Cel-shading

I’ve introduce cel-shading – my personal preference on art style (and its currently the best I have ) – in a previous post Using Cel-shading. And now I have something to share on basically how to apply them in flat drawings using flash. This is based on my experience from how I started drawing it to how I do it these days.

With tools provided with flash we can achieve a cel-shaded effect in quite different ways and yet achieve similar (if not so the same) results. As for this, we’ll be using the rectangle tool, line tool and brush, but of course all with the help of the selection tool and paint bucket tool for our color fill needs.  Just remember the base rule, to have consistent light source when adding the shades.

Our sample character

I’ve prepared a hand drawn character where we will be applying shading. Now, don’t tell me that my drawing doesn’t look any good, it’s all that I can do. :-p

Rectangle Tool

First off the bat, is the rectangle tool. Why the rectangle, not the cirle? Hence the edge points will be needed to snap on other line’s edges. The rectangle tool is only good for simple shapes with not so much detail, so for this example I can only see the nose to be simple enough.

Nose - Simple shape 1. Start with a basic shape from your drawing where the shade would not be too complicated (so don’t choose the ears, unless your ears is all round and flat to begin with).	2. Select a skin color which is slightly darker to the skin color. Take note the darkness or lightness of the shade would depend on the imagined light intensity.	3. Using the rectangle tool, draw a small circle.
4. Make sure to enable snap to objects to connect points easier. Use the selection tool to drap the corner to it one of the border edges.	5. Continue dragging the corners to the borders. Then use the paint bucket tool to color fill the space created .	6. Drag the other sides to form a curve. This will be the shade for the nose curves.
7. Continue dragging the remaining sides and curve them to make the round nose appear more round.	8. Now from the point where both points meets (a corner) drag it to make a smooth curve.	9. And we have the shading for the nose.

Well it obviously took long enough just to have that shade using the rectangle tool which will prove that it isn’t that effective for this task.

Line Tool

So next we will be using the line tool. Now things would be much quicker to do hopefully compared to the above or maybe not, since we’ll be shading the whole face now (with the ears).

10. Using the line tool, create a line above the jaw then curve it a little. We will have connected lines instead of having just one so that we can have more control over the curves.	11. The reason we curved the line is so that we won’t hit the mouth lines. Now extend it just above the chin. Curve it to your liking and to follow the jaw lines.
12. Continue with creating lines and curve them to show how the face is (note: straight lines = flat faces).	13. Continue lining and curving until you close the line for the shaded part.
14. Since the ears are a little huge (okay, not little but really huge!), we won’t completely shade it. Create lines and curve them respective to how the ears are popped-out.	15. After lining and curving, we can simply use the paint bucket tool to fill the shade color.
16. When everything is looking okay (lines and curves are good enough), we have to delete all the lines (unless you’ll make them necessary).	17. And look now, we have our character shaded quite well.

Now that we have our character’s face shaded, the only thing left is the shirt.

Brush Tool

For this last one, we’ll be using the brush tool and expect this one to be the quickest of them all. Although the outcome might not be well straight and curved unlike from lines but who care anyway, we just want it to look better and do it fast. By the way I’m using my tablet but this shading can still be achieved by using a mouse.

18. With the Brush tool, we have to set the brush mode to Paint Selection.	19. Select the fill for the shirt using Selection tool.	20. With Brush mode set to Paint Selection, only the selected parts will be painted, so go on and brush the upper part of the shirt which is supposed to be shadowed from the character’s head and don’t worry about paint going off the selection, it won’t.
21. Then do the same for the part bellow the arms.	22. And also with the sleeves.	23. And do the same for the arm too. And we’re finished!

I supposed you would not like to use the rectangle tool, but I just wanted to share that since I once used it before. The line tool has it’s own purpose on certain circumstances that using the brush tool might be troubling.

Sample character with shading

So maybe now, you have an idea on how you’ll be able to cel-shade your drawings from my example here. Of course hand draw styles are not meant to be with perfect lines, curves and shades, it would all come to a matter of preference and personal style. Learning this drawing style might take a while for you to get used to but it will be well deserved when all comes to place after a lot of practice. Now, go! go! go and draw your toons…