[ooc] Icon Tutorial #2 - Now with added shading!
This is what happens when you're bored between tags. :(
You will notice soon that this is not my character. I've been promising Jeva a tutorial since I started doing her icons, and well. Why not share with everyone?
I was originally going to make this a lazy tutorial when I started, but decided that I might as well do this one from scratch, instead of making reference after reference to the first tutorial I did. So this is a semi-basic tutorial!
Step One: Setting Everything Up
So, we're going to be coloring this image today.
Make sure the image is in RGB Color, which can be found by going to Image -> Mode before you do anything. Once you've done that, crop the image!
There's some parts on the image we can color out, so make a new layer and color over them with white. I prefer doing this to just whiting out or erasing on the image itself, because I tend to make a LOT of mistakes, and this makes it easier to go back and fix.
Now that we've got all that done, go to Layer -> Flattten Image. This'll smoosh everything down into one layer.
Now it's time to set up your layers.
Right click on your layer and select Layer From Background. What this does is turn your icon layer into a regular layer, which means that layers can be dragged underneath it.
Which is what we're going to do! Set your icon layer to Multiply.
Now you can start making your layers - I like to get my basic ones out of the way so I can move through things smoother. Make as many or as little as you want, we're going to be working from the bottom-most layer and going up anyway.
Also, make sure you make a layer all the way at the bottom and fill it with white.
Voila! You're now ready to start coloring.
Step Two: Coloring Part One.
Now here is where I strongly stress you keep your colors. Whether you put them in a separate file or turn them into swatches, or you're just playing around with different ones or whatever - SAVE YOUR COLORS> You will hate yourself later if you don't.
Click on your skin layer and start coloring.
That is one shitty coloring job, isn't it?
Don't worry about coloring up into the hair or down into the clothes - there's a reason we keep the skin layer at the bottom! And that's so you can color over those embarrassing out-of-the-lines coloring. No one will even know once you're done! It's magic.
Now move onto your clothing layer and color that shirt underneath.
FTR I didn't fail Kindergarten, thank you very much.
Again, don't worry about keeping in the lines! We're about to do some magic. Make a new clothing layer and color in that jacket.
If only it were possible to do this with markers on paper, that'd be awesome.
See? All that crazy coloring we did on the shirt is now hidden! NO ONE WILL KNOW YOUR DIRTY COLORING SECRETS.
Make a new layer, and color in the tie and the glove. You can do both on the same or seperate layers, it doesn't matter.
Now our clothes coloring is done for now. Let's move onto eyes!
Click on your eye layer and first color in the eyes with white, then with the color of your choice.
Now all that's left is the hair! What we're going to do with this is take the hair layer and drag it ABOVE the icon layer.
We will also ignore that "clothes 3" layer that was mysteriously above it in past caps kthnx.
Now what I do here is a little abuse of the Lasso tool. This tends to work better on icons with spiky-ish hair, but can be used on anything, really. So, lasso your hair.
And fill it in with the color of your choice. DON'T DESELECT IT WHEN YOU'RE DONE.
Aaaand drag that layer underneath your icon layer, again, DO NOT DESELECT ANYTHING.
So now you have your icon colored in! But it's . . . looking a little flat, isn't it?
Now, you can leave it here! Or you can move onto the next step.
Step Three: Coloring Part 2, or You May Want To Kill Yourself
So if you're still following along, awesome! What we're going to do now is a bastardized version of shading. "Bastardized" because I honestly have no clue about lighting or anything like that, so we're just gonna WING IT.
So here's the image. The reason I told you not to deselect the hair is simple! It's going to keep us from going out of the lines in the next few steps.
Make a new layer above your hair layer, and name it "shade 1".
Choose a darker color than your hair - not TOO dark, but not too light either. I went with a light brown color.
Now, get your paint tool and start coloring in the bottom of the hair. You can go as high as you want, but don't color the entire thing in! Like so:
Make another layer and name that "shade 2". This time we're going to pick a color a few shades lighter and more yellow than our hair color. For this layer, you want to color a thick strip across the middle of the hair. Don't worry if you color over the first layer! In fact, feel free to follow the top part of it, coloring over it just a little bit.
Make yet another layer and call it "shade 3".
For this last layer, we're going to go with a golden yellow color. This time, we're going to color along the lines of hair, like so:
But that doesn't look quite right, huh? Go select your Blur tool.
Make sure it's on Normal Mode and the strength is at 100%. I like to make my blur tool niiiice and big so I can blur quicker.
Anyway, start blurring those shade layers. Start with the top and blur as much as you'd like, then move down to the next and so on. When you're done, deselect the hair and you should have something like this:
Buuut we're not done! Go down to your eye layer and make one above it, naming it "eye shade 1".
We're going to be doing the same thing we did with the hair, only with the eyes now! This may or may not take more layers, depending on the color. Prussia's eyes take 3-4 depending on how the first three come out.
So, make your image niiiiice and big so you have room to work. Take the Magic Wand Tool and go back to your eye layer, selecting both eyes! To do this, hold down Shift while you're clicking.
But it's selected a bit too much. Go to Select -> Modify -> Contract and put in 1.
That's better.
Now, go back to your "eye shade 1" layer, select a color just a bit lighter than the eyes and color in the bottom part of the eye.
Make a new layer and name it "eye shade 2".
Choose a color lighter than the previous one. This time, we're going to make an arc right over what we color before, below the pupil, like this:
This . . . works a lot better when the eyes are bigger, but yes.
New layer, "eye shade 3". Choose a color that's again, lighter than previous, and getting whiter. This time you're just going to put a single line, following the top of your coloring on the previous layer.
My cropping is getting sloppier and sloppier. Oh well.
If you choose, you can make another layer and use actual white. It really depends on the style, etc.
Now, grab that Blur tool and start blurring that shit, just like the hair. Blur all three eye layers, and you'll have this:
He has Betty Davis Eyes . . . [/MST3K]
Now that we've got the two hardest parts done, we can shade in the clothes!
Because I'm lazy, and about this time am wanting to kill myself for spending so much time on an icon, I do this all on one layer. So go to your clothes 3 layer and make one above it called "clothes shade 1".
Now, select a color darker than your jacket and color in the lines you see. AGAIN, I DO NOT KNOW THE CONCEPT OF LIGHTING. And this is how I deal with that.
Do the same with a darker green, and a darker brown. I usually go with where I think the lighting would go and whatnot. Or I wing it. Mostly the latter.
And that is some damn fine winging, ain't it?
And nooow - you guessed it! BLUR THAT SHIT, SON.
We've got one last part to go! Click on your skin layer and make a new one above it, "skin shade 1". Pick a pink-ish color, since he has light skin.
What I usually do here is trace the hairline. And this picture helps, since it already has some shading! So feel free to color over those parts, as well as to the right of the nose.
And again, BLUR BABY BLUR.
But wait! The mouth! Dammit I knew I forgot to do something in the beginning.
For this, go to your skin layer and erase where the mouth is. And be careful, because sometimes mouths aren't drawn all the way DAMMIT.
Then, go underneath your skin layer and make a new layer. Grab a pink-ish color (you may have to play a bit until you find one you like) and color in the mouth. Don't worry about being neat, through the power of MAGIC the skin layer will hide what you color out of the lines.
Tada!
From here, you can do a few things - you can stop, resize, slap on a border and end it there. Or you can go ahead and play with gradients and make a background (which you would do ABOVE that white layer you made earlier), or any number of things.
In any case, this is your finished product:
Epilogue: Various Tips
Just a quick easy-to-remember things that'll make things go faster!
- Actions: I went over this in the last one and they are EXTREMELY HELPFUL. Even if it's just so your icons save to the same folder, or for the millions of layers you may or may not be making. You can record almost anything and have it saved to help you out in the future!
- Another handy thing for you PC users? Ctr+0. This will make your image as big as it can without maximizing it and without zooming in too far. This works great for smaller images! Bigger images not so much, but can be useful here and there. If there is a Mac equivalent, I don't know it because I shun Macs. :(
- ALWAYS save PSDs of your icon - whether you save one of the big version and one of the icon-sized, this makes it easier if you want to go back and fix something, or even get a color that you forgot to save. I tend to save the bigger versions of most icons, because they either came out really good, or there were a lot of colors used.
- Anime is your friend - no, really, stop looking at me like that. If you play from a manga that has an anime, don't be afraid to take a peek at what colors are being used in the anime and see if you can't work with those. You might have to fiddle a bit to make them lighter or darker, but it does help a bit when trying to decide on a color scheme.
Aaaaand that's about it! Questions? Comments? Demands that I get a life that isn't making icons?
You will notice soon that this is not my character. I've been promising Jeva a tutorial since I started doing her icons, and well. Why not share with everyone?
I was originally going to make this a lazy tutorial when I started, but decided that I might as well do this one from scratch, instead of making reference after reference to the first tutorial I did. So this is a semi-basic tutorial!
Step One: Setting Everything Up
So, we're going to be coloring this image today.
Make sure the image is in RGB Color, which can be found by going to Image -> Mode before you do anything. Once you've done that, crop the image!
There's some parts on the image we can color out, so make a new layer and color over them with white. I prefer doing this to just whiting out or erasing on the image itself, because I tend to make a LOT of mistakes, and this makes it easier to go back and fix.
Now that we've got all that done, go to Layer -> Flattten Image. This'll smoosh everything down into one layer.
Now it's time to set up your layers.
Right click on your layer and select Layer From Background. What this does is turn your icon layer into a regular layer, which means that layers can be dragged underneath it.
Which is what we're going to do! Set your icon layer to Multiply.
Now you can start making your layers - I like to get my basic ones out of the way so I can move through things smoother. Make as many or as little as you want, we're going to be working from the bottom-most layer and going up anyway.
Also, make sure you make a layer all the way at the bottom and fill it with white.
Voila! You're now ready to start coloring.
Step Two: Coloring Part One.
Now here is where I strongly stress you keep your colors. Whether you put them in a separate file or turn them into swatches, or you're just playing around with different ones or whatever - SAVE YOUR COLORS> You will hate yourself later if you don't.
Click on your skin layer and start coloring.
That is one shitty coloring job, isn't it?
Don't worry about coloring up into the hair or down into the clothes - there's a reason we keep the skin layer at the bottom! And that's so you can color over those embarrassing out-of-the-lines coloring. No one will even know once you're done! It's magic.
Now move onto your clothing layer and color that shirt underneath.
FTR I didn't fail Kindergarten, thank you very much.
Again, don't worry about keeping in the lines! We're about to do some magic. Make a new clothing layer and color in that jacket.
If only it were possible to do this with markers on paper, that'd be awesome.
See? All that crazy coloring we did on the shirt is now hidden! NO ONE WILL KNOW YOUR DIRTY COLORING SECRETS.
Make a new layer, and color in the tie and the glove. You can do both on the same or seperate layers, it doesn't matter.
Now our clothes coloring is done for now. Let's move onto eyes!
Click on your eye layer and first color in the eyes with white, then with the color of your choice.
Now all that's left is the hair! What we're going to do with this is take the hair layer and drag it ABOVE the icon layer.
We will also ignore that "clothes 3" layer that was mysteriously above it in past caps kthnx.
Now what I do here is a little abuse of the Lasso tool. This tends to work better on icons with spiky-ish hair, but can be used on anything, really. So, lasso your hair.
And fill it in with the color of your choice. DON'T DESELECT IT WHEN YOU'RE DONE.
Aaaand drag that layer underneath your icon layer, again, DO NOT DESELECT ANYTHING.
So now you have your icon colored in! But it's . . . looking a little flat, isn't it?
Now, you can leave it here! Or you can move onto the next step.
Step Three: Coloring Part 2, or You May Want To Kill Yourself
So if you're still following along, awesome! What we're going to do now is a bastardized version of shading. "Bastardized" because I honestly have no clue about lighting or anything like that, so we're just gonna WING IT.
So here's the image. The reason I told you not to deselect the hair is simple! It's going to keep us from going out of the lines in the next few steps.
Make a new layer above your hair layer, and name it "shade 1".
Choose a darker color than your hair - not TOO dark, but not too light either. I went with a light brown color.
Now, get your paint tool and start coloring in the bottom of the hair. You can go as high as you want, but don't color the entire thing in! Like so:
Make another layer and name that "shade 2". This time we're going to pick a color a few shades lighter and more yellow than our hair color. For this layer, you want to color a thick strip across the middle of the hair. Don't worry if you color over the first layer! In fact, feel free to follow the top part of it, coloring over it just a little bit.
Make yet another layer and call it "shade 3".
For this last layer, we're going to go with a golden yellow color. This time, we're going to color along the lines of hair, like so:
But that doesn't look quite right, huh? Go select your Blur tool.
Make sure it's on Normal Mode and the strength is at 100%. I like to make my blur tool niiiice and big so I can blur quicker.
Anyway, start blurring those shade layers. Start with the top and blur as much as you'd like, then move down to the next and so on. When you're done, deselect the hair and you should have something like this:
Buuut we're not done! Go down to your eye layer and make one above it, naming it "eye shade 1".
We're going to be doing the same thing we did with the hair, only with the eyes now! This may or may not take more layers, depending on the color. Prussia's eyes take 3-4 depending on how the first three come out.
So, make your image niiiiice and big so you have room to work. Take the Magic Wand Tool and go back to your eye layer, selecting both eyes! To do this, hold down Shift while you're clicking.
But it's selected a bit too much. Go to Select -> Modify -> Contract and put in 1.
That's better.
Now, go back to your "eye shade 1" layer, select a color just a bit lighter than the eyes and color in the bottom part of the eye.
Make a new layer and name it "eye shade 2".
Choose a color lighter than the previous one. This time, we're going to make an arc right over what we color before, below the pupil, like this:
This . . . works a lot better when the eyes are bigger, but yes.
New layer, "eye shade 3". Choose a color that's again, lighter than previous, and getting whiter. This time you're just going to put a single line, following the top of your coloring on the previous layer.
My cropping is getting sloppier and sloppier. Oh well.
If you choose, you can make another layer and use actual white. It really depends on the style, etc.
Now, grab that Blur tool and start blurring that shit, just like the hair. Blur all three eye layers, and you'll have this:
He has Betty Davis Eyes . . . [/MST3K]
Now that we've got the two hardest parts done, we can shade in the clothes!
Because I'm lazy, and about this time am wanting to kill myself for spending so much time on an icon, I do this all on one layer. So go to your clothes 3 layer and make one above it called "clothes shade 1".
Now, select a color darker than your jacket and color in the lines you see. AGAIN, I DO NOT KNOW THE CONCEPT OF LIGHTING. And this is how I deal with that.
Do the same with a darker green, and a darker brown. I usually go with where I think the lighting would go and whatnot. Or I wing it. Mostly the latter.
And that is some damn fine winging, ain't it?
And nooow - you guessed it! BLUR THAT SHIT, SON.
We've got one last part to go! Click on your skin layer and make a new one above it, "skin shade 1". Pick a pink-ish color, since he has light skin.
What I usually do here is trace the hairline. And this picture helps, since it already has some shading! So feel free to color over those parts, as well as to the right of the nose.
And again, BLUR BABY BLUR.
But wait! The mouth! Dammit I knew I forgot to do something in the beginning.
For this, go to your skin layer and erase where the mouth is. And be careful, because sometimes mouths aren't drawn all the way DAMMIT.
Then, go underneath your skin layer and make a new layer. Grab a pink-ish color (you may have to play a bit until you find one you like) and color in the mouth. Don't worry about being neat, through the power of MAGIC the skin layer will hide what you color out of the lines.
Tada!
From here, you can do a few things - you can stop, resize, slap on a border and end it there. Or you can go ahead and play with gradients and make a background (which you would do ABOVE that white layer you made earlier), or any number of things.
In any case, this is your finished product:
Epilogue: Various Tips
Just a quick easy-to-remember things that'll make things go faster!
- Actions: I went over this in the last one and they are EXTREMELY HELPFUL. Even if it's just so your icons save to the same folder, or for the millions of layers you may or may not be making. You can record almost anything and have it saved to help you out in the future!
- Another handy thing for you PC users? Ctr+0. This will make your image as big as it can without maximizing it and without zooming in too far. This works great for smaller images! Bigger images not so much, but can be useful here and there. If there is a Mac equivalent, I don't know it because I shun Macs. :(
- ALWAYS save PSDs of your icon - whether you save one of the big version and one of the icon-sized, this makes it easier if you want to go back and fix something, or even get a color that you forgot to save. I tend to save the bigger versions of most icons, because they either came out really good, or there were a lot of colors used.
- Anime is your friend - no, really, stop looking at me like that. If you play from a manga that has an anime, don't be afraid to take a peek at what colors are being used in the anime and see if you can't work with those. You might have to fiddle a bit to make them lighter or darker, but it does help a bit when trying to decide on a color scheme.
Aaaaand that's about it! Questions? Comments? Demands that I get a life that isn't making icons?