A big bunch of requests came in after my first asking how I went about shading my stuff. In this guide, I’ll go through shading with simple 3 tone shading, using solid colour. I’ll assume that you have already read my first tutorial about the basics of flash vectoring. If not, give it a read!

Again, the methods used can be carried over to any other vector package. I prefer to use a combination of Flash and Illustrator, but do the bulk of the vectoring using Flash’s “organic” tools. Alright. Now that that is out of the way, let’s have some fun!

Setting it up

The first thing you’ll want to do, is to make sure that you use a strong contrasting line colour, to easily distinguish it from your already coloured piece. I usually go for something ridiculously bold like orange when I’m working with dark colour, and dark purple or red, when working with naturally bright colours (read up on Brightness vs Whiteness if you have no idea what I’m on about). Simply put, if you use colours which match too closely with the existing base colour, it’s going to suck to pick out.

Light it up!

Before you start shading, determine where your light source will come from, and how intense you want it to be. As a general rule, the more intense the source, the more contrast you will have in your light tones. Just don’t overdo it! Highlights will sit on the edges closet toward the light source, whereas shadows do the opposite and try to ‘hide’ from it. Don’t forget cast shadows as well! When something blocks the light, behind it will be a shadow.

Get in nice and close

It’s vector, so take advantage of it! Using either the line, pen or pencil tool, draw the line of the shadow/highlight around the form on the same layer Remember to think in 3 dimensions. Shadow lines are almost never straight, unless the object’s contour is. Imagine you are running a spiderman style web around whatever you are shading, and it will turn out more volumetric.

Which page?

Pages: 1 2

« Crocker (wip) | clompi »