Shadowing Markmywords style

[woodwater]

Hi

I would like to be able to shadow peopl`s faces like in MMwords avatar .
In the tutorials I`ve seen so far in which you use the transparency tool for shadowing there isnt a clear line betwen the shadowed part and the rest like you see in Markmywords Avatar. How do we do that?



thanks
http://www.talkgraphics.com/member.php?u=12076

[woodwater]

Here is what I managd to do just now. As you can see its not as clear cut as MMwords

[steve.ledger]

WW, are you asking for help with Xara Xtreme techniques (seeing as you are posting .xar files) ?
If so, you have posted incorrectly and I will move your thread to the correct forum.

Thank you

[woodwater]

ok

[steve.ledger]

I'll take that as a yes

Thread moved.

[wizard509]

woodwater,
Are you refering to the eliptical transparency on the right side of the face you have drawn as a shadow? I could be wrong but I think MarkMyWords has drawn shapes to create his image. So you might give that a try. Just now I found these two images onlline that might help you figure out some of the shapes.

http://www.mantlestudios.com/wp-cont.../09/planes.jpg

and this one.

http://fc05.deviantart.net/fs70/f/20...evin_Busha.jpg

Here is the link to where the above image is found if you want more information.
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgu...26tbs%3Disch:1

Hope this helps.

[Black Panther]

WoodWater, Larry is right with his comments, you must draw shapes, and not lines for your face, draw the shape for the face and over this shape draw the highlights for the face then use the transparency tool to get the shade of the face, i attached your xar file to you with my drawing used the same colors and transparency tool.
Regards BP

[MarkMyWords]

Hello Woodwater, sorry I took so long to reply, work, work, work. You know how it is.

Here is a copy of the XAR file for my avatar. I start with a cell-shaded approach, the style that is so popular in Manga and anime, I'm sure you have seen it. Each colour is a separate shape.

So make your face shape, give it the basic flesh colour you want, then draw in the shadow as a hard edged shape and choose a colour which is a darker shade of your basic flesh colour. From this point on it gets complicated. If you look closely at my avatar you can see that there are few really flat colours. The base flesh colour has a very subtle fill gradient from darker at the bottom left to lighter at the top right. The shadow has another subtle linear fade, this is a fill gradient from darker on the left to lighter on the right. On top of these I have put some very feint hi-lights on the forehead and cheeks. White shapes flat fills, with both a linear transparency fade and feathering.

To get the best from this technique, you do need to be familiar with shading to emulate 3 dimensional views. I hope this is helpful.

[woodwater]

like that?

[woodwater]

Thanks a lot MMWords. I`ll see what I can do