Jungle Boy: Part 2

Next I need to decide where the light will be coming from and what my basic pallete will be. On seperate layers, I start defining the areas for the dark, mid and light tones using a hard round brush (images 1 - 3). No mystery here, just use common sense or some reference photos to guide you. The lighting does not have to be 100% accurate. The "cartoon" style of this drawing is very forgiving and you can get away with a lot more than you would be able to normally. Our eyes are easily fooled... Adding another light source also help to make the forms seem more "rounded". The reason the tones are done on different layers is so that I can easily adjust the colours for each. Just "Lock Transparent Pixels" on each layer in Photoshop, choose a colour and use "Alt+Backspace" to fill the layer until colour tones emerge that work together. I also play around with the "Opacity" slider on each layer to harmonize the tones (image 4). On the last image you can see I have added some highlights and tested some pinks and greens which I may later use to add reflective light and shadows (image 5). After this all the layers for the character gets merged to a single layer. So now I am left with only three layers - the background, the jungle dude and the line art on top of him. This process may seem elaborate, but it helps me to solve problems early which later makes it easier to work on the final large scale version. NEXT INSTALLMENT: Blending the character and adding detail to the background.