Title: Lesson 1
Description: Intro to CG Soft-Shade(made for GIMP)
Description: Intro to CG Soft-Shade(made for GIMP)
Johnny - September 12, 2004 10:25 PM (GMT)
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| This is for people who are just beginning CG, but feel free to join in if you're not a beginner For this I use GIMP, you can download it free, if you can't get it for reasons like "my computer freezes when I get GIMP" then post in the help topic and I'll see what I can do... okay on to the lesson... ;) (you'll have to click the links to see the images cause there were too many) Okay, first you'll need to create a new canvas, of course, so go to "file" and select "new" after that a window will pop-up that looks like this...  In the space that says "width, height- pixels" put in 550x550... this will be the pixel size of your canvas. When drawing manga you always want to have multiple layers, to get multiple layers open the "Layers, Channels &Paths" window and click the layer button (circled in red)  When you click the button another window should pop-up and you'll click the spot that says "transparency" then a new layer will be created. Now we'll start the line-art, to do this we first must do the main sketch, so we'll go to the tool pallet and select the pencil (boxed in red) and then we'll click on the forground color (boxed in green) after clicking the forground color a window will pop-up with the color pallet, select light blue...  Then pick the appropriate brush size by going to the brush window, located under the FG&BG (foreground and background), then select the first small circular brush (circled in purple)  Now we can draw the sketch, it won't be at all detailed, it's just the main configuration of the body. For female characters their body will be more slim and curvy, this is a male character so his features will be more sharp... http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v238/Joh...ce/a3c0532a.jpg then you'll select another shade of blue and add the clothing and hair sketch... http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v238/Joh...ce/f111ce4f.jpg Now we'll add another layer like shown before, by adding another transparency, then we'll change the FG color again to black. Then we'l select a new brush size one time larger then the first, thicker outlines are easier to work with in the beginning. Then we'll trace the outline of the character like this... (TIP*- if you make a mistake it's easier to push "ctrl Z" to undo it!) http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v238/Joh...ce/283ae4b2.jpg Now we'll delete tha sketch layer by going back to the layers window and selecting the skatch layer and then click the delete button (circled in red)..  then after deleteing the blue sketch we'll color the background a sage green like so... http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v238/Joh...ce/cfeb4bc7.jpg then we'll add another layer below the lineart and start to color the picture, for every color you should add another layer, this makes it easier to go back and add highlight, shadin, or erase.... http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v238/Joh...ce/a5ae7ca2.jpg okay now you should end up with something like this... http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v238/Joh...ce/1cffd015.jpg EACH COLOR SHOULD BE ON IT'S OWN LAYER! if you have this we can move on to the shading and highlighting... To shade and/or highlight you should choose the burn tool.. which looks like this...  after shading it you can smooth out the shading and highlighting by selecting the blur tool, which looky like a tear drop, and running it over the edges of the shading and highlighting... http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v238/Joh...ce/c792239d.jpg After you've blurred the sketchy shading/highlighting you can move onto the tiny details... When adding details to the eyes you should put the glare spots over the line-art to give it more character, you can go crazy with detail, but try to keep it within reason and not go overboard, or your character will turn out more fictional looking then you want it to, and when doing a dark skinned character like i did, you should start with a brown then add a light shade of sage green... (do this by lowering the opacity on the brush tool and going over the skin till you have it how you want it)... http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v238/Joh...ce/ea3c82c7.jpg Now that you have all the details you can add the background, which is very simple. To put the background I have, all you have to do is go to the pattern pallet by clicking the pattern box, located beside the FG&BG boxes... then another pop-up window will appear with different patterns to choose from, select one then go to the stamp button, and bring up the "tool option" window by going to "file" then "dialogs". Then in the "tool option" window choose "pattern source" then go to the background layer and color it in.. then add shading to make the character to stand out more if you want to... and you're done... http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v238/JohnnyAlice/BEGG.jpg now for homework I want each of you to create your own character... you don't have to get fancy and it can be anything you want ^_^ ( -_- PS. if you're want to know how to get the knit look to the shirt you select the small fuzzy brush and raise the spacing level and select the dodge/burn tool and dodge it.. it'll create little dots of lighter color and gives it a textured look.. it'll be explained more as you go further into CG) |