Hi. Me again.
When I left off with this tutorial I had a few requests for it to include some shading information. I would hate to disappoint.
Part 1: Skin and Hair
To kick this tutorial off, I added a bit of skin and hair to our zombie:
I outlined some patches of skin for starters. He was looking a bit too much like a skull and we needed to be reminded that he is the walking dead. Also, I gave him some random tufts of hair, for character.
There are a few key points that I kept in mind with the additions:
- If the skin has been ripped from his face, surely there are some parts flapping off and folding over. This guys skin loss is more a result of violence and less a result of decay.
- Skin has depth. It’s not paper thin. I added a small ledge in a few spots so it didn’t look that way.
- He has no eye. Skin sinks into the face a bit when there is nothing behind it. Think of people without teeth. Same concept.
Once you’ve added some spots of skin and a few random parcels of hair, you’ll probably want to drop a few colors behind the linework so that things make more sense. I filled in his eye/nose holes pretty dark, and went with a light grey on his muscle tissue. For now he is a greyscale study.
Now that we’re done with that..
Part 2: Shading
I’ll start this part off by explaining a few of the most basic concepts of shading: Form shadows and Cast shadows.
We’ll do a quick demonstration of form shadow with a sphere. The first thing to do is to define a light source, and the basic shape of your object:
The actual shading.. alot to it. For the sake of brevity I’m going to dumb this down as much as possible.. Here goes.
The obvious parts of shading are that the areas most directly affected by the light will be light, and those untouched will be dark. Defining those areas can be a bit trickier.
I have left the area where the light is directly aimed white. Shading starts in a very soft manner, on the lit side of the object. This shading is a result of light hitting the object, but not as much light as directly under the light source.
The point at which light actually starts being blocked by the front side of our sphere is about half way through. You will notice that shading at this point becomes dark exponentially quicker than on the lit side of the object:
Obviously, where and how you define your shading is dependent totally on your light source(s).
Moving on. Cast shadows, a quick study. This image simply illustrates that cast shadows are always in the opposite direction of the light source:
How you handle cast shadows is fully up to you. For this tutorial we’re just going to suffice it to say that you know of their existence.
With all of that boringness out of the way, we move on to our waiting Zombie. I start by blocking out the biggest contours of the object. Very rough and general. I pick a semi-dark color and make my lines of shade just slightly ahead of where I imagine the dark side of the object would be:
- Main shading. Direct result of the light affected by the shape of the object.
- Cast shadow from the large hair tuft. Remember to keep them in the opposite direction of the light source.
- Cast Shadow from the skin flap.
- Dark side of the object.
Next is the detail shading. Things that I focus on are representing the overall contour, and then representing it on a smaller scale. For instance - A round object does not have straight lines for shadows. Similarly, smaller textures on the face of the object need to be shaded as they are shaped. All of the texture in the muscle area is a great example.
Highlights are also important. Areas of the Zombies face that stick out, like the brow and cheek bone may catch light that surrounding areas do not. The interplay of light and shade creates volume. What you do not shade is just as important as what you do, if not more:
I like to use a second level of shading. I have found that it makes the character more dramatic and is generally what I’m going for, in terms of concept. It’s even more important to be light of hand with the second shading layer. You don’t want to make a surface look steeper than it really is.
Other than that, the second verse is the same as the first:
That about wraps it up for this one. Hopefully someone here finds it helpful.