PaintBBS Cell Shading Tutorial
PaintBBS in an applet of oekakis (online drawing boards). This tutorial aims to teach the cell shading technique. Cell shading does require some skill. Cell shading basically refers to the "hard" definition of highlights and shadows. With cell shading, you need to have a good imagination since you have to have to be able to really see where the light really hits your subject. Cell shading is harder, in my opinion, than watercolour shading becuase of the fact that we never see a definate light and dark section as shading; everything always has much more of a gradual blend of tones. Cell shading is a good skill since it makes you look at what you are drawing and makes you think where would the light really hit the object?
This tutorial will walk you through in order to help you create a picture similar to this one:
If you wish to view the full-size images, simply click on them.
Throughout this tutorial, I'd just like to clarify that when I refer to "lineart", I actually mean "outline".
Step 1: getting started
Firstly, open up PaintBBS Animated or Palleted. Set you canvas size. For this image, I will use a 300 x 300 canvas size; the bigger your canvas size, the more work you'll have, yet, if your canvas is too small, you'll have loads of fine details to do.
In the right-hand bottom corner, click on the layer box to make the bottom layer selected. On the latest version of PaintBBS it should be named "layer0" whilst on other versions this may be called "LayerBG".
Using a solid 1 pixel brush of a light colour (such as pink or light blue), draw the sketch of your image. Use as many circles as as you like, such as for the head like I have. Go over you lines a a few times; it won't matter! This is just a sketch, it'll only be used as guidance for later. It, therefore, doesn't matter if it isn't perfect.
Step 2: The Lineart
Switch to the top layer to do your lineart. You can do this by simply clicking on the layers box, until it displays "Layer1" or "layerFG" depending on what version of PaintBBS you're using.
Then, select a brush size. generally, 2 to 4 pixels is the best and easiest to use. Make sure you select black as your colour (we can change that later if you want). For this picture, I will use a 3px brush. Make sure that you've set the brush type to "Solid". If you don't see that on the first tool box thing, click on it until "Solid" appears. To draw your lineart, you have a choise of 2 main options: freeline and beizer. Freeline means you simply draw the lines normally with no computer help. You need to have extremely good hand control to achieve nice lines this way, plus it's very time consuming. Hence, I have used the Beizer tool since it allows me to draw nice smooth curved. It took a while to get used to, but all in all, it wasn't too difficult to learn how to use.
Draw your lineart nice and neatly over the top of your sketch. Make sure you're on the top layer! Although we will make further adjustments, I do recommend to make sure you're quite satisfied with the result.
Next, we need to get rid of the ugly sketch which is no longer needed.
Go back down the the bottom layer. Then, select the White Rectangle tool. To do this, simple click on the "White" tool untill it changed to "WhiteRec". Draw a rectange over your picture, if you've done everything on the correct layers, the sktech will disapear while the lineart will stay.
Step 2.1: Thickenign the lineart
Switch to the top layer to modify the lineart. Using the 3 px solid black brush, thicken the lineart in certain areas, especially where two lines meet. By varying the lineart size, we get a muc more interesting picture. This is true and can be applied to even traditional art. It looks more pleasing to the eye.
Remeber to utilise the zoom in tool (as indicated on the diagram) to esure that you do everything carefully. Do this where ever you feel is neccessary for the entire picture of yours, as shown below:
Final result:
Step 2.2: Tapering the lineart
This step shows how to thinen the lineart making it neater. This is refered to as "tapering" or "tampering". Again, use the zoom tool to see a close up of a specific section, as illustrated below:
Use the eraser tool -- this is not the same as setting the toolbrush colour to white! Select the tool that says "White", which is the eraser tool, as show on the below picture.
Thinnen out the lines where they meet, as well as making certain lines thinner. As I've said before, the more varied the lineart, the more interessting it looks. Create very defined edges; making them pointy. Also, if any lines overlap where they shouldn't, erase the unecessary bits. Make sure you're happy with your lineart, since we won't be majorly modifying it later.
Final result:
Congratulations on getting so far here. Now the only thing that is left is the colouring.
