"Tutorial" might be a little misleading, this is more of an insight into my process.
I'm not sure who this will be useful to but I figured I'd do one of
these anyway. I guess if nothing else it gives you a rough idea of my
process.
[A] Here I have the linework, which in this case I drew entirely in PS, nothing exciting here yet.
[B] What I've done here is I've locked the line art layer and set the blending mode to "linear burn", this is how I achieve my color holds.
[C] Here I apply the "flat" colors, probably the most tedious and un-enjoyable part of the the whole process.
[D] This is where it starts to get fun, here I apply cel style shadows with a deep blue or purple.
[E] Now I add some highlights and gradients. With the highlights I set the layer blending mode to overlay and use white or a light grey.
[F] At this stage I want to give my shadows more of an authentic "animated" cel look, so I duplicate my shadow layer and apply a gaussian blur of about 7-9% whatever or whatever feels/looks appropriate at the time.
[G]Another fun part, applying some mood lighting. What I do is I select my shadow layer (CMD+Click), then Invert (CMD + i) Then while your selection is still active click on your flats layer, select the magic wand and (option + click) OUTSIDE of the flat colors, this will deselect everything exept the selection you need to make your lighting, while the selection is still active create a new layer over or under the lineart (over is probably better) and fill or use the gradient tool to cast some lighting, use a bright color. I'll bet none of that made sense lol *sigh*
[F] Here I add a few more effects, blurs and such. To bring out more color I'll flatten everything, duplicate the layer, set the duplicate layer blending mode to HARD LIGHT, 50% opacity and apply a noise filter. FILTER>ADD NOISE>MONOCHROMATIC (set values to whatever suits you, then apply a Gaussian blur of about 40%, all of this together should give the image more color and a smooth animated look. Also you can play with color adjustment to intensify the mood of the image.
*PHEW*
I hope that made sense to somebody lol
[A] Here I have the linework, which in this case I drew entirely in PS, nothing exciting here yet.
[B] What I've done here is I've locked the line art layer and set the blending mode to "linear burn", this is how I achieve my color holds.
[C] Here I apply the "flat" colors, probably the most tedious and un-enjoyable part of the the whole process.
[D] This is where it starts to get fun, here I apply cel style shadows with a deep blue or purple.
[E] Now I add some highlights and gradients. With the highlights I set the layer blending mode to overlay and use white or a light grey.
[F] At this stage I want to give my shadows more of an authentic "animated" cel look, so I duplicate my shadow layer and apply a gaussian blur of about 7-9% whatever or whatever feels/looks appropriate at the time.
[G]Another fun part, applying some mood lighting. What I do is I select my shadow layer (CMD+Click), then Invert (CMD + i) Then while your selection is still active click on your flats layer, select the magic wand and (option + click) OUTSIDE of the flat colors, this will deselect everything exept the selection you need to make your lighting, while the selection is still active create a new layer over or under the lineart (over is probably better) and fill or use the gradient tool to cast some lighting, use a bright color. I'll bet none of that made sense lol *sigh*
[F] Here I add a few more effects, blurs and such. To bring out more color I'll flatten everything, duplicate the layer, set the duplicate layer blending mode to HARD LIGHT, 50% opacity and apply a noise filter. FILTER>ADD NOISE>MONOCHROMATIC (set values to whatever suits you, then apply a Gaussian blur of about 40%, all of this together should give the image more color and a smooth animated look. Also you can play with color adjustment to intensify the mood of the image.
*PHEW*
I hope that made sense to somebody lol
