There are two ways to make good skins. One is easy, One is not. But like all things in life making skins the hard way is bound to bring better results. In this blog i will start with the easy way and then go on to the hard way.

The Easy Way:

Step 1: Find an idea. If you are going to base the skin of a previously existing character like my iron man skin thean find a picture. Or you could just improvise like in my submission for the monster contest Captain spicy fire.

Step 2: Choose your program. I would recommend skincraft because honestly if you dont use the premade parts than it seems fine.

Step 3: Fill in the charcter in all solid colors. draw outlines with the pencil tool and fill in with the bucket tool.

Step 4: Pik a darker shade and a lighter shade of each of the colors you used.(For black you only need a lighter shade for white you only need a darker shade)

Step 5: Fill in random spots with the darker and lighter shades

The Hard Way

Steps 1-3 are the same as the easy way.

After that there are number of methods you could use. I use a combination of all of them usually.

Method 1: Basic Shading. in this step you simply get continually darker. This method is prominent in my wolverine skin.

Method 2: Advanced shading. In this method you find all the fine details and make the pixels under them darker. think about the charcters dimensions. Are there parts of his/her bosy that might cast a shadow. this method is prominent in my iron man skin and my sandman skin.

Method 3: Steve shading. Look at the reference skin (steve). There are darker spots on steve's body. Make those spots slightly darker on your character as well. This method is prominent in my daredvil skin

Method 4: The Pocket Effect. Many charcters have pockets in which they store things. When i make pockets on my skins I make them 2 by 2 pixels. i make the top right and bottom left pixels one color and then chose a lighter shade for the top left and a darker shade for the bottom right. THis is prominent on my hawkeye skin.

Method 5: Checkering. I use Checkering when i have a logo or icon to fit into a small space. i take the two most important colors of the logo and put them in a checkered pattern.I used this on the logo on cyclop's belt. I think that even if you dont have two colors, if there is ever a small space that needs to be spiced up i would checker with a dark and light shade. i used this on iron mans unibeam. be careful though a checkerd pattern can be really ugly on to large of a space.