Welcome to this new Tutorial-addition!
- Advanced CG CellShading-

1. Preparing your art
If you want to color a traditional and scanned in, inked drawing please check this tutorial HERE at first, because for the first step here you need a digitalized drawing which is explained in the tutorial I put a link up to. Be sure that you have the following layers: WHITE (a layer filled with white color) OUTLINES (the layer with the outlines, and JUST the outlines!! No white stuff!) So what we want to do next is to fill our lines with some color, but as you can see here in my example, it is quite hard to fill all that detailed lines with colors, but there is a way to make it faster. Be sure that you are in your Outline-Layer, than click on the magic wand tool and set it to following settings: Tolerance: 5, NO Anti-alias, YES Continguous, NO Sample all Layers. Than click and mark the stuff around your outline which will not get a color in the end! (Just look at the screenshot, I marked all area around the character)
If you are done with that marking press SHIFT + CTRL + I or go to Select -> Invert Selection, which yes, inverts your selection, tada you think we are done, but no just let's go to the next step. If you zoom in you will see that the marking is much bigger than our drawing, so the filling would be ugly. To make the marking more exact go to Select -> Modify -> Contract, you should know how thick your lines are, for approx. 3 px thick lines type 2 px into the Contract drop down menu, and so on, always approx. 1px less or the same size of your lines. (You can see the result in the Screenshot below)

2. The Flatcolors

Now leave the selection how it is and go into the layer menue, make a new Layer and name it FLATCOLOR, be sure that this one is UNDER your Outline Layer!!! Also be sure that you are in this new layer! Now fill your selection with color, I took a random red color, it is easy to see and you can make corrections easy, but well the color doesn't matter at this time. (See Screenschot below)
Now zoom in and check your Lines, you will see that the color isn't always behind our black outline, (like I have it here on the hair in my Screenshot) Now take the eraser and set it to following settings: PENCIL, Opacity 100% Flow 100%. and erase the stuff which is outside your lines, but why do I take the pencil eraser? I want that my color layer stays pixel-hard, so that I can mark it easily, and you don't see the hard edges at all because they are covered with our outlines ;)
If you are done with your corrections, click on that little quadratic symbol, which will lock the transparent pixels in your Flatcolor layer (a white padlock appears beside your layer name, a black padlock means that the whole layer is locked and you can't move or color it, I make that to be sure that I just color or work in the layers I should ;) ) This setting will help you with the flat colors, you don't have to look out for the borders, because you just can color there where there is already color.
Now, we are still in our FLATCOLOR Layer, take the Penciltool, yes we want hard pixel edges! The next steps are our real flat colors, you have to make the main part there with your hands, you can select and contract the selection on bigger parts, like the same we did it already, you just have to do it inside your outlines and don't invert the selection just expand it this time! But I can tell you the best results are done with your hand.. or better tablet/mouse! You can see my flat color version here on this Screenshot.

3. The Shading

Now we need the magic wand tool again, with the following settings: Tolerance: 1, NO Anti-alias, NO Continguous, NO Sample all Layers, and click into one color area, for example I took the Skin Color at first, when selected, go to Edit -> Copy or press Ctrl +C and than Edit -> paste or press Ctrl + V, this will make a new layer with the color you copied, be sure that this layer is under your Outline Layer and name it Skin for example! We wont need that layer really but since Photoshop has the nice function, if you press Ctrl and click into that layer it will automatically mark the whole layer area, and so we do it, make that and mark this layer that way. Now make a new layer over this Skin layer and name it Skin Shading, we will shade here, we just use the Skin Layer to mark our area faster! Than take a soft brush for example the BrushTool with the HardRound 5 Pixel and paint your shading, since we have no color in this layer already we can't use the "lock transparent pixels" function but we have marked our skin area so we can be sure that we will stay in there with our shading color. On the screenshot you can see my layers and the non-selected finished part of the shading.

To be sure that you made your shading right, go and click on the eye symbol and hide the Skin and the FLATCOLOR layer, you should only see your shading and the outline after that.
Okay, you can click on the eye symbols again so that you see all layers again. Now we will add some gradients to our simple cell shading. So be sure that you are in your Shading Layer and set click on that little quadratic symbol to lock all transparent pixels. Now take the Polygon Lasso and roughly mark one little shading area you want to put a gradient into (Like I have done on the shoulder here on the Screenshot) Now click on the Gradient Tool after that click inside the shown gradient on the top menue, you will come into a new little menue. Now click into one of these little quadrats with an arrow and choose a color, your light color should be a bit darker than your flat skin color and the darker color should be a few levels darker than this one so that you get a nice gradient! click OK. Now Take that Gradient Tool and make a gradient inside your marked area, try out which direction of the gradient fits the best.
Make this with the whole shading parts, and we are done!
Now right, look at my next creenshot, make the same! Just name the Layer Skin Shine, take a soft brush and paint the areas like we already did in our shading area, to be sure that you just color there, press CTRL and click on your skin layer meanwhile, yep, this marks the area we want to color in, BUT BE SURE THAT YOU PAINT IN YOUR SKIN SHINE Layer! Now make the same gradients in there, also don't forget to lock the transparent pixels at first, and your gradient should go from a light color to your skin color.
OMG! What happened now? Ah nothing! We just give our Colors a bit more mood, make a new layer and name it skin complete, mark the skin area again and make a circle form gradient inside it, with red, blue green or whatever color you like!
Now open that drop down menue on the top of the layer menue and give your colorful gradient the setting "Overlay" or just try the other settings out, also play around with the opacity until your result looks interesting! This is just a tip and not a must-have! If you don't want it just leave that layer out!
So we are almost done! Now go into your outline layer (I copied my one to save the original) lock all transparent pixels and color the outline! To make it fit better you should color the shaded parts with a darker color ant the light parts with a lighter color! You can make a new group inside your layer menue and put all the skin layers inside it, so that it looks more clean in there, and you will also find your stuff easier! So we are done! This is kind of advanced cell shading, and just how I make the main colorings of my stuff, now make all that on the other parts of your coloring and you will get a quite acceptable result ;) Greetings!
Tutorial, Drawings, Coloring and Text © Lizkay
Photoshop Objects/Screen are © Adobe

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