So with this piece of Toby and Amy I'm really wanting to colour it so that it looks like it's dark and they're lit by the light from the TV screen.
I don't really know how to begin, so any help will be appreciated greatly because I'm not exactly that great at lighting! It must be something that comes naturally because I just don't understand how people make it look so easy!
So I was thinking...if I start by colouring them usually, I will have my base colours;
Obviously this was rushed lol.
Then I thought to make it dark...?;
Then I thought maybe if I try and add a greenish tinge and bright highlights and dark shadows? I don't really know if this looks good or not...I would hope it would look better with my normal shading at the base level...but I dunno, I'm scared to start! I don't want it to go wrong and just release it shaded like it's day time!
So yeah...help! There was me wanting it finished by March 5th lol.
Make your lights lighter and your darks darker :3 also, look at where the light falls on the fronts of the bodies, imagine slicing them in half down the middle where light meets dark, for example Toby and Amy's faces would be lit up completely with some sharp dark shadows under the nose and in the ears, and then the backs of their heads would be completely black with some very faint light reflected from the wall onto the rim of Toby's head, because a very small amount of light would bounce back onto the shadowed object (please forgive me if I'm talking down to you, you probably know this already!! T_T ) forgive me if you've already done this, but put your shadows on one layer and your highlights on another so you can adjust them to the right opacity. What I do is I fill the layer with black, make it transparent enough that I can see the lines of the figures and then select the line selection tool, set the feather to 80-100% and use it to deselect then delete the areas that will be illuminated, then I use a white layer and do the same with the shadows and middle-grade colour areas, if necessary blur or sharpen the layers until the shadows look tidy enough. I also found it helpful to look at photos of people in the appropriate light/shadow situation, like this:
ReplyDeletehttp://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/About/General/2012/7/25/1343213266164/Man-on-sofa-watching-TV--010.jpg
I hope some of that can help, I know what a pain it is with high contrast lighting XD
Haha no it's not patronising don't worry, I really don't know how to go about it! That makes sense though :) I'd like it still a bit darker, like it's a darker image on the screen (maybe I'll have to take some ref photos!) 'cause that one is very bright (and how HUGE is that sofa?!)
DeleteI guess it needs a ton of layers (which I'm used to anyway lol) just for the lighting, but I'll get there. You'll have to show me what you mean with all this feathering line tools though, I be unskilled in the ways of photoshop techniques :P