So you wanna color shading and line layers huh?

Honestly, who doesn’t? Making sure that the shading and line layers are colored properly is key to making your pet look stunning! SeaCrest has put together an amazing tutorial here that will simplify this process for you!

If you’re just starting out and her amazing skill level (seriously, she’s awesome!) has you scratching your head, here is how I do it! (Because I’m a newb and a rebel against change!!! xD)

This tutorial will be utilizing screen caps from Photopea, which is a free browser-based PSD editor. It’s similar to Photoshop and is fairly easy to use from what I have experienced. You can find it here!

I will also be using the Alicon PSD and the following color scheme (it’s obnoxious….I know):

Base: R:48 G:48 B:48
Wings, Hooves & Horn: R:255 G:255 B:255
Flower: R:174 G:14 B:14
Leaves: R:0 G:255 B:0
Mane & Tail: R:0 G:255 B:253
Eye: R:23 G:23 B:201
Inside Ear: R:251 G:158 B:223
Heart: R:255 G:247 B:0

Tip: When working with extreme colors such as black, white or any form of neon, you will have to make some modifications to make them look right.

If you want to use black, avoid using a true black for the base color because you will lose ALL detail in the area colored with the black. Instead, use a dark gray. Coloring in the shading layers will give you the black effect you desire. I promise!

When using bright colors such as white or any neon color, you will need to play with the shading layer to make it look right. Use a slightly darker color for the shading in these areas to make the shading look correct otherwise your pet will look “flat”.

Because this is mainly geared toward coloring shading and lines, I’m going to skip coloring the basic layers in detail.

As a brief “how-to”, simply select the layer that you wish to color and use the “Fill” option to color in the entire layer. (The shortcut in Photopea to autofill a layer is Shift+F5.) Most, if not all, PSD’s downloaded from Faenaria should have some basic details layered out already so doing this step should be fairly simple for you. Anything more than these basic layers you will have to do manually on a new layer. (Wow Numie...great skip ya did there xD)

Tip: Turn off all shading layers and your light layer to place colors and draw markings. It helps not having the shading in your way.

Assuming that you have colored your layers how you want, your pet should look something like this:

Now, let’s add a simple marking (I’m using a mouse…don’t judge my wavy lines! xD).

First, make a new layer. Click on the icon at the very bottom right corner that looks like a piece of paper. This is the “New Layer” button.


This layer may appear out of alignment when you add it so we will have to shove that bad boy back in place. Right click on that rebellious sucker and select “Clipping Mask”.


Once you have “clipped” the layer to the base layer, it will prevent you from coloring outside of the scope of the base. Note that anything inside the base is still fair game so make sure you color your markings inside the appropriate lines.

Your new layer should be in line now and you can rename it to whatever marking you are adding to your pet.


Now draw your marking in the new layer.


Once you are satisfied with your marking. Don’t forget to lock your pixels in that layer by clicking on the checkerboard looking icon in the “layers” tab. This will prevent you from accidentally adding or erasing something from your pretty new marking and will also allow you to auto fill it if you want to change the color.


With me so far? Excellent!

Now, on to what you’re all here for!

Shading!

Because we were playing with markings, we need to turn our shading layers back on (don’t forget the light layer too!).

Note that in our Alicon PSD, we have two shading layers. We will need to color both of them for each marking in order for this pet to look right.

First, match the shading color to your base (color both shading layers!):

“Criminy! That’s not how I wanted it to look at all!” I know, I know, calm down. We’re getting there!

Now that we have our base shade done, leave one of the shade layers highlighted as your “active” layer to color in. Scroll down to the bottom of your markings and select the first marking that is above your base layer.

Tip: To select the area of the marking layer, hold CTRL and click on the preview box of the layer you want to color. (see screen cap (please ignore the fact that I forgot to turn the shading layers back on for it...they should be there in yours! T_T))

Notice that the hooves have dotted lines around them? This means that we will only be able to color inside those dotted lines while this area is actively selected.

Now all you have to do is use the fill function (Shift+F5, baby!) for both shading layers to color the shading layers in this specific area.

Your pet should now look similar to this:

Notice that the hooves look gray instead of black now? Rinse and repeat this process for each marking layer (moving from bottom to top) to color the shading appropriately for each marking layer.

Tip: Remember that you are using the same color as the marking for the shading layer. We used a very light gray for the shading on the hooves, we will use the aqua color for the mane and tail, the red for the flower, the green for the leaves, etc etc. Also, don’t forget that for bright colors, you may have to use a slightly darker color for the shading layers.

When your shading is done, it should look similar to this:

(Side note: As you can see above, while there is a slight greenish tint to the mane and tail where the shading should be, these layers largely look “flat”. I should have used a slightly darker shade of aqua for the shading layer here in order to give them more depth like the wing has. This is a prime example of the tip I mentioned earlier of how you have to modify the shading color a bit for a bright color.)

Questions? No? Good! Moving on!

Lines

Now for the bane of my existence...stripes lines. Lines can get a little tricky depending on the method you use. SeaCrest’s tutorial will more than likely alleviate a lot of the touch up you will inevitably have to do with my method, but if you’re just starting out and don’t know a lot of the functionality of your program yet, this method has worked for me.

First, set the lines to be appropriate to your base color. Because my base is “black”, I know that my lines are more than likely going to be a true black, so I have automatically used that color for my base lines. If you have a base that is a different color, utilize the method described for matching the lines to the “Hooves” layer to find your base line color.

With the black lines, your pet should now look like this:

“Well that doesn’t look TOO bad” Sure! But it can look better! We will use a similar theory of working from bottom to top when working with our layers to color the lines. Let’s start with the hooves…

Keep your “Lines” layer as the active layer that you will be coloring in. Scroll down to the first marking above the base layer. Hold CTRL and click on the preview square for the marking to outline that area.

Use the Eyedropper tool to pull the appropriate color from the darkest part of the area that is outlined. Then, click on the color swatch to the left to open the “Color Picker” window.

In the Color Picker window, move the circle indicating your current color down to make it a few shades darker. I recommend at least 3-4 shades to make it stand out enough but preference does play a role here. We want to be able to at least see the detail intended from the lines. Once you’ve made it darker, click “OK” to set that as your new current color.

Once you have your new line color, fill the line layer and the lines for only the hooves should be what changes.

Tip: If you don’t think your new color is quite right, go ahead and click on the color swatch to the left and go a shade or two darker. Play around with it until it’s right.

Repeat this process for each marking layer. Once you’ve done this, your pet should be similar to this:

You may notice that some spots will require touch up. Sometimes the coloring on the marking layer does not reach all the way to the edge of the line. This will cause parts of the line to not color when using the method described above. In order to fix these trouble spots, I will zoom in and use either a #3 or #5 brush and do this manually.

Tip: You may notice that some details are lost because the lines aren’t colored quite right. This is especially noticeable along the bottom edge of the wing and the tips of the mane where feather lines and edges of the hair look sloppy. Use your judgement of which part is on “top” in the image to decide which color the line should be when doing touch ups.

For example: The bits of the mane that hang down over the alicorn's neck should match the hair lines in order to bring out the details of the hair. This is because the hair hangs over the neck. That being said, take a look at the veeeery left where the mane kind of looks like it’s sitting behind the neck. This line, I would color black to sharpen the angle of the neck because the neck is the closer portion of that section. Some details such as this will need to be handled from a more detailed perspective.

The same goes for the lower line of the wing. The wing hangs over the body so instead of coloring this black, I would use the gray of the wing lines to emphasize the details in the wing itself.

Once you have gone through and done your manual touch ups, your pet should look like this:

Note that now the lines look like they are more natural details versus the harsh black outline we had before.

The last thing I would recommend doing is blending your lines. This is not necessarily required but when you have lines of two very different colors right next to each other, it can be a touch jarring to see once you notice it. By blending the lines layer, you smooth out those harsh edges and make the color transitions flow a bit better.

To do this, select the blur tool, make the brush large, 100 pixels or more, and just do a few passes over the entire line layer. This should easily blend any harsh color changes you may have.

Notice a difference? Yeah I didn’t think so! xD The change will be subtle but if you ever notice those jarring transitions, blurring/blending the colors together is super helpful.

Once you’re happy with your pet, all that’s left is to save the PSD (don’t forget to rename it) and a 300x300 pixel PNG. If you’re using Photopea, I recommend using “Export As”, under “File”, and selecting PNG. You can adjust the pixels in this window. Click Save and this will be the PNG that you will use to submit your custom pet to the site!

VOILA!!! You’ve successfully completed your crash course on coloring shading layers and lines. Your diploma will be mailed to you in 7-10 business da-*is dragged away by her ear for inserting another corny joke here*

Thank you sooo much! Once I get some free time I'll try my hands on this and will let you know whether or not I ever manage to earn myself that diploma