How To Shade?

[Merkaken 516]

So, I want to start shading my skins but I have no clue how to. Anyone able to help me out?

[HuskyPuppy 255]

http://www.planetminecraft.com/blog/cutemurphys-shading-tutorial/
 

This is how I learned to shade, and from there I tweaked the style and positioning to my choice. But If your going to shade I personally find it easier to use the program paint.net over Novaskin (presuming you still use that)
 

[Merkaken 516]

I have a mac so I can't use paint.net :c Novaskins is nice, but what do other mac users use to shade?

[Demotheus 651]

Yoiu basically touch the shade gem and then get the power of the black ethereal spook tentacle an- oh wait nvm wrong thing.

 

I use GIMP 2.0's dodge/burn tool (mostly the burn tool).

 

Fiddle around with the settings until you get something you like and then go ham. :)

[Lago 2572]

How to Shade? Well, first off you approach Heero and the Shade Gem, then you let them corrupt your - wait, other kind of shade...

[Merkaken 516]

I'm so stupid, I sat there for like five minutes thinking "Wait what are they talking about?" before I got the joke XD

[Kardel 1054]

Use MCSkin3D and make your life easier with the shader tool.

[Merkaken 516]

Use MCSkin3D and make your life easier with the shader tool.

McSkin3D does not work with Mac, for whatever reason.

[Genevieveee 234]

Yoiu basically touch the shade gem and then get the power of the black ethereal spook tentacle an- oh wait nvm wrong thing.

 

I use GIMP 2.0's dodge/burn tool (mostly the burn tool).

 

Fiddle around with the settings until you get something you like and then go ham. :)

I do the same sometimes.

[KUSHerZombie 222]

Go to novaskins

click add layer or whatever after you finish skin

Look for shade layer one and layer two

Profit

[Genevieveee 234]

I use different shading techniques depending on the character. Imma make a fairly long post here for ya. So starting with hair, theres 1) The "H" shading. Heres a picture for example.

 

See, Its just a bunch of H's. The H will be your lightest shade, and highlight. Then you just go darker and darker until your reach the edge of that piece. In the example I had decreased by 4 each time.

 

Next theres some dots. 

 

Pretty much the same thing, but instead of H's you have singular pixels. Then you radiate out going darker.

 

And last using this type of shading is Vertical lines. Again, same concept. Pretty much take the single pixel one from before, and make it one taller.

 

Last one with hair is different, The ones before I used MCSkin 3D now i'm using Gimp.

So first I darken the corners using the burn tool.

 

 

Now I add lines going with the way of the hair.

 

Lastly I add highlights and some touch ups.

 

Finished product:

 

 

Now a few things to note:

1. DO NOT decrease too little! If you have a small decrease that its hard to see the different shades, no ones gonna be able to see the shading unless they look closely!

2. Don't decrease to much! If you do its just going to look weird.

3. Be creative with colors! Look at this,

 

You can easily fade into different colors, making your skin look better. 

4. When doing things like Dark blue hair and silver.

  I. Dark blue, start with a dark blue as your highlight, then fade to black. It makes it look, bluer.

   II. Silver hair, is not just different shades of grey. Its also hues of blue and such. So add in your baby blues!

5. Be sure to add shadows! This means under the hair, around the nose area, anywhere that would cast a shadow. Just know your limits. Don't put a extremely noticeable shadow at the nose or something. 

6. Note that when youre doing shadows, don't just make the color darker. If you have a pale skin, don't just get that weird orange color. Go a little black and a little red or something. Study some colors and find out what color should be used for that shadow.

 

Thats all I can think of for now. I pretty much use the same techniques for clothes. When doing the clothes just note where its darker. so around joints and waist it should be darker than somewhere that gets a lot of light.

 

Hope this helped!

[Knox213 10]

Moved to the Archive. It shall be sorted into the appropriate category shortly.