To shade or not to shade ...
To shade or not to shade ...
I have noticed that for most of the mainstream comics that do one off gags ... like the far side, they do little if any shading. Normally political gags have more shading. Is this true ? Do too much shading and lines detract from the gags ?
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Faub
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Many of the 5-7 days/week comics don't shade because they don't have time. Instead they've developed a B&W drawing style that implies volume without shading. Sinfest or Liberty Meadows are good examples of this. Or they develop a drawing style that doesn't imply enough realize to require shading. Peanuts or Dilbert fall into this category.
The way we shade our characters, objects and backgrounds is very simple and only take a minute or two to do. Actually our comic's named after our shading style "Alpha-Shade".
We use flash MX for about 95% of the art. After the characters/objects are colored in, we set up one or two more layers on top of that and apply a the shadows. this is done using an "Alpha Faded" black, set between 25-40, usually a 30ish and another 40ish for the darker shadows.
Alpha Faded, means the color black is set to be 30% or 40% opaque or see through. Using this Alpha-Faded black, you can then shade all the different colors on the character and any objects in the frame using just one color. You don't have to try and match each individual color and then darken up the values. Instead of taking 45 minutes to an hour, you can get the same look in a few minutes.
Sometimes we use 2-3 layers of shading for a 2-3 tone shadows. The alpha-faded colors will compound the shading effect when layered over each other. A 20% black on 3 layers will give you 3 shadow values 20%40%60%.
This style of shading is used in the banner below. The shadows on Laura and the cat are on a layer over the colored characters. The shadow's then drawn in from the top of the hat, hair, coat and hand all in one step. The same brush can then add the shadows to the ship in the background all on the same layer. The drop ship has 3-4 shaded values on the side and on the bottom. You can see how the alpha faded black darkens all the colors as if you took the time to try and match the colors and the darken them. Its a huge time saver and gives the drawing a cell painted look to them.
Faded black works great, sometimes we do use a tinted black (blue-green)in a few different areas. I haven't try this style of shading in PhotoShop, but you should be able to do the same thing with layers.
CB
We use flash MX for about 95% of the art. After the characters/objects are colored in, we set up one or two more layers on top of that and apply a the shadows. this is done using an "Alpha Faded" black, set between 25-40, usually a 30ish and another 40ish for the darker shadows.
Alpha Faded, means the color black is set to be 30% or 40% opaque or see through. Using this Alpha-Faded black, you can then shade all the different colors on the character and any objects in the frame using just one color. You don't have to try and match each individual color and then darken up the values. Instead of taking 45 minutes to an hour, you can get the same look in a few minutes.
Sometimes we use 2-3 layers of shading for a 2-3 tone shadows. The alpha-faded colors will compound the shading effect when layered over each other. A 20% black on 3 layers will give you 3 shadow values 20%40%60%.
This style of shading is used in the banner below. The shadows on Laura and the cat are on a layer over the colored characters. The shadow's then drawn in from the top of the hat, hair, coat and hand all in one step. The same brush can then add the shadows to the ship in the background all on the same layer. The drop ship has 3-4 shaded values on the side and on the bottom. You can see how the alpha faded black darkens all the colors as if you took the time to try and match the colors and the darken them. Its a huge time saver and gives the drawing a cell painted look to them.
Faded black works great, sometimes we do use a tinted black (blue-green)in a few different areas. I haven't try this style of shading in PhotoShop, but you should be able to do the same thing with layers.
CB
I use "brightenss-contrast" adjustement layers. They are not as strong, but it's not necessary for shading, and I figure they are 1 byte per pixel, as opposed to 4 bytes per pixel.Phalanx wrote:Ahh... multiply layers.
Yes, that's how it's done, and the best part of working on another layer is that it doesn't damage your originals.
You are the Non. You must go now, and never return."
"1.Scan in high res 2.tweak with curves,levels or something to clean up the scan (or use channel mixer to remove blue pencil lines) 3.Add colour using a layer set to multiply. 4.Add wordbubbles and text as vector shapes. 5. Merge all layers. 6.resize to the web size. 7. Export/Save for Web" that's all I know about webcomicking.
"1.Scan in high res 2.tweak with curves,levels or something to clean up the scan (or use channel mixer to remove blue pencil lines) 3.Add colour using a layer set to multiply. 4.Add wordbubbles and text as vector shapes. 5. Merge all layers. 6.resize to the web size. 7. Export/Save for Web" that's all I know about webcomicking.