SHINING SURFACES
( Updated Jan 15th 2004 )
So we open the year with a new tutorial :) . This time we will work on reflections and shining surfaces in our images.
Well be using MS Paint for this tutorial.
STEP -1
We'll be working from a prior image (logo, drawing, whatever we have...). I used
an 8 color palette and painted each letter on a clear shade while the background
was left on a dark shade (1).
We will start with the letters shine effect... we paint them with one of the
base Paint colors (I used red) (2).
Now for the shining effect. Basically it is constructed from diagonal lines 1, 2
or more pixels thick (that really depends on your feel and the size of the
surface) and painting one line in a lighter shade than the letter base color and
the other on a lighter shade than the background.
As you can see we use the same
effect with 2 different color choices. The lightest one for the letters, and the
darkest for the backgound (3).
STEP -2
We will apply now our shine effect to the image. Select the fill color (red in the sample) as transparent and put it over the lighter version and then paint the letters in white with the original base color, or even faster creating a rectangle and put it overlaying them (4).
Now do the same with the background... fill it with a fill-color, overlay the shining effect taking care it will correspond to the prior result (5).
And that's all with the shining effect... well, nice enough but not too impressive... colors are a bit plain and the shine is not that obvious. Okey... we ended up using 5 colors for background and shine effect... choose more contrasting colors and see if it works for you.
Here you can see 3 samples... same image but with different 5 colors palette.
This ended up leaving me with a nice logo for this tutorial section... great it ended up so useful! :)
End of the tutorial
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- - - -- --- NOTES --- -- - - -
Note 1: This tutorial just covers Pixel Art, to learn about MS Paint usage and options refer to your software help file.
TUTORIAL TRANSLATED BY SLAINTE