS - YouTubeYouTubeStart of suggested clipEnd of suggested clipIt's important to maintain a consistent pressure between each back and forth stroke or eachMoreIt's important to maintain a consistent pressure between each back and forth stroke or each individual stroke. This will take some practice and concentration to develop the muscle memory.

How do you know where to shade?

Determine the surface where the shadow would land, and use the side of your pencil to shade in the drop shadow.Look at a photograph or a still-life to see how your light angle affects the drop shadow.The hardness of the edge of your drop shadow depends on the strength of your light source.

How do you add shadows in anime?

The simple idea of how to add a shadow is to "attach to the opposite side of the direction in which light exists." If there is light on the left, it will be on the right, and if there is light on the top, it will be on the bottom.

How many colors can you add to a character?

Usually, to speed up the production, characters only have 2 values per color, that means, one color for the light side, and one color for the shadow side. You can add more than 2, but keep in mind that the more you add, the longer it will take to color the character, and if you add too much layers of shadow, you run the risk of the character not looking like something from an anime show or movie. The eyes of the characters, however, tend to have more detail and colors depending on how close the camera is.

Why do you need to add more detail to drawings?

Usually, the objects that are closer to the camera, have a lot more detail than the objects further back, and that’s because they don’t need to have that much detail , when everything in a drawing has the same level of detail, nothing stands out, so you only need to add more details to the parts that matter the most.

How to avoid white spots in silhouette?

To avoid having and white spots, I tend to turn the silhouette layer on again and fill it with the same color as the lineart by locking the transparent pixels. You could just fix these problems by coloring it better and more carefully, but I feel like doing it that way takes too much time, that’s why I just use the silhouette layer to fix my mistakes. Just keep in mind that this is something I use to save time, and not something you would do if you were to animate it.

Can you animate a character?

Animating characters takes a lot of time, so anime studios use just clean lines and flat colors. Sure, you probably won’t animate your drawing, but if you want it to look like the real thing, you will need to draw as if it will be animated.

Do you need to clip correction to character?

And then one for the character. Remember to first clip the correction layer to the character layer so that it only affects that layer, otherwise it will also affect the background layers, so you need to clip the correction layer to the character layer and, after you’re done adjusting it, merge the correction layer with the character layer. Same with the background layers, so every correction layer clipped to another layer, will need to be merged to said layer.

What is the anime girl coloring?

Anime girl coloring step by step. The coloring style used in anime is known as “Cel Shading”. Cel shading is a technique generally used in animations and manga/comic book style art as well as 3d renderings where there are no gradients used between the shaded and normal areas.

How to keep shading to bare minimum?

To again keep the shading to a bare minimum for the hair simply darken the inner area of the back of the hair.

When coloring and shading a drawing, do you want to start with the largest areas of the drawing first?

When coloring and shading a drawing you want to start with the largest areas of the drawing first and work down to the smaller details. You will also want color in your whole drawing before applying the shadows.

Is cell shading easy?

Cell shading can on one hand be easier as it’s fairly basic shading but at the same time it can be difficult to find the right areas to shade. As mentioned before the suggested shading areas in this tutorial will generally be the ones that are darker in most normal conditions but you can certainly experiment with different types of lighting.

Can you highlight a drawing on paper?

If you are going to be drawing on paper be sure to leave the highlighted areas white. If you are going to be coloring digitally you can add the highlights after you color the entire drawing.

How is anime hair shaded?

How Anime Hair is Shaded. Generally anime and manga hair is shaded without gradients and has hard transition between it’s light and dark areas. This makes the shading process much faster but at the same time a little tricky as it can be difficult to figure out where the boundary between light and dark should be placed.

How to make your hair shiny in anime?

To make the hair look shiny add some highlights. You can draw these as a series of lines with some joined into small zigzags. Sometimes anime hair will be drawn with only one main highlight area but in this case we will add a highlight for each major part of the hairstyle (also common in anime and manga).

What is a pigtail shaded like?

The pigtails will be shaded similar to the pony tail in an earlier example with the hair clumps being shaded similar to most other examples.

How to draw highlights?

Draw the highlights as a series of curved and zigzag lines. Position the first highlight across the forehead area of the hair. Try and draw the lines that comprise it to flow along the shape of the part of the hair that they are on. For example draw the lines on more of an angle to flow along the curved parts of the hair that are tucked under the sides.

What is anime hair?

Anime hair is generally drawn in large clumps with a lot of it based on real hairstyles.

Where to draw shadows on hair?

Draw the shadows running along the sides of the various hair clumps towards the bottom portions of the different section of the hair.

What happens if you draw shadows too dark?

If you make them too dark they will look unnatural and if you make them too light they may not be visible.

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1- Introduction

2- Brushes

  • In this tutorial I will be using some brushes, but the ones that I use for almost everything tend to be just 3 or 4 of them, and here in particular, I will change between them depending on the element of the drawing. For example, to shade characters in anime, you usually only use hard brushes without texture, while for backgrounds you can use a wid...
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3- The Sketch

  • If you want to make it look authentic, I recommend to start by drawing the character with a background. In anime shows or movies, the characters are almost never just standing there with nothing in the background, they’re usually in a room, in the street, or at school, and as we will see soon, the way you shade the background is one of the main elements to consider if you’re going …
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4- Lineart

  • Now, if you want your drawing to look like something from an anime show or movie, you need to follow the same steps that are used to make anime, and that means, for starters, to have a clean lineart. When you’re working in a more painterly style, you might not need a clean lineart, or even a sketch, but that’s not the case here. Animating characters takes a lot of time, so anime studios u…
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5- Coloring The Background

  • For the coloring stage of the background, I don’t clean up the sketch. This may be different in some anime, but usually, backgrounds have no lineart, they tend to be a bit more realistic, so they don’t need it. So instead of cleaning up the sketch, I lower its opacity and start adding flat colors in a layer behind. Try to make it so that every object of the background has its own layer. For exam…
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6- Coloring The Character

  • Now we will color the character. First, in another layer, I will draw the lines that indicate where the shadows go. The color for these lines doesn’t matter, however, it’s a good idea to use very vibrant and saturated colors to make them look different from the lineart. Also, to avoid getting confused, you can use different colors depending on the parts of the characters, for example, red for the s…
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7- Postproduction

  • We’re almost done, now we just need to add the postproduction adjustments. These are adjustments that usually, in animation, would be done with software for video editing, however, Clip Studio Paint has tools that can help you achieve a similar result when working in single images. First, to be safe, save every layer from your drawing in a single folder and then copy tha…
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8- Conclusion

  • If I had to explain it with the least amount of words possible, it would be like this: “if you want your drawing to look like something from an anime show or movie, draw like they do and follow the same process” Obviously, there are differences since this is a single drawing and those are animations, but my point is that you need to imitate the process if you want it to look similar. Se…
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9- Thank You

  • I’m still kind of new to giving tutorials, so I hope I was able to explain it well enough. Also, English is not my first language, so if there are some grammatical errors feel free to tell me in the comments. Thank you for reading to the very end, I really hope this tutorial was of some help to you, if it did, feel free to give it a heart and leave a comment. Also, you can check out my stuff o…
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