Pass 8, Shadows
All shadows were traced out as black shapes, then blurred and set to an 'Overlay' layer. If the layer was kept as 'Normal', all shadows would appear black, which would make the image less colorful, more bland. By using 'Overlay', areas of black instead bring out the color of what's below them, in this case making the shadowed areas appear a vibrant blue. This makes the image MUCH more vibrant and lush than if the shadows were just dark-black. It also helps make flesh look more alive.
Have you ever seen a 3d model of a person and thought that something wasn't quite right - they looked a bit too plastic, a bit dead. That's because human skin has glow-through - if you hold you hand up to a light and look through it, your hand turns red, as some of the light is passing through your hand and the flesh underneath.
This is one of those things we usually forget about, until we see an artwork WITHOUT it - like a 3d model with plastic, dead looking skin, or an image with black, colorless shadows. In 3d models this is fixed using a SSS (Sub-Surface-Scattering) Shader, which simulated the way light passes through skin and instantly makes the entire model look much more real and alive. And in 2d art this can be achieved by using 'Overlay' and having colored shadows, as a quick way of making your person look more alive and touchable.
Anyway, after drawing all the shadows I blurred them to make them look softer, like they were falling over soft skin. BUT, blurring like this ONLY works if you then cut out the places that should still be sharp edges.
For example, look at the tendril in the lower center of the screen (the one between her breasts). Notice how the end of the tentacle is shadowed, but the breasts behind it are not. If I just blurred the shadows and left it at that, this shadow would blur ONTO the breasts, which would look wrong, because the breasts are meant to be behind the tentacle and lit differently. So to fix this, I cut out the shape around that the tendril, and made it an 'Erase' layer applied on top of the blurred shadows, cutting this area out of the shadows.
Similar affects can be achieved in Photoshop with Layer Masks, and in Paint Tools Sai with Clipping Masks, both of which have many tutorials that can be found by searching those terms.
Cutting out the shadows was only done in a few places - the mid-breasts tendril, the shadow in the nook above the nearer-shoulder (cutting the blur out from the forward tentacle), etc. In other places I deliberately let the shadows blur onto surrounding shapes, e.g. the space between the two tentacles at the top left of the image, or the tendril just touching the far breast - given this is touching, it makes sense for the tentacle to cast a little bit of a shadow onto the breast itself.
This part was brought to you by the word 'breast', which I'll be saying much more in the following part on: shine.
Have you ever seen a 3d model of a person and thought that something wasn't quite right - they looked a bit too plastic, a bit dead. That's because human skin has glow-through - if you hold you hand up to a light and look through it, your hand turns red, as some of the light is passing through your hand and the flesh underneath.
This is one of those things we usually forget about, until we see an artwork WITHOUT it - like a 3d model with plastic, dead looking skin, or an image with black, colorless shadows. In 3d models this is fixed using a SSS (Sub-Surface-Scattering) Shader, which simulated the way light passes through skin and instantly makes the entire model look much more real and alive. And in 2d art this can be achieved by using 'Overlay' and having colored shadows, as a quick way of making your person look more alive and touchable.
Anyway, after drawing all the shadows I blurred them to make them look softer, like they were falling over soft skin. BUT, blurring like this ONLY works if you then cut out the places that should still be sharp edges.
For example, look at the tendril in the lower center of the screen (the one between her breasts). Notice how the end of the tentacle is shadowed, but the breasts behind it are not. If I just blurred the shadows and left it at that, this shadow would blur ONTO the breasts, which would look wrong, because the breasts are meant to be behind the tentacle and lit differently. So to fix this, I cut out the shape around that the tendril, and made it an 'Erase' layer applied on top of the blurred shadows, cutting this area out of the shadows.
Similar affects can be achieved in Photoshop with Layer Masks, and in Paint Tools Sai with Clipping Masks, both of which have many tutorials that can be found by searching those terms.
Cutting out the shadows was only done in a few places - the mid-breasts tendril, the shadow in the nook above the nearer-shoulder (cutting the blur out from the forward tentacle), etc. In other places I deliberately let the shadows blur onto surrounding shapes, e.g. the space between the two tentacles at the top left of the image, or the tendril just touching the far breast - given this is touching, it makes sense for the tentacle to cast a little bit of a shadow onto the breast itself.
This part was brought to you by the word 'breast', which I'll be saying much more in the following part on: shine.
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