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How I Make my Skins
Yoyaya_ayayoY requested it, so here it is
I recommend using the free program Paint.NET to follow this tutorial
Part 1 - Colours
If you look at my Arthas Menethil skin:
you'll notice at the top right I have highlighted a rectangular region outside of the skin area. This is the colour palette I used to make this skin.
Here it is enlarged:
As you can see, for colours that cover the largest areas, I use 5 shades, and for areas that only cover small areas, I use 3. To get the colours, I usually take them from a reference picture.
Where there are 5 shades of colour, this is how I select each shade:
1. A much lighter shade than 2 for high contrast
2. A slightly lighter shade than 3
3. The average colour
4. A slightly darker shade than 3
5. A much darker shade than 4 for high contast
And when you only need a colour palette for a small area, I leave out shades 2 and 4.
Part 2 - The Design
Before I even start shading, I design it with block colours first. I start with this template, and then, using the colours from the palettes, I use the pencil tool to work out the design of the skin before shading it.
I have Minecraft Skin Viewer open next to Paint.net to see how it looks on a player.
For example, here's how Hideous Hatteous would have looked at this stage:
At this point you can decide whether the skin is going to work or not before you've started shading.
Part 3 - Shading
And speaking of shading, here's the bit you've been waiting for. The shading!
First, select the area you want to shade with either the magic wand or rectangle select tools.
Secondly, decide where the light is going to hit it. Look at some of my skins for reference here.
Sometimes you want the light to come in the centre to make it look rounded, other times you might want it to come from above.
Here are examples of each on Hideous Hatteous with the light sources highlighted in red:
Both give a good effect, so it's entirely up to you.
Now you know where you want the lightest point to be, go to the palette and select the two shades on either side of the middle one. Next, set the transparency of each to something low, like 25%.
Select the brush tool, set it to Brush width: 1, and begin using the lighter selected shade on the lightest point until you get a gradient that looks something like this:
Yes, I know, this looks rubbish, so select your darker shade and use the brush on the area around the light shade until it looks like this:
If I'm using a 3 colour palette for the current area I'm shading, I stop here, however since this is using a 5 colour palette, there are still two steps to go.
Now select your lightest and darkest colours from the palette and repeat the above steps again.
Use the light colour until it looks like this:
And then use the dark colour until it looks like this:
Part 4 - Shadows
Not necessary on all skins, however it does add a great 3D effect on most.
In areas that are below something that should be sticking out, for example a belt or a hat, use the brush with a dark shade to add a shadow.
For example, on Gingy I added these shadows below the icing:
And that's all there is to it! Good luck!
Since this is my first blog, feedback and constructive criticism is greatly appreciated!
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2 Update Logs
1.0.1 : by Daft-Vader 11/17/2012 2:54:51 pmNov 17th, 2012
Added Part 4 - Shadows
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~Yoyaya