How To Colour in an Anime Style

Understanding your layering system

For this lesson you should understand what works well with what and which type of layers to use. Here are the order to use them in.

• All layers for colouring are raster layers

• Have flat colour layer

• Have multiple shadow and mood layer

• And a lighting layer

 

1. Flat Colours

Having a flat colour layer allows you to lay down all the simple colours on the canvas which gives your picture some understanding on how it would look like and if the colours you have choosing work together very well.

Quick tip:

There is no point of shading on this stage, mainly because we will be using a different method for shading.

 

2. Mood Layer

Having a mood layer allows you to easily blend your character/object with the scene or background . this makes it easy for you to not worry about the characters not looking right with the background .

Quick tip:

When choosing the mood colour , remember to choose a dark saturated version of the colour you prefer. This helps makes your piece balance with everything else.

One more tip, increase or decrease the opacity of the layer depending on how dark the environment is , for example , you will want to use a lower opacity for morning and afternoon, and use a higher opacity in sunset and night time. This also applies to indoors as well, depending on how bright or dark the room is.

 

3. Shadow layer

With the shadow layer, change the layer mood to multiply or liner burn (you can experiment however you want). Then decrease the opacity to 50%. REMEMBER TO USE THE SAME COLOUR AS THE MOOD LAYER this is very important on making sure everything blends well.

shadow colour

4. Lighting

Now as for the final part of this piece. Lighting can help bring life onto the canvas. I would recommend you to use any light blending mode for this part, and use the lighter version of a colour to create highlights .use this nicely you will have an amazing art piece.

Conclusion

This leads us to our conclusion. Just wanted to say that this is a very powerful tannic to use and can make any piece look good. The style is even more amplified if your draw style is good. But all I have to say I hope you enjoyed this and continue enjoying doing what you love.

Yours truly Darryl.