Do you think I can get away with this non existent shading?

[ylldre]

That’s too much details lmao I don’t think it’s sustainable for me. There’s a reason that’s a cover art not the actual comic I think xD

[ylldre]

That’s a great reference i’m also aiming to do that but not that skilled yet lmao thanks a lot. The problem is when I use set of brushes to do background and it looks good but my characters don’t have shading at all lmao.

[river121693]

I know the feel. Brushes make life so easy but also so hard loll

[Inspector]

Haha! It's okay. It's a superhero comic, so it's all colored like that. I don't know what type of comic you're making, so it's hard to tell which type of shading you need. The one I showed would be better for a superhero comic, which I'm guessing yours is not. No shading is always fine as well!

[llobucervallince]

@river121693 gave me another idea where you could actually use degradation map to limit the palette or find a better harmony

Map degradation 100%

Map degradation 30%

[SoftWonderBun]

Pre-production test pages are always gonna be your best friend. Also, color charts to pull from while you work. I just set it up as a PSD with labels for characters, locations, etc.

[ylldre]

Ikr!! how to do this one for instance. Hard choice. I have to do the shading I think ckckkckckck.

[BoomerZ]

From the beginning I wanted a cell shaded look for my comics. The easiest way to achieve this is with a shadow layer and using opacity to adjust the opaque value.

[ylldre]

It looks really good. But I can tell it takes pretty much a lot of time and patient xD which I don;t have that many xD

[VibrantFox]

at it's base i'd say it's pretty good but it could be the direction of the light or color choice that could be making things feel off. like taking this and doing some editing (redoing flats, new shading gradients, and a texture layer) i happened to get this from the time that you sent this reply to now

like for the most part it looks really good but whenever i feel doubtful about lighting or shading i just do a two tone gradient overlay to emphasize and then a noise or texture like this noise pattern i got from photoshop and turned into a brush

or this texture overlay from sandflake on deviantart

then i take those and set it to an effect like overlay, multiply or hard light that way it gives it that nice gritty/paper look to it

when i do it for my own work it's kinda like this

or to give an example of a comic focused style this ones really old but about the same as how i do colors now with flats and then some gradients or small details for things like hair, blush and clothing

probably the biggest reason why i like the texture overlays tho (especially the sandflake one) is that it helps give flats a bit more volume so it can look like there's that brush stroke look to it without breaking my wrists to get it. granted i sometimes break my own "rules" and go ham on specific drawing or panels coz i want those to pop the most but i think it's not so bad coz it can sometimes help to guide a reader to those things or add to pace or flow

[ylldre]

That actually a conceivable option!! I might copy your version i like texture. I’ve tried texture as a brush before and it takes too much work, but from what I gather from your version it’s just overlay on the whole canvas right? Like adding noise filter. That only takes seconds lmao. I don’t know how much this helps me The demonstration helps a lot thank you sooooo muuuuch I want to experiment it /o/

[VibrantFox]

no problem! but yeah overlay on the whole canvas to get the texture and then choosing a layer mode that best suits the effect you're going for (ie, multiply, overlay, hard light, etc)

usually whenever i use effects like that it's like lines and flat colors

progressive details (which i only went extra for the shirt coz it's an illu and not a comic page tho it's mostly more overlays and edited assets)

and then noise grain set to multiply

or texture set to overlay/hard light (depending on the look i want)

it definitely takes some messing around but it's been my go to for colors for a while now since it achieves the look i want but without straining my body

[TheLemmaLlama]

me on the exact opposite end being like 'can I get away with non existent lineart quality' :P

But yeah, I've personally read and enjoyed comic in your first style; even though I mostly stuck with those comics for the story, it wasn't like in a 'this art sucks but I'll tolerate it because I need to know the story' kind of way, but more of a 'this art is competent; I'd get bored if I sat and stared at it for 5 minutes, but it complements the story well' kind of way

(And if push comes to shove, you can always go back and shade it later ig XD)

[ylldre]

Got it, thaaanks a lot

[ylldre]

Yeah need to be realistic if I want to finish my story xD and it’s true I can always come back and pay someone to do the work for me(if I have money). Wow this is actually a good goal lmao. Thanks xD

[Lensing]

You can not only "get away" with it, I think it can be a good decision to keep things simple.
I think you shouldn´t shade at all when you dislike shading. I grew up with reading ligne claire
comics, no line weight, no shading. The readers don´t think about stuff like that.
When you look at different art styles / artists, they all put their focus on things and leave
out other elements. Some don´t use outlines, some don´t colors, shading etc.
Your focus can probably be on dynamic lines, it´s good that you can draw without sketching

[hakei]

HELL YEAH!
I'm a huge proponent of no shading styles it shaves off so much time.

No-shading style does benefit from
* having simplified gradients here and there, especially for moody scenes
* having some sort of overall paper (or halftone/noise) texture
* characters with varying line weights to indicate shadows
* making sure the characters look very distinctive from the backgrounds even before the colors

[darthmongoose]

I pretty much only shade skin and very light-coloured stuff in Errant (like yellow or white fabric), and everything else I just make a layer on "add (glow)" clipped to the foreground colour layer and throw on an edge highlight, like this:

Simply changing the highlight colour allows me to tweak the lighting really easily while being very fast to do on a comic I make two pages of every week.

You have really strong lineart with a lot of character in the line weight variation, so I say keep the colouring really simple, you could even get away with totally flat colours or just a texture overlay, or blobbed in watercolour style colouring like something like Buuza!! or The Princess Beast.

[ylldre]

The readers don´t think about stuff like that.

need to hear this sentence to remind myself of my priority. Yeah I mostly do lineart right away but if it’s more than two characters I still need a rough sketch to get the composition right. Thanks a lot

@hakei that looks so gooooood like whoa but it looks not empty because the background doesn’t feel like an eyesore. Thanks for pointing out the benefits of no shading it makes me relieved to see really professional looking with no shading looks that good ‘o/

@darthmongoose I’ve tried using watercolor style but my lineart is in that awkward place of not really loose style which I think works really well with that two gorgeous comic you share! Thanks for sharing those comics btw, great styles! I might use flats or overlay texture on top of gradient, whichever works best. Do you think it’s okay to publish shaded prologue but no almost no shading for the next chapter? Or do I need to redo/ delete the prologue shading? Anyway thanks a lot

[darthmongoose]

Personally, I'd redo the prologue for consistency if possible... but it kind of depends on how much work that would be.