Photoshop is an excellent tool for creating anime illustrations.
Photoshop is an excellent tool for creating anime illustrations. All of the tools you need to create an anime drawing are simply a click away. You can draw out the frame of your characters, refine the line work and color your anime characters using Photoshop. Creating and anime style illustration in Photoshop will save you time and energy, as you will not need to stop and root around for that certain pencil, marker or paintbrush.
Hardware Tips for Drawing Anime in Photoshop
The best way to do any sort of drawing in Photoshop is to use a digital tablet and stylus. Cheaper models for beginners' run around $100 as of 2009 from companies like Wacom. These tools mimic drawing on a pad with a pencil, and you will have more natural-looking strokes and lines using this method. Make sure that you have pressure sensitivity activated under "graphics tablet support" at the top of the screen. If you do not have access to a tablet, you will need to draw your line work on paper and scan it into your computer at 300 dots per inch. If you are scanning your work, you should ink the line art with a black pen to make sure the line art is as crisp and clean as possible.
Creating or Cleaning Line Art
If you are creating line art with a digital tablet in Photoshop, you should draw out a skeletal frame of your drawing using basic shapes. Ovals can be used for heads, rounded rectangle shapes for the chest and upside down triangles can be used for hips. Limbs can be created using simple lines with cylinders over them to create the upper arms, forearms, and upper legs and lower legs. Create a new layer for your final line work and place this above the skeletal frame. Draw your anime character over the framework and trace only the lines you wish to keep. Add hair, clothing and facial details at this point. Hide the bottom layer to show off your finished anime line work.
If you are using a scanned image, adjust the contrast to make the white areas of the page as light as possible and the lines crisp and black. Use the "magic wand" feature to delete any stray pencil strokes or smudges on your image.
Coloring Anime in Photoshop
Color your anime illustration by creating a new layer and placing this under your line art. Set the line at layer to "multiply." This will ensure that the colors on the layer below will show through. This technique is especially useful when coloring scanned in images.
Color the basic hues first. Use medium range colors, and make sure that each section of your illustration is colored. Identify the direction of your light source to add shadows and highlights. For instance, if the light is coming from directly above your anime character, the tops of shapes will be the brightest, while areas like under the chin will have shadows. Use lighter and darker versions of your medium range colors to create highlights and shadows.
