icon tutorial 001 ♥
I haven't made a tutorial in ages! So here's how I color my manga icons, step by step.
go from this to this:
icons made with this technique:
Start with your base, try to shoot for something without too many screentones and with some empty background space.
Choose a texture that's interesting enough to serve as the background. It helps if it has lots of different colors in it. I'm using this one by 77_words from her mixed bag set.
Get your lineart on it's own layer. If you don't already use the Quick Mask Mode to do that, I have a tutorial that covers how to do it.
For flat colors, I sample colors found in the texture. Her skin is the lightest peach color, hair is the brown around one of the flowers, and I picked a nice green for her glasses. Use a new layer for each color and shove them all under the lineart layer.
I started cell shading with a 5px solid brush, using a top left light source. To shade her skin, I used a color that was not only darker, but redder than the base color. If you don't go redder with skin, it'll be left looking very flat and bland. I put some darker streaks in the hair, following the lines suggest in the base. The glasses were left unshaded.
Since I couldn't see enough of the interesting part of the texture, I rotated it.
From here I flattened the icon and started adjusting it. I went into Hue/Saturation and boosted it about halfway. It's all personal preference though.
Finally I went into Curves, and into the Red channel. I played around a little til I got what I wanted. This step just darkened it and made it more contrast-y. All done now!
I'd love love love seeing what other people come up with, so please post results (and requests for new tutorials)? ♥
WATCH? ♣ AFFILIATE?
go from this to this:
icons made with this technique:
Start with your base, try to shoot for something without too many screentones and with some empty background space.
Choose a texture that's interesting enough to serve as the background. It helps if it has lots of different colors in it. I'm using this one by 77_words from her mixed bag set.
Get your lineart on it's own layer. If you don't already use the Quick Mask Mode to do that, I have a tutorial that covers how to do it.
For flat colors, I sample colors found in the texture. Her skin is the lightest peach color, hair is the brown around one of the flowers, and I picked a nice green for her glasses. Use a new layer for each color and shove them all under the lineart layer.
I started cell shading with a 5px solid brush, using a top left light source. To shade her skin, I used a color that was not only darker, but redder than the base color. If you don't go redder with skin, it'll be left looking very flat and bland. I put some darker streaks in the hair, following the lines suggest in the base. The glasses were left unshaded.
Since I couldn't see enough of the interesting part of the texture, I rotated it.
From here I flattened the icon and started adjusting it. I went into Hue/Saturation and boosted it about halfway. It's all personal preference though.
Finally I went into Curves, and into the Red channel. I played around a little til I got what I wanted. This step just darkened it and made it more contrast-y. All done now!
I'd love love love seeing what other people come up with, so please post results (and requests for new tutorials)? ♥
WATCH? ♣ AFFILIATE?