Colour & Shading

wac

wac

Senior Member



This is part of a live project to create a Christmas Card for the University of Worcester. This is one of 2 or 3 characters that will appear on the card. I drew it in Illustrator and I'm now considering the best method of colour and shading.

On the right I've just used live paint to fill in some block colours which I could go on to shade.

I've never used the gradient mesh tool before but I thought that might be worth a try.

I thought possibly using textures (like paper or cotton) instead of colours might look good.

Or possibly take them into photoshop for a more thorough colour workshop.

I wish I had time to trial these but the deadline is less than a week away so If anyone's got any thoughts or examples on the above I would really appreciate it.
 
what about just sticking in a few highlights to represent light reflecting off the material etc
 
yeah, add in another couple of bits just to give it a bit of depth really, you could do it in photoshop I'm sure but illustrator would be the best option - something like what's been done here

anime-thunderbird.jpg
 
If it were me I'd use Photoshop but that works with my style. For example:
Cameos.jpg


But it depends totally on the style and look you're going for here, and that's tricky to judge from looking at the work so far without seeing where you see the design going. If you like using Adobe Illustrator (which, I can see you do, lol) try shading it in AI but I would try to follow the cartoon feel. Here's a nice (if mental-looking) example Mr Google gave me of some reindeer vector colouring:
rudolph_watermark.png
 
JimLad speaks the truth.

He knows about reindeer.

I would photoshop also unless you need a vector illustration.
Hand draw the line work first, put some life into the character!
Then scan and vector it up.
 
wac, the only thing he is missing is a red nose. and a tail too for that matter...

Jimlad, those are some cute reindeer (1st image). Wish it was Christmas already..
 
Cheers for the ideas guys. I can see I'm going to have to do a bit of experimenting after all. Jim I like the style of that vector reindeer you found on Google, and it doesn't look like they've used the mesh tool so it should be quite straight forward. I'll pop a more completed version up here as and when I can make some progress on it.
 
Hey guys. I’ve pretty much run out of time on this Christmas card and I found myself staring at it thinking that something’s not right. Never the less I’ve had a play around with the composition and opinions as to which one I should finalise and submit would be appreciated.


The standard version, needs a few stroke adjustments..




The robin has now moved (is now freakishly big)




Ignore colour change but does it work better with this horizon shift?



Less is more? Wave goodbye to the snowman and scenery.
 
yes, I'd go with the white one.

Looks like that reindeer need a light for his spliff.

The snowman is totally chilled.
 
Definitely the last one. The gradient background on the others doesn't look nice and the snowman looks like a ghost. The White card on the other hand looks pretty cool.
 
Typo said:
The snowman is totally chilled.
Click to expand...
:badumtsh:

While the white one looks best in this case, I don't think it's good. You should build up some scenery in the background.
 
Cheers guys I think you're all right, the white one just seems to work better so as painful it is get rid of something that you've spent time on, I think it's for the best. Kevin I wish I had more time to see if building up the background would improve the look of the currently minimalistic design but the submission date is tomorrow.

So thanks again for the advice. The final design (a few subtle tweaks from the last one) is below.


 
in regards to teh background, you could just do some pale grey curves in the background to represent snowy hills/mounds etc
 
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