Flat Characters? 3 Steps to Nail Realistic Lighting - Cutepunk 5: Hungry

Hey everyone!

Do you notice your characters looking flat in terms of values and don't know why? Today, I'll give you three tips that I'm currently using for my latest pieces, and you can try them in any of yours!

Let's dive into my process during these series. Technically speaking, I'm currently working on values, specifically cloth values. I study how the fabric behaves based on the character's gesture and, as a consequence, how the edges of the shadow must be shaped.

1. I use large shadow shapes from the references as a guide to position smaller ones, and over the process, I slowly refine these triangular values. How can you spot large shadow shapes, you might ask? Just shrink the picture to a small size and find triangular or recognizable patterns in the reference.

I use large shapes because it's easier for me to spot them once I look back at the references, but you can choose anything you find easy to recognize, like the shape of a shadow similar to a random thing, like when you find similarities with clouds and animals. While looking at the reference, I replicate the shape in my piece. I try to use triangular shapes because I feel they resemble fabric shadow shapes the best, but sometimes that's not the case.

2. Once the shadow layer is officially done, I select the layer and create a new one on top. With the soft brush, I add darker tones (ambient occlusion) right where light will get the least, and also I add soft darker tones right at the border of some edges, right where the shadow is connected with the light.

This small touch will create a "reflection" effect without the need of making your shadow clear, and therefore keeping the tonality balance between the dark side of your composition and the bright side.

3. As a final touch, I change the color and the strength of the values depending on the surface of the object. For instance let's make this treatment to the sking of the character:

- Tap command/control, position the cursor on top of the layer and click right on the rectangular layer (not the text, the rectangle). This will select the shape of the skin but not the layer.

- Afterward, I go to the shadow layer and while keeping my "skin" selection, I select the shadow layer just by simply clicking on the layer.

- I tap command/control + U, and the Hue/Saturation window will pop up. In there, I make the shadow of the skin lighter, more saturated, and sometimes I change the Hue in search of warm tones, from yellow to red.

Usually, shadows share a similar tone to the local color, in case you wonder what Hue you should use for each spot of the body.

Try these three simple tips to increase the volume of your values, making your pieces more realistic and complex. There are several things attractive to the eye at first, like familiar shapes, bright colors, and realistic values. In this case, we are exploring values, and it's very easy to get lost among many, so keep it simple at first and just add what is necessary, less is more!.

Are you hungry for more tips like these? In case you missed it, check out the article about Drawing/Painting Fabric from last week, which is also very related to this subject.

If you still find it difficult to grasp these explanations by text only, remember you can watch the process video and check the file for a clearer understanding of each phase (Mastering Maestro Tier), plus some extra things I'm not explaining in detail because the process is often more organic and chaotic than the way it's described.

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