#colouring tips

Ways to shade =]

13.11-19

The process, me and some of my friends. 

I was using ecolines, sharpies, pencils and a couple of copic markers. 

I went too dark with some of the ecolines, and I was ready to die. Luckily, I thought to use plain chalk on those parts, and use a lighter shade of pencil. :)

This took me about two hours, I did it in one session. 

This post is some top tips for colouring gifs that I’ve learned from colouring my own gifs over the last year or so.

It’s for people that already know how to gif and have perhaps been using other people’s PSDs or have been trying to colour themselves but haven’t quite got the hang of it yet or have been colouring themselves but don’t like the results.

For reference you can find all of my giffing tutorials here.

Don’t use PSD’s - If you learn how to colour your own gifs and then attempt to create a couple of PSDs to use across all of your gifs, you’re most likely going to have crappy results. Every gif (even if they’re from the same scene) will need different layers and settings to make it work. In the time it’ll take you to adjust your PSD’s to suit your gifs, it would be faster to just colour it from scratch. Some people like to have a “signature” look with their colourings, which I understand, but it’s tricky to pull off, particularly if you’re a beginner and you’re giffing multiple fandoms. Which brings me nicely to the next tip. 

Take each gif individually - The best approach to take, in my opinion, is to colour each gif individually. Sometimes if you’re giffing just one scene it is feasible to use the same PSD on every gif, but even then the lighting can be different because the scene has actually been filmed in two or more different takes. 

Make use of your drafts - Drafts serve a purpose - so we can draft things, duh! But until recently, I didn’t realise how useful they could be in making gifs. When you’re in the process of making a gifset, create a post and save it to your drafts. As you make each gif and save it, add it to the post and that way you can see what your gifset is going to look like as it unfolds. It enables you to make sure the colourings of your gifset match because you can see all of the gifs together. And it also means you can simply pop over to PS and add a little brightness or adjust colour balance to make sure the gifs all look similar.

Don’t get too overwhelmed with it - Easier said than done, I know, but I found that the biggest hindrance to me colouring was thinking it was a lot harder than it actually is. Tutorials can seem long and overwhelming, but when you break it down and put it into practice a few times, you’ll realise it’s not as tricky as you think it is. Some gifs can be a lot harder to colour than others, but 9 times out of 10 when I’m making gifs it takes about 5 minutes. A lot of the time I sharpen it, add curves and the gif already looks great, so it’s really not as hard as it seems. 

Practice, practice, practice - Colouring like anything else in life is not something that you’ll be able to do overnight. I’m still learning new things and better methods all the time even after a year of doing it. Experiment, read as many tutorials as you can and just get used to it. When I switched from PS CS5 to CC there were quite a few changes to the methods of giffing and for about 3 weeks I barely giffed because I couldn’t get over the hurdle of having to learn a new process, but now I’m completely used to it. So persevere and set aside a couple of times a week to practice. You don’t even have to post what you make, just practice for yourself. 

Get an eye for colours/what looks good - Like I’ve said time and time again in all of my tutorials, it’s all about judgement when it comes to colouring. Some people may look at my gifs and think I coloured them badly (hell, I do most of the time lmao) or that they would have coloured it differently but that’s the point - everyone has their preferences. Don’t try to replicate somebody else’s colouring exactly, because that’ll never happen (even if you follow every tutorial they have) create colourings that you like. Figure out whether you like pale gifs, vibrant gifs or black and white gifs. Do you like high contrast or low contrast? Bright gifs or not-so-bright gifs? Once you feel confident with the process of colouring gifs, the best thing to do is step away from tutorials and practice colouring by yourself, and eventually you’ll develop your own colouring techniques and preferences without even realising. 

Learn the function of each layer - It’s easy to follow tutorials without fully understanding what the hell you’re doing or what any of it means (I did exactly the same in the beginning), but understanding what each layer does yourself will really help you to colour. The basics are that curves, levels and brightness/contrast change the brightness and colour balance and selective colours change the colour. But there’s more to it than that and each layer serves different purposes. For example, if a gif is particularly red, if you try to go to colour balance and reduce the red right down the gif is going to end up looking awful and most likely green/yellow. The best approach to take in this case would be to apply a little colour balance to reduce the redness and then go in with selective colours and increase the cyan in Reds. You’ll learn the best way to tackle these things by going back to the above tip - practice, practice, practice! 

Everything in moderation - Before I started colouring my own gifs I used PSD’s and a lot of them had 20+ layers. Since I didn’t colour myself, I assumed that was normal, but personally, I rarely exceed 6 layers. It’s not necessary to colour the crap out of a gif with multiple layers of contrast, selective colours etc. Depending on your tastes you may want to do that and that’s fine, but it’s very easy to create good gifs without adding lots of layers and making lots of changes. 

aaaAa- you’re not late don’t worry!!

frick the reason i took so long to answer this is because.. i genuinely don’t know what to criticise you on? you’ve got a unique style, your poses always seem to be full of life, your linework is always really really good.. the only thing i can really say is your colouring? sometimes it can get a little streaky and in some of your drawings, i can see that you sort of scribble when it comes to pencil colouring, which is fine! you don’t have to take my advice if you already like the results you’re getting, but here’s what i think might improve your pencil colouring..

instead of straight line colouring, try drawing little ovals!

sorry this drawing is kind of bad i just woke up oof–

but yeah! with straight lines, there’s always a starting and ending point and that ends up making these weird prominent lines that i could see in one of your drawings.

but that’s an easy fix!!!

here, i coloured in a dumb doodle of wally to show you what i mean..

with “scribble” colouring..

and with “oval” colouring! when you’re colouring though, you don’t take your pencil off of the page, but it’s one motion :p

so yeah, that’s really the only thing i can criticise… 

i hope i wasn’t too harsh, and i hope you can understand! i’m terrible at explaining…

aa thank you for your ask uwu sorry for the message being so long? eh hopefully it’s alright

!! Oh wow, thank you so much! <3

As for tips for colouring, I have a few (but I’m not the best at explaining so bear with me) and most of these are all personal preference. I’m not saying all of these are right, it’s just sort of my process

- Make a palette beforehand. This is not just useful to see the the mood you’re trying to convey with your work, but it’s also an easy access to your previously used colours (it saved my hide plenty of times)- Try experimenting with different hues when shading a certain colour. As in, if you shade something like skin, try to not just use brown tones. Go wild, try a touch of red or maybe even purple for especially deep shadows. Usually warm colours work for stuff like skin, but it all depends on the mood of your drawing.

I sometimes go to THIS POST to see which colours shade well with one another.

- I try not to go for grey shades unless it’s really neccessary. I always try to add at least a bit of colour, even to the blackest of blacks. For example, dark blue or dark purple usualy works well for me. This counts for white too: I never go for full white or shade it with grey. I either shade with light blue or light red

- Try to keep the background in mind. Add the main colour of your background to your shading if neccessary, or overlay it over the entire figure can sometimes give the desired effect too. It can all make it come together very nicely.

- Know your colour theory. I learned this in art class at my highschool luckily, and it’s very useful even today. Know which colours compliment eachother and which clash. Or which colours are considered warm, and which are cold. It can really save your art piece!

So my girlfriend has been struggling with hair from all that she’s been telling me, and asked if I could give her tips.

Soooo, here is a tutorial on how I draw and colour hair under the “keep reading” link below.

Do you ever have linearts that distort the colour after you save your work? Easy fix: Use the Select tool around a clean version of the lineart, copy and paste it into a new file and save it. Somehow this stops the colour distorting. Just make sure it has absolute no colour or it won't work.