ASK THE MAKER Answers pt1
Ask The Maker || My Thread
This entry has answers for questions about my coloring asked by haldir-lives13, kayable and accordion.
First off, I am really, really bad at answering questions and explaining myself, but I did the best I could! I hope these are helpful in some way and feel free to ask follow ups if I made no sense.
haldir_lives13: I would love a guide on how you achieve that wonderful shiny, vibrant colouring of yours! Like these:
So, my basic coloring style is to create a kind of canvas with a low saturated tan color to it, either solid or using textures to add some lighting right off the bat. Then I use 3 soft light layers and 1 screen layer of the base to add the image to the canvas, then use the brush tool to brush on the individual colors (in soft light layers) I want to bring out. I have a full tutorial of the method here if you want more in depth steps of that.
Focusing on bright, shiny coloring specifically, here are some tips.
First off, using using already vibrant colors to brush on beneath the base’s soft light and screen is a good way to get saturation without losing details. Usually I only pick one color in an icon to have super bright, sometimes two. Making the background bright is my particular favorite since it will lend the whole icon a bright feel while still keeping the subject looking human/somewhat natural. Clothing is good too, but best if it contrasts with the subject’s skin and the background.
So for instance, on that Ariel icon, this was our base:
It isn’t all that bright or shiny of a cap, but it is a great base because the colors are already clearly contrasting each other and it isn’t super bright or dark already. The main thing I want to do is make the sky super bright and pop out from behind her.
Using brush work, I get it to look like this:
Mainly what I’ve done is just to bright up the whole icon, every color. I brush on below the soft light/screen base layers with them visible at all times so that I can see how the icon will look later, but here are what the layers would look like without the soft light/screen base layers.
All set on normal:
Regular settings (in this case all soft light 100% opacity except her lips, which I put on multiply 42% so they wouldn’t disappear):
Just by looking at this you can see how the background is obviously the brightest, most intense part of the icon. Her hair also is very bright, but that it held over more from the original cap so I actually used a more purple shade to cool it off a bit.
The shininess is from light blobs. I place my own, usually, but I do recommend drankmywar’s light blob textures until the end of time. One thing I did a lot while I was figuring out how to place light blobs is that I used other people’s light blob textures, setting them on the same image one at a time on soft light, and picking out which parts of the icon I now liked and didn’t like, using those to help me figure out what kind of light blob placement I personally liked.
The most important light blobs in terms of shininess are the ones I put on the background. While usually with background lightblobs I don’t want them going over the subject and will erase/mask out the parts that do, when I am going for super shiny coloring, I actually want them to brush over the lines a bit. Think of it as like a little kid’s coloring book just with light and shadows instead of color. Then, a lot of Gaussian Blur.
Sometimes in doing this it will overbright certain parts of the icon, but that is an easy fix. Just brush over whatever has gotten blown out with black and put it on a low opacity soft light layer, or take a pale shade of whatever color you want it to be and put it on multiply.
My final shininess trick is just a stamp or merged layer of every visible set on soft light and Gaussian Blurred to heck. Sometimes, if the icon is a bit dark and this isn’t shiny enough, I will do the same thing with a screen layer set way down on opacity.
Here is a little palette of colors to brush on that make things nice and bright.
As you can see, for colors like green and cyan-y blue, I just go for the brightest, most saturated shade- the colors located here:
As I head into warmer colors, I go darker (downward) and slightly less saturated (leftward) This is because warmer colors, at least for me, have stronger tendency to get blown out and lose depth if I keep them super bright. Additionally, for pinks and purples, I stay toward the top but go for lower saturation levels to give those colors a bit of a softer edge to them.
kayable: How do you work with such bright colours and not make it look overly saturated like -
or
My coloring method of brushing over helps keeps things bright without being over saturated, generally, but here are a few other tips for if things do become too saturated.
If the whole icon is oversaturated:
1) Go to Layer>New Adjustment Layer>Hue/Saturation. Mode: Normal, Opacity: 100%. This will bring up a Hue/Saturation box with sliders for Hue, Saturation and Lightness. Leaving the first and third sliders alone, drag the middle (Saturation) slider back to around 40%. Nudge it one way or another until it looks good.
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2) Go to Layer>New Adjustment Layer>Gradient Map. Mode: Normal, Opacity: 100% (for now). I have a preset gradient that I use to make thing black and white, it is black on the right and a light grey on the left. Click ok to set the layer and then drag the opacity around until things look right.
If just one color is oversaturated:
You could still use the Hue/Saturation adjustment layer, since is can pick up just individual colors groups (Reds, Yellows, Greens, Cyans, Blues, Magentas) but I personally don’t like using it. The reason I dislike using this tool for just cooling down one color is that the border where it divides shades into one of those groups might not be where I’d put it, and it sometimes creates weird borders.
Instead, find the color’s opposite. To do this accurately, just invert the whole image and use the eyedropper tool to pick up the color that is now where the color you want to fix used to be. Remember, though, that inverting doesn’t just switch the hue but also the lightness- so a light green will turn into a dark red, not a light red- so you might want to play with the shade just a tad. Invert again to get everything back to normal.
Then, I use the brush tool (best tool!) to brush on that shade over top the part you want to fix and lower the opacity or set it to soft light. If it still doesn’t look quite right, use Enhance>Adjust Color>Hue/Saturation to just shift that one layer’s hue/saturation/lighting around until it blends in right.
If the border where you brushed on is too clear, just blur it until it blends.
To use a super saturated version of the palette I put together for the last question as a guide, here are how these different methods of desaturating can work out.
The first line is the original colors, the second is desaturation with a saturation/hue adjustment layer, the third is desaturating with black and white gradient map on a lower opacity, the fourth is inverted colors on normal with a lowered opacity, and the fifth is inverted colors on soft light.
As you can see the results are variable by color, so I just experiment around a lot.
accordion: I know from your previous tutorials that you often color by brushing over an area and setting the layer to soft light. Is there a general color palette you tend to use or do you always choose new colors? How do you decide which colors you want to bring out?
I don’t have any palettes saved, I pick new colors every time. What I usually do is go for the brightest, most saturated version of the color I’m aiming at, the ones located here:
And then I play with them in the hue/saturation tool, fiddling around the settings until things look good. That tool saves my life, seriously, I fiddle with probably every color I put down using it.
Honestly, I don’t have a set process for deciding which colors to bring out. Usually that happens more when I’m actually putting the colors down and messing around with them and I find something that I thing looks super cool, so then I make it the focal point.
That said, I usually try to find two colors that aren’t right next to each other on the color wheel to bring out, just to give the icon some contrast. While both should be very saturated because I love vibrants, usually one should be darker and one should be lighter. I usually like the lighter on the background and the darker on the subject, but that isn’t a hard and fast rule.