#base color tutorial

Step 6- Base Color

This step- and most future steps are gonna be pretty geared towards CLIP Studio (the drawing software I use.)

First off it is important to make sure your line art is secluded in its own marked folder.

Never Fill YOUR ONLY COPY OF LINE ART for your base color.

if you just HAVE to have your base colors in your line art layer ( for whatever reason you would need to do that for)- MAKE A COPY OF YOUR LINE ART and set it to invisible.

For the coloring method I am going to show you (Later on in Step 7- Basic Shading)  you NEED to have the colors filled in their own layer.

you can do them all on one layer- BUT- it will make things harder on you later on.

After I prep my folder- label it ‘color’ and add some pages im ready to start filling.

I use the ‘Paint Fill Tool’ with the ‘refer to other layers’ sub tool setting.

This way I can fill my Line Art layer without actually touching it.

Also- if you have connected all of your lines on your line art (See earlier steps) You will not need to use ‘close gap’ feature of your ‘paint fill tool’- but if your color fill seeps outside of your desired lines you need to check the box next to the words ‘Close Gap’ in the Tool Property tab.  

After you check that box- the five empty boxes beside it will fill.  These boxes determine how strict your ‘close gap’ setting will be (For larger gaps, you will need more boxes filled, for small gaps- fewer filled boxes.) 

All of this is depicted in the image below….

After my tools are in order- I start filling in my line art- 

It is important to layer your base colors from ‘back’ to ‘front’…

For example: 

clothes and hair go over the skin-

So your layers in the folder should be

HAIR (Top)

CLOTHES

SKIN (bottom)

As you may have noticed- whenever using the ‘paint fill tool’ there are always little unfilled spaces.

It is important that these empty spaces are filled in- it will be troublesome down the road if they are left alone.

this is not an unavoidable step- it is boring and tedious- but it needs to be done for the sake of your project.

You must go through the entire work closely to find everything- because I can promise you there will be a lot of unfilled spaces in there.

After the clean-up is done we need to add a ‘White Layer’- this layer if for teeth, eye whites, small accessories, and such like that.

We dont use the ‘paint fill tool’ for the white layer because

A. ‘white layer’ stuff is usually pretty small.

B. ‘White layer stuff is not always sectioned off by the line art.

This layer is placed DIRECTLY BELOW THE EYE COLOR LAYER.

Below is the image without the white

image with filled in ‘white layer…

Now we have finished the Base Colors!

This is a good save/stopping point.

and the full image- 

This needs no prepping for Step 7- basic shading.