At 6/4/07 08:27 PM, JepMZ wrote:
Like everyone else, I'm loving your stuff.
Daaaamn, your coloring is extremely impressive. Am I allowed to call it sexy? Yeah, it's pretty damn sexy=P
I've never asked anyone this before, anyone is allowed to answer it if they want, but how do you figure out what colors to use for skins? I'm colorblind, so I have a rather hard time deciding for myself=[
btw, that's not masculinity, it's more like action-atmosphered, or something. Female characters can be in a action-atmosphered thing too=]
Thanks, dude :D
Personally, I think any color can be used for the skin. Blue, green, red, yellow, orange, peach, brown...you name it. It all depends on the mood and the lighting of the picture.
For "normal" humans, I start off with a base color. For the fairer skinned, I use a peachy color, more yellow if the subject is Asian, more pink is Caucasian. For the darker skin, I use browns. Whether the brown should be warm (reddish) or cool (bluish), again, depends on the mood, character and lighting. The fairer skinned are easier and safer to color for me, but the darker skinned has more...impact? Punch? Anyway, it's more dramatic.
For shading, under normal circumstances, I use a darker shade of the base color. Not just darker in value though, but also with a slightly different tint, to add depth and make it more interesting. For example, if I used yellowish-beige for base, I use a slightly more orangey and darker color for shading. Of course, if you prefer, you can also use a more blueish of greenish tint, it's all up to you. Just make sure you're NOT DOING IT ON MS PAINT because you really need a tool that can blend colors well for this.
One other popular technique is to move the shading colors into the grays. It gives a more ethereal feel to the picture. A well-known artist who does this is Hyung Tae-Kim , and you will see in his pictures certain parts of the character fade into gray when they're further from the background, or if he doesn't want them to interfere with the focus.
Finally, there is the ambient lighting, but I don't know enough about that aspect to give any decent advice. All I can say about it is that it is a second, softer light source coming from the background, and its color will affect the way you shade. If you do it right it can make your coloring look pro. You can probably look up some tutorials for that online.
Hope that helped.
BTW, I wasn't talking about the action-oriented aspect of the male pictures. I'm talking about...curves. You know, boobs. They are fun to draw, easy to please, and you don't see too much of those on men. Unless it's moobs. But no one likes moobs XP