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Hello!
I’m .avi. I work as a professional game illustrator and creating comics and webtoons is my hobby.
In this tutorial I’d like to share tricks for easy and efficient coloring and shading to make your webtoons, illustrations or any kind of artwork look rich and colorful without too much effort and time!
Coloring 3D objects and color boost tricks are also included!
I’ve prepared my optimized versions of the tools presented here for free download in Assets:
Just be aware that with these tricks your workflow will get so fast that you may want to keep adding more enhancements to your comic and end up spending the same amount of time on it anyway! :D
🟪 FILE STRUCTURE TRICKS
While the features for panel folders are great, I have found that keeping all respective layers throughout all the panels in a file is more efficient.
Below is a simplified structure of my webtoon file.
All the backgrounds of all panels are together, the character layers the same, and above them is a common frame layer and topmost are the texts.
Not only it reduces the total number of layers but most importantly, you can make changes in all panels at once easily!
I’ve explained this frame set up in Mind-Saving Tips for Webtoon Paneling tutorial:
🟧 Coloring layers structure
For coloring itself I found that putting all base color layers as well as lighting and shading layers inside a layer folder with a mask that defines the shape of the characters or objects to be the most efficient and versatile.
Thanks to that you don’t have to worry about any colors or lights spilling outside of the silhouettes and each layer inside can have its own clipped layers!
Also, keeping each color on a separate layer is practical, as you can use them for making selections when shading.
To save time creating folders and naming layers, a common trick is to copy the layer structure from file to file.
🟪 FILLING IN BASE COLORS
🟧 Reference layers
When you have finished the lineart and are ready to start coloring, select the folder with the lineart layers and set it as the Reference layer.
This way the tools we will be using will know where to refer to for filling areas and will save you many clicks.
🟧 Auto select tool
How to fill the silhouettes of your characters to make the mask for the color folder?
No need to keep clicking to fill all the gaps in the lineart! :D
Make sure the lineart is enclosed even under the frame borders:
With the Auto select tool set to refer to Reference layer, which is in our case the folder with lineart, and Area scaling to 1.
Now just click anywhere outside your characters and in enclosed spaces and invert the selection with Ctrl+Shift+I.
Select the color layer folder and click Create layer mask.
These settings of the tool are universal for all kinds of lineart, thin, thick, uniform or messy like mine.
🟧 Character sheet in Sub view
Rather than preparing color sets for each character, it’s more intuitive to make a character sheet with their base colors, which you then open in the Sub view palette.
Inside the Sub view, the cursor automatically changes to eyedropper:
🟧 Closed area fill tool
This tool has undergone name changes so it may be named differently in your version, Enclose and fill, for example.
Out of all the cool tools for filling lineart this one is a real life saver for quick filling even complicated areas like hair.
You can just roughly select the parts you want to fill, and it will fill the areas enclosed in lineart:
You can download my modified version or set yours according to the following settings:
In the Target color, select the last option and set Area scaling to -1. Set Reference to Reference layer:
With these settings, the filling is super-fast and almost perfect!
Sometimes an unwanted area is filled, but switching to transparent color like usual doesn’t erase it well...
To fix that, I made a duplicate tool and only changed the blending mode in Ink to Erase:
And to speed up work even more, I set a modifier to the filling tool thanks to which the tool changes temporarily to the erasing tool:
What’s best about these tools is that they fill and erase also under the lineart, which is handy in case you want to leave the lineart soft, semi transparent or may need to erase parts of it later.
This is what it looks like with the lineart hidden:
🟧 Lasso fill tool
For fixing imperfections and filling leftover parts I use the Lasso fill tool.
I also recommend it for shading, no matter which technique you use. It’s perfect for quick filling and erasing areas and incomparably more efficient and precise than using a brush!
🟪 SHADING TRICKS
🟧 Basic gradient
The base of shading, as well as the simplest way of shading, is a soft darkening gradient on a layer set to Multiply.
Making the less important parts darker helps bring focus to the important parts, like the face or hands.
… I’ll skip the classic techniques like using multiply layer and tone curve layer with masks that are often covered in tutorials and jump right to my favorite technique!
🟧 Shading with light
Well, it sounds nonsensical, but I never found the right term to describe it… maybe “lighting”? I quickly came to love this technique because it’s more intuitive and the colors turn out nicer and more natural. Lighting in 3D works this way too.
The core idea is to define light areas instead of shadows by making the most of layers in Add Glow, Screen or other lightening modes and painting with colors of the light sources in the scene on them.
Having lights on separate layers from the base colors allows you to change any of them whenever you like!
Add glow is great for medium to strong light of warm colors, while Screen works well with subtle lights and cool colors.
The level of detail and type of shading is completely up to you. Since these techniques and tricks save a lot of work time, you can spend more time having fun combining them!
🟨 Dappled light
You can just paint a few big blobs of light and erase only the most important parts to put them in the shadows:
It’s quick and effective especially when there are cast shadows, like from trees or a roof.
🟨 Back light
By Ctrl-clicking the icon of the color folder mask, nudging the selection a few pixels to the side, inverting the selection and filling it on a new layer you get a quick back light that makes your characters pop out of the background!
You can use the Liquify tool to further tweak the light area, lasso fill or brushes to add, remove or blend parts.
🟨 Defined light
For more detailed works you can also use an Add glow layer with the color of the light source. Draw the light areas with the lasso fill tool for cell shading, and eventually use blending brushes to soften the shadow edges and to add a painterly look to the picture.
Use the base color layers to select parts of the character for easier painting by Ctrl+clicking the layer icon of the respective color layer.
With Ctrl+Shift+click you add to the selection while Ctrl+Alt+click removes from the selection. Thanks to this you don’t need to worry when some color layers overlap!
Here’s a quick diagram for easier understanding:
💡 Quick tip for webtoons! 💡
For webtoons I recommend going through the whole canvas with each step to save time. For example, with the hair area selected I first shade the hair in all panels, then do the same with all the faces on the canvas, jackets and so on.
I often add a secondary and tertiary light coming from different angles and with different colors on separate layers. This way the character gets a nice 3D look!
🟧 Extra lights and colors
There are several quick tricks to enhance the colors of your character or the whole artwork, with just a few blobs of a soft brush on a layer with a special blending mode.
In most cases you get better results if you clip these extra layers on a folder containing both lineart and color folders, instead of just the color folder.
Use an Overlay or Soft light layer to add subtle color variations.
One dab of yellow with a soft brush on a Glow dodge layer brings the character’s face into focus and adds extra shine to the hair. You can also add a subsurface scattering effect quickly, like light shining through hair or skin.
🟧 Colored edges of shadows
Putting saturated colors on the boundary between light and shadows suddenly takes the atmosphere of the scene to another level!
First Ctrl+click the layer icon of the light layer (or shadow layer, if shaded the classic way) to make a selection of it.
Go to Select > Expand selected area, try 2 pixels.
Now Ctrl+Alt+click on the light layer icon again to subtract the part of the selection and fill the resulting selection on a new layer.
This adds a color line along hard edges of light but a soft border on soft edges:
Now play around with the resulting layer’s color, opacity and blending mode to fit your scene! You can even blur it with Gaussian blur to make the lines softer.
💡 Like with any repetitive tasks, I recommend setting up auto actions of the selection expand and shrink commands to speed up your workflow. Now the cool colorful effect takes just a few clicks!
🟧 Colored lineart
For more colorful artwork try adding color to your lineart!
Clip a new layer on the lineart folder (which is in Normal mode) and fill it with a color that fits your scene.
Try adding more clipped layers on Add glow, Glow dodge or Overlay mode for richer colors!
I sometimes color parts of the lineart instead of adding backlight, or to add highlights to hair.
With just a few brush strokes the artwork gets an elaborate and colorful feeling!
🟧 Coloring 3D objects with lights
If you use 3D objects in your work, make the most of the 3D light settings!
With the Operation Object tool selected, in the Sub Tool Detail palette under Light source you can tint the color of the shadows by changing Ambient light color and intensity.
Play with the Directional light color, intensity and angle to add light from the sun, moon or a lamp.
But that’s not all! Hidden in the Object list, there’s Directional light 2! If you turn it on and select it, in the Light source tab you can now change the specifics of the secondary light!
To go back to editing the primary lights, select the object in the Object list.
The Fog can also be used to add a color veil to create depth.
Do you still need another light source?
You can duplicate the 3D layer, set the Ambient light intensity to 0 to make the model black and set both the Directional lights on this layer to your liking.
Afterwards, set the layer to Add glow or Screen, switch to any non-3D layer and as you see, the two new lights on the duplicate have been added to the model!
🟧 The ultimate coloring cheats
Okay now we get to the elephant in the room… What is this suspicious “postprocessing” folder?
Without it the colors don’t look so neat anymore, right? I’ll show you the tricks hidden there.
Notice the folder is set to Through for the effects to be applied outside the folder.
🟨 Colored edges of shadows from merged layers
You can use this quick trick to add color edges not only to 3D objects or backgrounds, but to the whole canvas, characters included!
The result in detail - it may not look like much but it takes the color richness of the artwork to another level:
Make a merged duplicate of all layers to which you want the effect applied, go to Filter > Effect > Artistic.
Choose Lines only and set the settings to your liking.
This filter gives you black outlines, so lock the layer’s transparency and fill it with your desired color. Try setting it to Overlay or Soft light. You can blur it with Gaussian blur (don’t forget to unlock the transparency), add a layer mask and erase parts.
🟨 Lighten and Lighter color modes to chase away darkness!
This trick makes use of the Lighten mode’s feature to lighten colors that are darker than the color on the layer.
Just fill a new Lighten layer with a color that you want the dark colors to change to and play with its brightness and opacity to find the best effect to suit your scene!
A layer on Lighter color mode works very similarly, but leaves a threshold where the underlying areas are lighter than the color on the layer.
You can use that to add nice colors to the shaded areas!
🟨 Correction layers
Lastly, the correction layers like Tone curve and Color balance are very powerful allies for final color adjustments of your work.
🟧 Conclusion
I hope these tricks will help you speed up your workflow when coloring your comic, webtoon, animation or illustration and leave you more time to have fun doing what you enjoy the most!
🌟⭐✨ If you enjoyed this tip, it will make me happy if you give a like so that I know I’m doing things right, eventually leave a comment on where I could improve :) ✨⭐🌟
For those who wanted to support me, I don’t have a Patreon nor I plan to get one. I’m doing this for the fun of sharing knowledge :)
I appreciate your messages and thoughts very much, though, thank you!
(´｡• ◡ •｡`) ♡
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