INTRODUCTION

This guide will explain some basic information using the shading assist function. Shading assist was an added feature that should be available in CSP 2.0 and higher, if you are still on a 1.0 license, you won’t be able to use it.

 

For other effects like chromatic aberration you either need an auto action or CSP 3.0

 

This Guide is not a professional tutorial

It’s an explanation and overview of my personal process using the shading assist tool.

This guide may be confusing if you do not have a basic understanding of navigating or using clip studio, or how to use layer workflow, clipping, and other effects.

 

If you wish to understand fundamentals on shading, light direction amongst others things, its best to seek out a youtube tutorial on these. There’s plenty of them.

 

I apologize for the inconvenience.

Where is shading assist and how do you apply it?

If this is your first time using this feature, you can find shading assist in the edit menu, for best application, put all your drawing’s layers in a folder before opening it.

Make sure this folder is selected before you click on shading assist.

In some cases, instead of seeing this, you might see the shading layers appear ‘‘swirly’’ this is because shading assist struggles with hues. The feature is programmed to read what’s in the folder and works best with flat colors. I personally prefer temporarily turning off my color layers for better results.

 

In the menu, you can see I have ‘‘evening’’ selected. This is my preferred mode, I can edit the 3 colors seen in the menu and adjusted them as I please for a different mood.

Evening’s cel shading mode has all colors set as a multiply layer.

 

The circle can be widened or moved around to change the direction of light or increase the amount of light, adjust as you go until you get a result you like.

 

Click ‘‘ok’’ when you’re done adjusting and shading layers will be created based on your settings.

Rendering Technique One.

Before getting into adjust, we’re going to clip all of these shading layers to the main folder.

For this character, I am going to remove tone 1 and tone 2, because I don’t want him to be in the dark.

The basic colors of these two layers can be best color-picked when temporarily turning multiply off.

Now that I have access to the colors, I am going to merge these two layers and select ‘‘lock transparent pixels’’ after, then I’m going to use an airbrush and while the layers are on multiply and soften the edges with the pink color.

Now that a basic feeling for the shadows is created, it still feels very unnatural for the most part, doesn’t it? There’s crunchy lines.. It’s smudged around the lineart, and some locations feel like they require a bit more shadow..

Unlock the ‘‘transparent pixels’’ on the shade layer, and use the pink color to begin refining and adding shadows. Use eraser to remove the bit that could use less shadow.

I am doing all of this on the same layer.

 

For the darker areas, I will be using the purple color, on the same layer.

Now that the basic colors for this render are put down, i’ll be doing a lot of blending. Alternatively, you can soften the shade layer slightly using gausian blur before you use the blur brush itself. This all comes down on how you prefer rendering the shadows.

I will not claim that my shading style is correct or accurate, this is just how I prefer doing it.

When blending this layer, I tend to go a bit back and forth from time to time to adjust it until I’m happy.

However, I don’t really like the colors Right now. How to easily fix this? lowering opacity of the shadow layer does the trick in some cases, but this character wears pretty dark colors so doing that will make the clothes look unshaded.

 

Instead, pull up the hue/saturation/luminosity menu while having the shade layer select.

You can find this menu under edit > tonal correction > hue/saturation/luminosity

Hue changes the color, saturation changes how colorful the colors are, luminosity either brightens or darkens the colors. Adjust to your leisure.

This is what I’m going with before moving on to the final steps of this piece.

Next, I’m using a new layer on the linear burn setting to darker the shade in the eyes (usually a purple color for the shading), then I’ll add another new layer just for the light sparkles.

To finish my render of this toonchibi, I do several steps but just to explain them in quick succession without making this part of the guide longer I’ll just write down what I do.

 

1. Create a copy of all of this drawing’s layers and merge the copies.

2. Create a copy of that merged copy.

3. The first copy will have a white outline using the layer property effect.

4. The 2nd copy will be put on gaussian blur of 15, then the layer opacity reduced to 22%

5. Add my watermark near the feet, and give it a white outline using the layer property effect.

6. Create a layer copy of the first copy, 2nd copy, and the watermark, and merge them.

7. Now use chromatic aberration filter on this merged layer (3.0 feature) on intensity 8 and angle 65, then reduce layer opacity to 75%

 

Done!

 

To quickly explain why I didn’t just merge all the original layers, this is so I can still go back and edit the drawing in case I messed up before the rendering and final touches.

 

You may have to adjust numbers and other things to get the results to your liking depending on your filesize, canvas size, DPI, amongst other things. Please consider these factors, as they affect everything. I generally draw on a 300dpi 2000x2000 ish canvas for these type of drawings.

Rendering Technique Two.

For my second rendering technique, I’m going to render a drawing with a dark mood setting using shading assist. For this I’m once more using a similar layer set up.

My drawing folder contains the following;

 

-A Base fill color layer

-A flatcolor folder containing the character’s flats.

-A layer for the ‘‘paint’’ on his fingers.

-The lineart

 

For now Ignore the top layers clipped on the drawing folder, they’re not relevant right now.

 

 

(I’ve turned off the irrelevant layers so they’re invisible.)

When you put the flatcolor layer on multiply, it will refer to the base fill color, this gives a sense that this character is in the dark.

 

I’m going to adjust the base fill until it has a color that contrasts against the background to fit the mood better.

Using a purple base fill, causes the flat colors to go more in the range of this color. It fits the background better and gives you the feeling this characters is out at night.

 

Putting your flats on multiply will also show you any pixels you may have missed or colored incorrectly during the flatcoloring stage, you’ll want your flatcolors to be tidied up before we move any further.

Turn off all your color layers and select the drawing’s main folder before opening up shading assist again. For this drawing I’m going to use the evening setting once more, but change the base colors.

Once you’re settled on a palette don’t worry too much, you can always adjust it later with tone correction like on my previous drawing if you don’t like the results.

 

This time around I’m going to merge all the shading layers that have been created, I’m not going to lock transparency, instead I’m going to adjust and draw more shadows. To color pick the merged layer’s shade colors, make sure to turn of multiply temporarily.

When drawing or editing the shadow layer, having your flat colors turned off can be quite helpful because you can focus more on the contrast this way. Before moving further, turn your flat colors back on to see how it looks.

 

You can smooth out the shadows or blur the edges of the shadow layer and adjust from there on out, with or without the flat color folder turned back on. I personally prefer doing this with the flat colors turned back on.

What’s the point of leaving the flatcolor folder on multiply?

 

When turned off, the drawing gets lighter. To maximise the feeling of this character being in the dark, having the flats on multiply will blend the colors further.

To finish my render from here on out, I do the following.

Any additional layer is clipped on top of the drawing’s main folder unless stated otherwise.

 

1. Add a linear burn layer (purple) to give more shadow in the eyes. Lower opacity slightly.

2. Add highlights to the eyes and a layer on add glow effect.

3. Add skin highlights layer on overlay mode with lowered opacity.

4. Color the lineart by clipping a folder of layers to the lineart layer inside the drawing folder, color pick the shaded parts of the drawing to find fitting colors and then lower opacity on the clipped folder. Adjust until I’m happy with it.

5. Add an ‘‘glow dodge’’ layer and draw purple moon-light onto the character for drama. blend, adjust opacity, etc to my liking.

6. use the ‘‘merge all visible to new layer’’ option in the layer menu. This will copy all currently visible layers and merge them.

7. Use gaussian blur 15 on the copy layer, lower opacity to around 22% or higher.

8. Add watermark, then Copy all layers again, then use chromatic aberration on this copy and lower opacity of this layer to 32%

 

Done!

Rendering Technique Three

For the next one, we’re going to use the ‘‘Morning’’ setting of shading assist.

As soon as you pull this one up, you’ll notice that the layers have different effects selected for this one, namely, Screen and Hard Light. I’m personally not super familiar with these and don’t really use them for my work, but I do like playing with the rest of these settings.. So, we’ll customize it.

Press OK for now, once you have the shadows in the locations you like, then

Delete the screen layer and change hard light to multiply, activate lock transparent pixels on this layer and change the color until you find something that vaguely matches the previous color of this layer. (I usually pick a pink or orangey color.)

Now, similar to technique 2, I’m going to merge all multiply layers and carve out the shadows from here on, using gaussian blur once I’m done to ‘‘smooth’’ out the edges before blurring manually and using airbrush to soften the shadows out more.

 

Afterwards, like the previous drawings, I use a linear burn layer and a overlay later for darker shadows and highlights.

Once I’m done rendering as seen above, I’ll adjust the main shadow multiply layer using the color correction tool (Just like I did in technique one) until I’m happy with it. As well as the linear burn layer if necessary.

 

Eventually the final effects like eye highlight, gaussian blur and chromatic aberration are added again, and now we have a finished piece using technique three.

 

 

Why should you use shading assist tool Feature?

I can think of many reasons to play around with this tool, but for me it massively saves time without me having to block out the rough direction of shadows too much and draw them on bit by bit.

The tool creates the layers I need, and I can freely adjust the colors and direction to get an estimate of how it’s going to look. It’s why I call it ‘‘carving’’ I’m trimming the tool’s flaws away by the edges until it looks better.

 

On it’s own, it doesn’t purely erase the need for painting shadows, all it does is speed up the way of getting there. For me, it’s definitely to cut out time I would have otherwise used to draw every little shadow in every crook, corner and crease, and then get frustrated.. And draw more and more shadows manually which just takes hours.

 

As well, using the settings let me play around with colors for shadows more, I think I learned something from using the tool, or at least on how to make it look aesthetically pleasing with my style.

 

Final Thoughts

Is it shading accurate? I don’t know. I’m certain a professional teaching artist could give you better pointers on this, but I wanted to show how a passionate artist like me uses these tools to my advantage.

Hopefully it is a bit insightful on how this might help you out potentially.

 

I prefer my work to be flawed and fun to make.

 

I wouldn’t know how to apply this tool if I’m painting an environment, as I tend to do lightning for characters separate from background scenes.

After notes: Rambling for a Desired Feature

I love how CSP has provided updates which are convenient for comic artists, from 3D tools to the photo to lineart tools.. Now with shading assist, I think it’s really coming together as an ideal software for comic making, everytime they add something new, there’s a thousand ways of utilizing it.

 

I’m not sure how much reach this’ll get, but one feature I’d really love to see is a flatcoloring tool, where the program can determine based on a character reference where to put the base colors in a folder of a character you’re coloring.

 

it doesn’t have to be exact.. As I doubt tech in this day can predict how to exactly fill a character’s lines perfectly. But if it can get a rough estimate like how this tool is capable of blocking out shadows, I think it’d be a massive plus to speeding up some progress for comic making.

 

 

Colorize is an experimental feature that might turn into this, but what I’m hoping to see is a tool specific for FLAT colors, so no shading, a solid later of all the character’s primary colors based on a self made character reference. I hope this makes sense.

 

Anyway, hope you enjoyed the guide!