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Last Updated Monday , September 23 , 2002 Archives
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Lalala.. guess what? I'm an idiot and decided to do a tutorial before I did anything else! Silly, silly Xella *baps* Anywho, this tutorial is on.. you guessed it.. eyes! More specifically, how I do them for XDM. I do eyes differently for every different project, so bear with me, especially if you've read any of my other tutorials. I can be confusing, but I'll try not to be. This page is graphics-intensive, please wait for it to load so you understand what's going on ^_^
To make the most out of this tutorial, you'll need Photoshop 5.5. All the techniques work in 4+, but I personally don't use 4 coz' of a lack of hotkeys and don't use 6 or 7 because the bar at the top drives me INSANE. So this tutorial was made using 5.5, etc. etc. You'll also need layers capability, and something to use it on, especially if you care to follow along ^^ Your ink should be on a layer ABOVE your colour and background, because when you colour over the lines, things get.. icky looking ¬¬; And we don't want that ^^; At a later point, I'll be explaining how I do the entire comic, so look back for that if my layers thing confuses the hell outta ya ^^;;
For XDM, I do all the colouring of the characters on one layer below the ink
layer. I could make seperate layers for everything, but I've been too lazy
recently. If you don't know what colours you'll want things to be at the end,
I suggest putting each colour on its own layer. I'm not going to be talking
too much about that for now, so.. yeah *nods*
I have all my character colors already established; if you're planning on coloring the same character more than a few times, I suggest creating your own palette for this. Again, I'll go into that at a later date, but here's what we'll be using for this tutorial:
We'll be primarily using the paintbrush (hotkey: B), but you may need to erase (hotkey: E), especially if you're colouring on multiple layers like I suggested (but I don't follow my own advice, so like anyone else will XD;;) For both tools, the three brushes we'll be using will be the first three on the default brush setup: 1 pixel, 3 pixel, and 5 pixel, all of which have 100% hardness setting. Both tools should also be set to 100% opacity, and if you have a pressure-sensitive stylus/wacom/tablet, go ahead and set that to be size only. The eraser should be set to 'paintbrush' as well.
You can also see I've circled 10 colours in my swatches panel (the swatches panel is usually categorized in the same window as 'Color' and 'Brushes', however in 5.5 you can take it out and arrange it how you want. Wish you could do that with 6 *glare*). These are my custom colours; every colour here is used on some character or another. Scary, no? These will be the colour's we're working with: the four on top are Janus' eye colours, the ones directly beneath it his skin, and the ones on the very right his hair and the colour of the shadow in the eye (I use those colours on every character, by the way, in case you were wondering). We'll also be using white and black, and (if you so desire) a 20% and 80% grey (just to add even more depth in the shading and highlighting). The ultimate descision, however, is yours. That, by the way, is our finished result at 200%. I tend to work up close, especially when working at a lower resolution (for webcomics, you need only 72dpi. If I were ever to bring these to print, I would probably go as high as 800dpi, but that takes a lot more time and makes a larger file), and I find it makes it easier to get lots of details in that make it look spiffy ^^
Step 00:
Here's what we've done so far. I'm not going to bring you through all the steps I used to colour this so far, because that would be pointless and redundant (see the tutorial on how I actually MAKE these things for that ^^), but I would like to show you where we're at. Usually I'll do the eyes last (save the background). You can kinna see the background actually already coloured in, but that's coz' I'm a dork ^_^
Step 01:
Quite simple: Colour in the eye with white. note that that line at the bottom is the lower eyelid: most whites don't go further than that, unless the eye is hanging out of the socket o_O;;;;;
Step 02:
Take the lightest of Janus' haircolor/eye shadow colour and draw a line up at the top there. It always helps to remember the eye goes along with the face: the brows do shade it a bit, but just grey makes it kinna blah, so I use the bloo ^^
Step 03:
Now take the next-darkest colour and make another line just above that one. It's hard to see, but its' there, and adds depth *nods*
Step 04:
Last one, folks. Take that darkest colour and dab it in at the very top there. Tada, your eye is shaded. But you have no real colour and no pupil! Aaah! Don't panic!
Step 05:
Simple, really. Take the lightest of the four eye colours and color in the pupil/iris area, go on, liberally smear it in there ^^ You know you want to.
Step 06:
Here's where we get a bit more complicated, though not much. Take the next
color and color in most of what's just been coloured in in the step before.
Now you may be wondering why the light section is where the shadows fall on
the rest of the face. My logic for that is this: with an eyeball, as well
as many spherical objects (like... noseballs. Or tongueballs... or just balls
^^), the lightest part of the ball (not the reflective part) is on the side
farthest from the lightsource. Don't ask me why, I just got it from Arioch's
tutorials and have been using that theory for 'bout a year now ^^;; So if
it isn't true, I dunnae care, it works and makes zhee eyes look goot ^.^
Step 07:
A tad more complicated now... take the second-darkest eye colour and mark the beginnings of where the pupil's going. Notice also there's odd shadow things on the sides of the iri.. That's coz' it.. happens a lot in anime and manga, and I dunno why, but it looks cool XD;; Do I have to give a reason for everything? ^_^;v Perhaps it has something to do with the whole being a sphere and showing depth bit. I dunno.
Step 08:
Take that final dark teal and repeat step 7 with it to form step 8 ^.^ As you can see, there's still some of the other colour showing, and its really beginning to look somewhat like the final product. Somewhat. But we're missing two things:
Step 09:
Nab that black (or 80%-ish grey, depending), and repeat as before. Now our eye REALLY looks like an eye.. except hey, wow, Janus looks like some kind of drone, mindwashed thing (isn't he, though? ^.^) So we now need...
Step 10:
Highlights! There's a large one in the direction of the light. That's really all you need, as you can see, but if you want to add more, three is usually my limit ^^
And here's the finished image:
I think that'd make a pretty shiznitty bookmark, myself ^^ The comic in which this appears (at the real size) aired May 10, 2002.
Did I not answer something? I'm sorry, please feel free to email me about it ^^;
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