'So Ya Wanna Do CG...

Also Known As:

CG For Complete and Utter Morons.'

a half-assed Photoshop 7.0 tutorial by Meh.

1. Inks, inks, and more inks.

-Okay, so you've got your drawing. Preferablly it's inked. Because pencil drawing + Photoshop = NIGHTMARE. I use Photoshop to directly import my drawing from my scanner into Photoshop. (that would be the File > Import command) Either way, scan and save your drawing at anywhere between 150-200 dpi (that's the resolution). Even though, when pictures are sent to the internet, the compression reduces them to 72 dpi. Still, it just makes things easier. Now we've got our drawing staring us in the face in Photoshop, right? It's time to clean the image up.

-use the Zoom tool to go in close, to where there's a lot of black, like the eye, for example. Now use Image > Adjustments > Levels (or just Ctrl L) to bring up the Levels command. At the bottom of the black histogram (that would be the weird black wiggly lines, in layman's terms), there are three arrows. A black one on the far left, a grey one in the middle, and a white one on the far right. Take ahold of that white arrow, and drag it to the left. Make sure you have the Preview box checked, so you can see what the hell you're doin'. Now, if you have a lot of grey smudges, they should start to fade away. Adjust this until the grey is vanished, but don't go to far to the left, or else your inks will fade into oblivion. To correct any lightening of the ink by the white arrow, take the GREY arrow, and move it towards the right. Your inks will start to get blacker. Don't go too far, or else you'll counter-act what you cleared up with the white arrow. On top of that, your inks will get all jagged and icky. And that's a bad thing. Just tweak it a bit.

-So your inks are nice and dark, yes? Here's where we make it so that you can color your drawing without fudging the inks. It's sort of like a bastard version of cel-style coloring. Duplicate the layer with your inks on it. In your Layers Palette (Window > Layers), right click on the little thumbnail of your drawing (it should be titled Background, in italics). There's an option to Duplicate the layer. Do it. (you could also click and drag the layer itself into the little icon at the bottom of the Layers Palette that looks like a page being turned, it's a matter of preference) Now delete the bottom layer (the one with 'Background' italicized). You should be back to one layer, the inks of your drawing. In the Layers Palette, there's a drop-down menu in the top left-hand corner. Click it, and a list of layer options comes up. Select MULTIPLY. This means that colors lighter than black will show up BENEATH this layer. If you want, you can double-click the text ('background'), and rename it Inks, to save any confusion.

You might wanna go ahead and save now. Save often. I learned that the hard way. Especially since I was introduced to Photoshop on a craptastic Macintosh in highschool.

-If there are still any smudges or eraser-bits (which happens to me a lot... I think they sorta sneak in there when I'm not looking) floating around, or if you wanna edit a mistake in the linework (like if I've got a case of the wiggles and decide to ink a drawing), now you can take your eraser tool (it looks like an eraser, duh), and make any edits. It'll seem like your erasing has revealed a grey and white checkerboard where there used to be white (or black). It's okay. Don't panic. That'll go away when we color the image and flatten it later. Don't fret.

Here comes the fun part. COLOR!

2. Blur the Technicolor

-Our inks are nice and dark and clean, right? You've got the inks layer set to Multiply, right? Right. Now that everyone's caught up, let's move on. In the Layers Palette (you'll be using this palette a lot, so leave it open. If you need it out of your way (like for coloring, shading, or making a selection, you can collapse it by double clicking the blue title bar), click the little icon in the bottom right-hand corner that looks like a page being turned. A new layer will appear (titled 'Layer 1'). Drag this layer down, so that it's BELOW the layer with your inks on it. And, also, you can rename this layer, like you did with your Background image. This is good for if you're just starting out, to name the individual layers 'skintone' or 'hair', or what-have-you. Now your new layer (NOT the Inks), is where you're going to start out coloring.

-You can add color a bunch of different ways. You can go in, and use a paintbrush with hard edges (they're the first 6 in the Brushes Palette, from sizes 1 to 19 pixels in width. You can change brush sizes in the toolbar in the upper-left hand corner, if the default sizes are too big or small for the job) and color, just like in a coloring book. If you're left-handed, like me, it might be difficult, depending on how good your mouse-control is.

-Another way to color is with your friend the Lasso tool. Oh, how this is fun. I use the Polygonal lasso tool when making lasso-selections, and just click like mad on the outline of whatever I'm coloring. Don't get too over-zealous and double click, or else your selection will close (and booooy is that fun. I swear my most colorful words when that happens to me). Also, I wouldn't recommend trying to reply to any IMs or do anything else while making a lasso-selection. It'll close automatically on you when you switch windows. Once you get your selection made, use the Paintbucket tool to fill it in with your desired color. Rinse and repeat. And with this method, you'll be doing a lot more selecting than you will be coloring.

-An easier, albeit cheaper, method of filling in color is with the Magic Wand tool. But this will ONLY work if the area you're going fill with color has NO OPEN SPACES in the inks. If there are gaps, the selection will 'leak' out of this hole and flood into other areas. With that in mind, select the Inks layer, and use the Magic Wand tool. Use the box in the toolbar at the top of your screen, and set the Tolerance to about 10. Now click ONCE where you want the selection to be made. Now go to Select > Modify > Expand, and set the expansion value to 1 pixel and hit enter. This will make sure that the selection is nice and snug against the inks. THIS IS IMPORTANT: BEFORE you use the Paintbucket tool, make SURE you select the appropriate layer for color. Because if not, the color will be smacked on the Inks layer, and it'll be messy.

-All you have to do now, is once you find a method you like, repeat until you have the flat colors for all necessary areas. You can make a separate layer for each color (skin, eyes, clothes, hair, acessories, so on and so forth). I do this, because it makes shading a hell of a sight easier.

I hope you've saved a few times by now. Because here comes the part that daunts and baffles many people (hell, it still does for me). The shading.

3. Made in the Shade (I hope you're enjoying my corny section titles)

To recap, our inks are clean, our colors are placed, and now we've gotta shade. You've got nice, neat separate layers for each color, I hope. If you don't, that's okay. It won't hurt anything.

-I usually start with the last layer and work my way up. Usually it's the skintone layer with me. Use the Magic Wand tool, and just click anywhere where there's color. (Now you see why I like to have different colors on different layers. Because if you have one layer with a flat green color, and you Magic Wand the green, it will place a selection around all the green on the layer.) Now make a NEW LAYER directly above the one you've made a selection on. If you want, title it aproppriately. Use the Eyedropper to grab a sample of the flat color. Open up the Color Picker (I hope you know how to do that. O_o;), and drag the selector circle around, until you get a shade that's SLIGHTLY darker than the original one. It depends on how drastic or light you want it to be, how dark you want it. This is now your midtone. Using a paintbrush, smack it up on there. ...oh, wait. You need to identify where your lightsource is coming from. Just imagine that your drawing is a real person. Now where is the light that illuminates him coming from? Directly overhead? To the upper right? Is it a backlight? Or is it that horror-movie classic bottom-lighting? Once you get that general idea in your head, it's time to tinker around. For general purposes, I usually have my lightsource coming from the upper-righthand corner. If you want to get an idea of how that would look, turn off the lights, and hold your hand up to your monitor screen, so that the right edge of your hand is brighter than the rest of your hand. A little more than halfway across your hand, the color starts to get darker, until you see that the left edge of your hand is very dark, compared to the right edge. Once you've gotten the grasp of the concept, and you've put down some midtones, open the Color Picker again, and drag the color down until it's even darker than the midtone. There's your shading color. I stick with four colors. Flat, midtone, shading, and highlights (which I only recently started using). Obviously highlights would be used where the light would shine brightest... don't overdo it, unless of course you're drawing someone slathered in oil, water, or large metal parts.

-Once you get one layer shaded, it's time to be movin' on up ('tooo the East Siiide... to a dee-luxe apartment in the skyyhhhyyy!!' Jefferson's moment. Don't mind me.). Just repeat the previous steps until you get your whole picture shaded and highlighted.

Shading isn't an exact science. It's trial-and-error. Study reference drawings and real-life to get an idea of how light falls on the face and body. Ya just gotta wing it, sometimes. Hell, I still do. The whole ordeal is time-consuming, and at times, frustrating, but it's well worth it, especially after you've done it a gazillion times. It's even better when you finally get good at it (and oh, joy, am I waiting for that day to arrive for me). ...by the way... have you saved recently?

4. The Finishing Touches

Before you flatten the layers, you can add a background (this can consist of solid color, crazy swirl shit Faia calls 'Fucking Around With Filters', or whatever your fancy). When you're finished with your drawing, go to Layers > Flatten Image. Suddenly, all of your layers have been compressed into one neat little image. To save your drawing for the internet, use the Save for Web option in the File menu. From there you can reduce the size to something manageable (because saving at a high resolution makes the drawing HUGE), and select which file extension you'd like. I usually go for JPG High. You can also adjust the Quality of the JPG, but it makes the filesize larger or smaller, depending on which way you go. I stick with around 70, so that the colors look relatively decent. ...you have been using Web-Safe colors, haven't you? ...Oh dear.

If you plan to post the CGed image, the colors you select in the Color Picker should be Web-Safe. Meaning, they won't go apeshit when you post it. You can use the 'Only Web Colors' option in the Color Picker, or, if you don't, make sure that the sample of the image in the Color Picker doesn't have a little exclamation point in a triangle beside it. Those are usually the colors that are brightest (along the right-hand edges, most of the time), and will definetly look screwy when it comes to image compression. Just a little F.Y.I. That was something else I learned the hard way.

Recommended Tutorial For Everything Else:

www.polykarbon.com