Cel-Shading Tutorial

This is less of a detailed tutorial and more of a tips & tricks to help you with your technique and speed. Photoshop & a pen tablet required. I hope you gain something out of it!

1: The sketch

I still do all of my preliminary sketches by hand and scan them in; I seem to be able to work faster that way. Your sketches, whether by hand or on the computer, don't have to be neat or accurate - after all, nobody is going to see them when you're all done :) As long as you've got enough to work with when doing your clean lineart, then that's all you need to worry about.

2: Lineart

I use a hard-edged 4px brush for lineart, with size controlled by tablet pen pressure. Try and get some variation in line thickness, as it helps to make it a little more dimensional. With my tablet size, I also find it easiest to work at 200% - the lines come out a lot smoother. Finally, to make the colouring in stage a lot easier, make sure all your shapes are closed - don't leave holes everywhere.

3: Filling

This is why I keep all the shapes closed - it makes colouring in a lot faster. I use the fill bucket tool on a new layer, set to 'all layers' with a tolerance of 32. Sometimes the paint spills out over the outlines if they're very thin; I just set the tolerance a little lower for that section, and click multiple times with the fill.

4: Details

The fill bucket can't do everything; there will be tiny little dots left over in corners with no colour. Setting your brush mode to 'behind' will allow you to scribble over the holes like crazy without painting over any of your existing colour. I also start filling in the details, like lips & eyes at this stage.

5: Shine

I add a bit of shine to the hair in two stages. First, I use the lasso tool to make quick jaggy selections for the highlights, then fill in these areas with a lighter colour. Then a soft edge airbrush with a 20% flow setting is used to soften the harsh edges.

6: Shadows

I hide the colour layer for now, and use a hard-edged brush with size controlled by pen pressure to paint in the shadows on a new layer. There's no real reason why I use blue, other than the fact that it's a nice colour :)

7: Duplicate

Make a selection of the shadow layer by CTRL-clicking its icon in the layer palette, then select the colours layer and hit CTRL-J. This will duplicate the colours layer based on the selection.

8: Filters

Finally, go crazy with the various hue/saturation/photo filters! Make the new shadows layer a bit darker, throw in a hue adjustment or two, just play around until you've got something that fits the environment and mood. If you're concerned about messing up your colours, use an adjustment layer instead of altering the colours directly. That way you can copy over the adjustment layers to future pages instead of having to remember all the filters you used :)

Click here for a huge screenshot of my Photoshop setup and layers

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	1: The sketch I still do all of my preliminary sketches by hand and scan them in; I seem to be able to work faster that way. Your sketches, whether by hand or on the computer, don't have to be neat or accurate - after all, nobody is going to see them when you're all done :) As long as you've got enough to work with when doing your clean lineart, then that's all you need to worry about.
	2: Lineart I use a hard-edged 4px brush for lineart, with size controlled by tablet pen pressure. Try and get some variation in line thickness, as it helps to make it a little more dimensional. With my tablet size, I also find it easiest to work at 200% - the lines come out a lot smoother. Finally, to make the colouring in stage a lot easier, make sure all your shapes are closed - don't leave holes everywhere.
	3: Filling This is why I keep all the shapes closed - it makes colouring in a lot faster. I use the fill bucket tool on a new layer, set to 'all layers' with a tolerance of 32. Sometimes the paint spills out over the outlines if they're very thin; I just set the tolerance a little lower for that section, and click multiple times with the fill.
	4: Details The fill bucket can't do everything; there will be tiny little dots left over in corners with no colour. Setting your brush mode to 'behind' will allow you to scribble over the holes like crazy without painting over any of your existing colour. I also start filling in the details, like lips & eyes at this stage.
	5: Shine I add a bit of shine to the hair in two stages. First, I use the lasso tool to make quick jaggy selections for the highlights, then fill in these areas with a lighter colour. Then a soft edge airbrush with a 20% flow setting is used to soften the harsh edges.
	6: Shadows I hide the colour layer for now, and use a hard-edged brush with size controlled by pen pressure to paint in the shadows on a new layer. There's no real reason why I use blue, other than the fact that it's a nice colour :)
	7: Duplicate Make a selection of the shadow layer by CTRL-clicking its icon in the layer palette, then select the colours layer and hit CTRL-J. This will duplicate the colours layer based on the selection.
	8: Filters Finally, go crazy with the various hue/saturation/photo filters! Make the new shadows layer a bit darker, throw in a hue adjustment or two, just play around until you've got something that fits the environment and mood. If you're concerned about messing up your colours, use an adjustment layer instead of altering the colours directly. That way you can copy over the adjustment layers to future pages instead of having to remember all the filters you used :)
	Click here for a huge screenshot of my Photoshop setup and layers