Update: The video is up now! You can watch it here - ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-EefqA7epQzk.html ***** Hey friends 👋 just a note that I've temporarily taken down the "Draw-Reflect-Learn" video I mentioned at the end as I'm planning to make an updated version of it that's going to be more actionable! So make sure to subscribe so you don't miss it when it comes out 💪 (EDIT: I've trimmed out the part I mentioned it in for now to create a better viewing experience.)
this is a really interesting topic. especially when you think historically, European art tends to be more about realism, capturing forms through lighting. And in Japan they seemed to be more interested in shapes, like in wood cuts or scrolls. personally i think the 123 shadow method is easier to learn and wrap your head around. But obviously learning about the theory of light and all that is a must, when you see an artist combine the two the result is amazing.
i think that has everything to do with it, like cel-shading is really what's being depicted with the 1-2-3 system (in anime cel-shading might only be 1 or 2 shadows though) so it makes sense that drawing in an anime style, they're going to use cel-shading techniques but can add more depth to the shadow and rendering since it's an illustration
Another fun fact, a lot of the ukiyo -e is inspired by European art and vice versa. If you see any fundimentals in perspective in ukiyo-e art, it’s because of western art as perspective is a western discovery. It’s mostly because the edo period started when japan open up trade to the west Also impressionist, were inspired by Japanese art.
@@DistantDeadWorldsyeah, I remember going to see Monet’s estate when I visited France, dude had so many old Japanese illustrations plastered around his home, it was honestly really cool! Also his garden still has the water lilies in it!
That explains the philosophy I heard from an artist who encouraged studying the concepts of both “notan” and “chiaroscuro” in her painting course (concept artist Airi Pan in her Schoolism course) when composing one’s pieces. There’s groups of really cool illustrators from around the world who I admire who love to play with both concepts in the ways they do the lighting of their pieces and it’s wonderful seeing the different ways they combine these influences into their own works as well. Art history keeps learning from each other! 🥰
as an artist who avoids rendering.... this just gave me the motivation honestly i'm doing a fanart of Kafka from Star Rail rn, and i want to do her justice. thank you so much for your help and willingness to share information that's limited to others, your videos really helped and i've subscribed! i hope you know there are people out there like me who appreciate you and a bunch of other artists a lot :)))
I accidentally figured this out myself while working on a fanart a few years ago. I was making fanart of a character from pokemon and while looking at the Ken Sugimori artwork of her, I noticed how he shaded and tried it myself. Basically, instead of doing what I had watched digital artists do for years, which was shading each area individually (skin, hair, clothes, etc), it was clear he was using one or two layers to shade the whole piece cohesively. This was a game changer for me. Since then, I use multiply layers to shade my whole drawings in 2-3 layers (main shadow, darker shadows, deepest shadows) and then finishing the piece with various lighting layers and final touches. I feel as though shading this way makes the most sense when working digitally as it really helps me think of the piece as a whole and keep the colors and shadows feeling cohesive.
I’m so glad to find smaller creator like you who go through this kinda stuff. I need someone to spoon feed this info to me so this is much appreciated! Hope I a get some value out of this
I'd like to point out that the 1st Shadow is more common in modern anime art, I've noticed that when compared to anime art from 90s and older. We are currently in a trend where rim light and semi-backlight is used to make more dynamic rendering. When I was a young artist it was more common to have the light source in front of the character or to the side, you would see noses have cast shadows instead of a lit up-area like in your artwork.
This is awesome, thanks for breaking the fundamentals of this style down. I've been trying to find out what style is used by Blue Archive and this is the closest I could find.
Happy to help! I love BA myself so I've also done a lot of studies of their art (so my art style definitely has some influence from them too!) and I can tell you it's somewhere in between simple anime shading and the one used for a more complex illustration. The in game art mainly just uses 1~2 shadows, and the way to approach it would be to start off from an anime shading base (you can take a look at the free Anime PSD I put up for how to) and then layering some more shading/lighting complexity on top of that
Working in Japan I often got work that was actually catagorized by how many shadow layers the client expected. This job is a 2 shadow job so it should be done in 2 days, This one is 3 shadow plus gurade (gradiation) so you can have a work week for this one, etc.
123 shadow comes from the animation production process,but other side comes from the drawing method of oil painting. The edges of light and shadow are blurred, and the edges of 123 shadows are also blurred, so no one mentions it
If you look at anime shading tutorials specifically they'll mention this layering thing even in English. I think they word it differently than the Japanese tho. Most English guides are focused more on realistic drawing so they pretty much exclusively talk about the physical way light works. Japanese anime styles just kinda seem to be the default so if you look up "how to shade" they'll tell you how to shade like anime which is typically more stylized.
ngl, you should do reviews on japanese artist tutorials and provide information on the tips they give as most of us don't know japanese :( Probably the only reason I would learn Japanese is not for anime, but to study from these masters
i've been working on making a vtuber model for a while and just have not been able to get satisfied with my shading! my japanese is very minimal and there aren't nearly enough resources for english-speaking artists out there, thank you so much for making these tutorials. they're amazing!
Aiooou as an anime artist myself I've been looking for a pro artist to go in-depth on anime shading. I learnt most of this myself from observation but having a pro's perspective on how they do it is something I've been looking for since I started drawing. 😄 I might click on every tutorial commenting that I wanted to do similar tutorials by accident though 😂 I'm just too amazed!!! I'm looking forward to see what you might teach in the future. Can you perhaps teach how to do anime face proportions? After all these years mine are always way off, I can never draw eyes and nose in the correct position. 😅
Thanks for this really and nice for pointing out that most of western artist just point the light and shadow of a ball it's really nice to know what other thinks especially the language barrier it's really hard to know and most of the great artist nowadays are Japanese, Koreans and Chinese
This is a very cool tutorial but the essence can be very distracting for people who learn from "english tutorials" :) There is no cast shadows in the shadows, it can lead to very messy values if someone would try to convey it to more realistic style. What is this "1st" shadow is the ambient light. So the "real" shadows are only 2nd and 3rd ones. I think it is worth to mention because someone can think that cast shadows are darker than "form" shadows and they really aren't. Keep up the good work!
I have actually been using two shadows inherently, but adding the first, biggest shadow would actually make my art more visible. Also thank you for explaining what warmth is, that would be really useful.
i mainly do watercolour art and these 1,,2,3 shadows make perfect sense to me. Its the same technique we do in watercolour. Loved how straightforward the video is!
After watching this video, I realized that I learned this method by copying a lot of anime art but never really knew how it works, so I never really managed to utilize it. It just works. Thank you so much for explaining this!
I've accidentally learnt 1 and 2 by myself, but never thought about making the 1.5 one since I usually just mix them with the 1, I'll try this method next time. Thanks for the amazing guide
1 minute in. I've been learning japanese on and off for about.. Half a year now? Recently took a break and just couldn't bring myself to study. Hearing about how art techniques vary and how japan has its own techniques gave me the motive I was completely lacking to continue. I now know what I want to learn it for - so I can follow art books and use Japanese as a stepping stone to level up my art - then when I'm proficient enough from reading Japanese art books and continuing to add on to my knowledge with classes, I could try to make some Japanese friends as that was my original motive. Booking a class for next weekend. Ori, tysm! All i needed was a little push, and you gave me a big one.
This is known in western traditional art as direct lighting, core shadows, ambient occlusion. You're 1.5 shadow is actually known as fill shadow or an alternative to fill lighting
Glad that there's content that helps relate what ambient, hard, and soft shadows are better. struggled with this until I got into college, as a lot of the time rendering isn't fully explained in highschool classes. They kind of just point at a picture and are like "here you go!" with no real demos of what it is.
While watching this I always thought there are around 3 shadings. While I only do pixel art and only have a slight knowledge of shading and traditional art. Its really insightful to see what my preconceptions about shading is pretty accurate and made it more clear just by watching this video. Its very insightful and very easy to understand by separating shadows in 1/2/3 sections.
I used to do a ton of traditional drawing years ago when I didn't have much access to computers and internet, it was a cheaper hobby to fill the time. I haven't really done drawing in quite a few years because of interest in other things (competitive gaming and hiking). Now trying to get back to learning art again except I'm trying to transition to digital. Been dipping my hand into different styles of digital works like water colour painting, objects, pixel art and sprite animation, ect ect. So many options with digital. My one friend thinks its easy to do digital art *eyeroll*. I also am not super motivated to get back into it which is why I am having slow progress, self learning. I have heard of this 3 layer shadow term before, I thought it was common knowledge and was surprised to hear you say it was considered a paid learning topic. Thanks for the refresh and lesson. Some people just have a higher art skill level these days ig.
A useful video, though somewhat of a misnomer. The style you're describing is informed by Japanese animation and it characteristically draws light cels out with more detail than what most studios can keep up with. Animation is geared towards simplification, so studying that first helps understand this style of light, but that's not actually an effective study for illustration since designing for animation and illustration are worlds apart. Honestly, they're more different than alike. As anime usually prioritizes detail and cheap production cost, it's usually (not always) much more stiff than western animation; there's a medium amount of everything. Medium detail compared to illustration, medium light information, medium movement compared to Western animation, medium simplification, etc. This leads illustrators who push that style to fit their art studies into that simplification-but-only-kind-of profile. That is to say, the shorthand answer to "how to paint like an anime style" is to apply any art related fundamentals to a dominant simplified cel based design, optionally with anime iconography (like eyes and the sort, of course). In illustration, you'll see more tricks used to enhance and post process stuff too, but it's not a substitute for learning fundamentals, whether the artist wants to apply that to one stylization/exaggeration or another. It's never so narrow as to say this is the one way to do it, but that's kind of a given point, of course. To study and process it this way elaborates on a much wider array of artists while staying consistent to where this style of illustration came from in the first place. Light has to be designed into the line mileage decisions for this style of animation, so you inherit that mentality in illustration within this context too ' v ' With that said, nice video~~❤
So, you're telling me that I am doing the japanese way when doing digital coloring? Nice. Didn't know that. Although in my case, it would be: 1. Base Color 2. Shadow 3. 2nd Shadow 4. Highlights 5. 2nd Highlights. The Base Color "maybe" acts both as a first shadow and a highlight. In any case, it may not be EXACTLY as the japanese way but is pretty close at it. Allso I am self taught. I did that based on observing animes.
okay, so because of this video i discovered that i've been doing the japanese shading system without even knowing it! :D i came up with this on my own back then when i used watercolor paint and watercolor pens. i used to combine my drawings and sketches using colored pencils and watercolor. the difference of the tools and their results kind of resembles what's being done in this shading system. with regular pencil sketches, it's much easier. just put more or less pressure to get different shading opacities! i also observed that the shadows for pencil sketching in western styles focus more on gradient shading. in anime, it's a bit more solid depending on the style.
What a great video! An additional part of the process that I've implemented is going back to that first shadow layer and adjusting the colour of the shadows to account for material. For instance, making the shadow colour slightly more red for the skin, more orange for shiny, golden accents, or just plain darker for materials that don't absorb as much light. I also shift the entire shadow colour based on the surrounding environment; if the illustration is supposed to feel cold, the shadows will be a bit more blue, but if it's supposed to feel warm, I'll use more of an orange. I've been using a 2-shadow system up until now, but I'm definitely going to start implementing a third, like you've done here.
another thing to note is that japanese anime artists LOVE to use either back lighting, where most of the face is in shadow, or top down lighting where most of the face is in the light. They will never do 3/4 lighting, presumably because it doesn't look good on stylized anime faces with cel shading. And even when they do paint shadow, the shadowy areas are still very light compared to what you'll see in photos and in western art.
thanks so much! i've seen this way of painting around in many digital anime art pieces, i always found it very interesting how they all have this similar kind of shadow to them. my japanese is not very good so i couldn't learn it very deeply, until this video :) thanks again.
As a western artist I learned this a s1 s2 and s3. similar ideas but maybe different shadow shapes. Also, the s1,2,3 shadows can be done as a solid color masking layer, and you can paint as a mask so you dont have to worry about color picking the different shadows. I highly recommend studying Mignon's work as he goes into the mask painting idea alot more. its pretty common and a productivity hack imo
Funny enough, ive been this menthod a bit naturally or intuitively. Or something close to it. I love this method and it offers a lot of flexibility. . I also saw this way with Naoki Saito's old video of how to render too 💕
On the chance anyone sees this, I am not an artist, but I have an understanding of light and illumination, so I'm explaining why these shadows exist and why they actually look good (realistic) when done well. Understanding where these shadows are coming from can significantly improve how you place and draw the shadows. Think about standing outside just an hour before sunset. Everything in direct sunlight will be fully illuminated, the base color comes from the direction of your main light source. Then, everything that isn't in direct sunlight will be illuminated by the sky (environment), the 1st shadow is fully illuminated by the brightness of the environment. It will be sharp because the sun is almost a point in the sky. Then, everything that is partially or fully obscured from the sun and the sky will be the 2nd shadow, these are created when a surface is close to another surface that is illuminated by the environment, that surface is then partially illuminated by the environment. This shadow will be soft, as the sky (environment) encircles the surface completely. The 3rd shadow is your "dark," these surfaces are illuminated only by the light bouncing off of your 2nd shadow surfaces, and directly from the ground, and should be nearly black, depending on the brightness of the 2nd shadows. There will be very few of these shadows, only existing in the darkest parts of the object that have almost no exposure to the environment. These are sharper than the 2nd shadow, but softer than the 1st shadow. Maybe someone will find this information helpful.
i'm an anime artist-in-training, and holy crap i've just discovered this channel recently. this will DEFINITELY help me out alot with my anime art (along with the other videos)!! i'll keep these videos in mind, thank you for making these tutorials, as it's kinda hard to find similar tutorials lol
Something that interests me is that i did something similar in my past art, just backwards. I'd do all the basic cast shadows first, a lighter shade for milder shadows, and finally the '1st shadow' which is everything the light doesnt hit.
Great concept but confusing video. You should have started with plain base colours and then added the shadows one by one. You jumped around a lot and kept switching off base colours and then switching them back on etc so this whole thing was difficult to follow. But thanks for giving a name to the technique. Will know what to search for now.
Great video! I would enjoy if you made a more in depth tutorial on the lighting as well as the effects you added at the end as I've honestly never heard of them. While i'm writing this comment, just wanted to say thank you for your videos! I honestly find your videos the most helpful for art tutorials. You have really helped me level up my art, thank you so much ❤️
The end went like: how to draw an owl -step 1: draw an oval -step 2: draw a circle -step 3: draw the rest of the owl xd but yeah tell us more about those still :D
I also like to erase the edges of kage 1 to create reflective light. Since reflective light shouldn't be lighter than the base color erasing from kage 1 achieves the effect without a dedicated reflected light layer. It works best if you have a highlight layer for contrast though, and if it's a simple illustration with no highlighting it might be best to skip.
Thank you so much!! I'm determined to be the best anime artist I can be and this - in tandem with Coloso tutorials and other inspirations out there -- are sure to help me level up!!
They do have it in english but it's the style that changes what it looks like hence why it won't be exactly the same. Alot of art here in the US was taught to be more realistic, both a blessing and a curse cause heaven forbid you enjoy cartoons/anime lol. At least though you learn the fundamentals of realistic lighting and shading and that's why the ball or other shapes are used to show hard, soft, ambient, ect, lights and shadows. But in stylized art this method is more common cause it's obviously stylized. Animation in general has this very fluid process for it cause they have so much work to do that you shouldn't take too long on one thing. It's very nice for rendering. When I switched from realism in school to semi realism/animeish out of it my rendering and shading was abysmal. I just didn't like how it worked or looked. This though was so nice to learn and really helped me out of that problem.
THIS IS SO USEFUL OMG THANK YOU i am mostly trying to speed up my drawing process bc of my mental health and troubles with consentration and this is very useful! also it is all for free... thank you.. you are a life savior...
I must've picked up this tip from somewhere, as I shade with a similar system with my understanding of shading/lighting we use here in the west. Thanks for sharing this tip with us, as now I have a better understanding of the three shadows 👍
hey, this is really cool! recently got this video on my recommended and i'm happy i decided to watch. i watched a tutorial this helpful in a while, and i like your vibe :]
can you make a more in depth video about masking layers? I don't understand how you get it to work like in your video. this video is super helpful and I thank you for it.
truly thank you very much Ori-sensei 🙏 truly thank you very much to you for sharing this technique to us as you said we can usually learn abt this technique by spending money 🙏
