(Click the thumbnails to enlarge the pictures)
 First
of all - the sketch. I just doodle with the solid lineart
tool in a rather light color... in this case I drew
Hikaru from Hikaru no Go! ^-^ He's so cute! o.o;
Use guidelines or don't.. base it on a sketch you did
on paper, do whatever you're comfortable with. ^^ |
 The
next step is inking... smooth inking like that only
really works on applets with 2 layers.
Go to the top layer (the sketch should be done in the
bottom one obviously) and start inking with the 1px
watercolor tool (black). You have to draw over one line
several times to show up semi-black, so this can take
a while. Not a good idea if you wanna finish your oekaki
in under an hour. ^^;;
If you need to erase some of the ink, always use the
"white" tool, it works like an eraser... drawing
over the ink with the color white would cove up your
coloring later on, so don't do that. ^^ |
 After
the ink is done, go back to the bottom layer and draw
over the sketch with white (or erase it). |
 The
next step is the BG. Since you have only one layer to
draw in (bottom one) you have to start from the background
and work yourself towards the foreground.
In this case I just did some random shading with a 30px
watercolor tool - first with blue and then I added some
white highlights (clouds? ^^).
Don't worry about drawing over the edges, we'll clean
up later on. |
 Aaaah, finally color!
XD After you finished the BG (keep in mind it's harder to alter it after
you've started coloring the character), it's time to do the flat colors
for the chara (in the same layer).
I always do that with the solid lineart tool (assuming you want cel style
shading), you'll see why in the next step.
Do NOT draw over the BG anymore (cleaning up will be hard ^^)! |
 Wheeee,
shading! Here's why you did all the coloring with the
(pixelly looking) solid tool: Now you can use masks!
Click on the mask button until it reads remask... and
choose the skin tone. Now pick a darker shade of that
color (you have to mix it with the color selectors in
most cases obviously) and start drawing with the solid
tool.
See? It ONLY draws on the skin area! ^_^ It's magic!
Repeat that step for all the other colors |
 Time
for the finishing touches...
The first thing I do is smoothen the coloring. Pick
a 2px watercolor tool (shaded skin color) and start
retracing the edges of the shading. This will smoothen
it out~ repeat for all the other colors.
I also added some shinys to the eyes... and cleaned
the pic up (erased the colors going over the edges).
Finally, I added some text (which is drawn pixel by
pixel in that case, cause the font tool doesn't support
text that small ^^;;). |
I hope this tutorial helped you some... just keep in mind that practice
is the key to everything! It is possible to do very nice looking pictures
with an oekaki rather than just doodling all the time~
And please don't just copy my technique... let it be an inspiration for
you to come up with your own! ^_^
Questions? Feedback? Feel free to email
me. ^^
This tutorial was done for my dear friend René! Kudos to you,
Niko
Geyer
www.nikogeyer.com
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