Inkscape Tutorial: Add Simulated Shading To Characters

this is nick with logos by nick.com and in this tutorial i'll be demonstrating how you can add some simple shading to your vector illustrations using inkscape this is a nice little touch you can add to your designs to make them pop a little more and if you don't have an example design to try this out with then i'll have a download link in the description of the video if you want to practice on this example design that i'm using here but before we get started if you'd like to learn more about inkscape be sure to check out my inkscape master class it's a collection of over 60 videos where i go over all of the tools and features in inkscape and i explain what they are and demonstrate how they work i'll have a link in the description of the video if you want to check that out so getting started here on escape as you can see i have the software open the first thing we want to do is just make sure we have our snapping enabled up here the top icon in the very top left that says enable snapping make sure that's turned on we want to come over here to where it says snap to custom nodes make sure that's enabled and then snap to smooth nodes as well and what i'm going to do now is i'm going to import this example design i have it downloaded here in this folder i'm just going to click and drag this onto the canvas like that i'm going to click ok to leave the default settings as they are and there's this example shark design that i'm going to be working with now let me come up here to where it says view make sure you have custom selected go to zoom zoom in at one to one and now i'm just going to hold ctrl and shift with the select tool here hold ctrl and shift and grab one of these arrows and scale this down now for this tutorial you don't have to necessarily follow this step what i'm going to do is i'm just going to right click this and go to duplicate and i'm going to apply this to a duplicate copy over here i'm going to leave this one over here the original so that i can show you the difference between the finished design and how it was previously just to show you how well it makes the design look so i have this design over here what i want to do now is just ungroup this i'm going to come up here to where it says ungroup ungroup selected objects click on that you may want to click on that just a few times just to make sure that there's not several layers of groupings there and now we can click off and deselect everything what i'm looking at here is i'm just going to imagine a light source being over here on the canvas right here shining light going this way so like on this side of the design the right side will be like a glow or like a highlight effect and over here will be a shading or a shadow effect so let me zoom in on this by holding ctrl and rolling up the mouse wheel and if you want to move the page around at any point you can just press down the mouse wheel and move the mouse what i'm going to do is i'm just going to manually draw a shaded a shaded area right here i'm going to grab the bezier pen which is right here with the snapping enabled as it is there i'm just going to snap to this cusp node right there click and then come down here and click down here into this blue area and then i'm going to bring the line going through this blue area here back to the starting point oops back to the starting point like that make sure you're going through the dark blue area the whole time and now i want to open up the fill and stroke menu which is over here fill in stroke or you can press ctrl shift and f on the keyboard and for the fill color i want to make this the same shade of blue that this light shade of blue is here only slightly darker so to do this i'm actually going to use the dropper tool first i'm going to come over here to where it says pick colors from an image or you could press d on the keyboard and just go ahead and grab a sample selection from that there and where it says fill in the fill tab i'm looking for hsl and in the l row i'm going to take this and bring this to the left a little bit just to make that a little darker and i'm actually going to change the shade of that blue a little bit i'm going to take this i'm going to take this atro and just slide this though right a little bit just to make that pop out a little more and i want to get rid of that black outline so i'm going to hold shift and click this red x in the bottom left corner and now what i want to do is grab the select tool and i want to lower this beneath these blue objects so i'm going to come up here to where it says lower selection one step click that once again again and again until it goes beneath these objects over here now instead of using this button what i like to do is use the keyboard shortcut which is page down so i'm just going to press page down until it goes beneath everything like that or maybe not that far okay perfect right there once you've done that just take your your edit pads by nodes tool and take this line and just manually click and drag it in so that it follows a similar contour to this blue this dark blue line right here and if you go to the select one you zoom back out you'll notice you've we've added a little bit of shading right there now i'm going to take this and make this a little lighter i don't want it quite that dark that looks a little better and i'm going to go through and do the same thing right here i'm going to add another shape by the fin right here let me grab the bezier pen i'm going to start right here bring the line right here then over here and then through the blue areas the dark blue out the dark blue areas until it's back to the starting point like that fill it in with this shade right here so i'm going to grab the dropper fill that in get rid of the black outline by shift clicking the x back to the select tool and again i'm using page down until it goes beneath those dark blue areas and now i'm going to grab the edit paths by nose tool and then just adjust this so that these lines follow the contour of these lines over here and that right there is what i'm looking for let me zoom out a little bit that's looking pretty good so now i'm going to draw another one right here i'm going to be i'm going to use the keyboard shortcuts now and work a little bit faster so i'm going to grab the bezier pen again over here b on the keyboard to grab that i'm going to start right here at this corner bring the line up here like that and then through the dark blue area back to the starting point press d on the keyboard to grab the dropper make that the same color get rid of the outline by shift-clicking the red x and now i'm going to grab the edit paths by nodes tool by pressing n on the keyboard and i'll just take this and drag this in you know what let me go back to the select tool and lower this down i'm going to press page down on the keyboard a few times there we go and now i can go back to the nodes tool and i can click on this node right here the corner node and then i can get these little handles that'll make it easier for me to adjust so i want to adjust these handles so that this shadow is following the contour of the shoulder here or the dark blue border that's looking pretty good right there as you can see i'm gonna do the same thing down here only i'm gonna make this shadow follow this this side right here so let me grab the bezier pen again same steps as before i'm going to end this one right about here i'm not going to take this all the way to the end right here i'll put it right about here back through the starting point through the dark blue areas there we go make it the same color get rid of the outline lower it down with page down and then back to the nodes tool and we can adjust this further and make it fit make it a little more fluid now you may want to temporarily disable snapping while you're doing this to do that you can just come up here and click on that because there's sometimes you're going to want to adjust these handles and the snapping gets in the way so you can temporarily turn that off if you want to adjust these handles like i'm doing here and then if you want to turn it back on you could just press you can just click this button or what i like to do is use the keyboard shortcut which is shift and five and there we go now it's enabled again so looking at this illustration here we're going to want to apply this shadow effect maybe maybe over here where the thumb is and then after that we'll have the shadows applied to the left side of the design and then we're going to work on adding highlights to the right side of the design so let me just go through and finish up the shadows really quick okay so i've gone through and i've added some shadows to the left side of the design now i'm going to add some highlights to the right side of the design and i'm going to start up here with the shark's head up here because as we're imagining this light source is coming over here from the right and shining this way so let me grab the bezier pen again let me turn snapping back on and i want to snap to this corner i'm going to create the shot the highlight right here going along the top of the head here snap it back to the starting point over here bring it through the border the dark blue border whoops didn't mean to do that and back to the starting point and for this one i'm going to use a lighter shade instead of a darker shade so let me grab the dropper make this the same shade of blue only i'm going to make this one a little lighter like that let's get rid of the outline or the stroke go back to the select tool page down a few times to lower it beneath the eye and beneath the dark blue area now we can grab the edit pads by nodes tool i'm going to turn off snapping for this part because i know for a fact that it's going to get in the way take this node down here adjust this that's looking pretty good i just want to get this out of the way of the eye right here so i'm going to double click i'm actually going to double click right here to add a new node and then just bring that up like that that didn't come out quite as well as i'd like so let me undo that to undo i'm just going to hit ctrl z a couple of times and let me raise this back to the top i want to add this node right here there we go and now i can go ahead and lower this down that's what i'm looking for right there that's looking pretty good so i'm going to add another highlight going right here now since this area is white i'm just going to use a more vibrant shade of light blue for this highlight although it's technically technically if this were like gray you would use white right here but since this is already white i'm just going to use a different like a more vibrant blue like this so let me grab the bezier pen again i'm going to start over here i'm actually going to start up here let me turn snapping back i'm going to start at this corner and i'll come through here like this let me turn off snapping after i've connected to that point there we go back through this area right here and i want to make this probably the same shade of this maybe a little lighter so let me grab the dropper there we go get rid of the outline let's lower this down there we go grab the nodes tool and then just make this follow the contour of that i actually got to lower that down some more that's still sticking out there we go and i want to make that a little lighter that's a little too dark for a little too dark for it to be a highlight like that that looks pretty good right there so now i'm going to create another one going through the teeth right here let me grab the bezier pen right through there and then right through here like this back to the starting point make this the same color with the dropper tool get rid of the stroke and then lower it down like that and as you can see it's it's really coming to life here so what i'm going to do is i'm going to add a few more highlights through here maybe right here on the right side of the shoulder and then over here at the top of the knuckles over here and maybe right there as well i'll have to see how it looks so let me go through and do that real quick okay so as you can see i finished up adding my highlights to the right side and the top side of the areas of the design here and whether or not this is actually correct like this is how the light would actually interact with the subject like this i don't know probably not but it still looks good enough for it to be effective and to make the design pop a little more let me zoom back out here to show you what i mean i'm going to take this original design and i'm going to put it right next to it and as you can see there is a clear difference there this design just seems more alive it seems to pop a little more it just looks like a like a higher quality illustration just with some simple shading and highlights drawn with the bezier pen like that so that is how you can go about adding some highlights and shadows and shading features to your simple illustrations using inkscape if you have any questions let me know and as always thanks for watching before i end the video i'd just like to let you know that you can watch all future tutorials without ads and before i upload them to youtube at logosbynic.com just click the red bell at the bottom of the page to get notifications and every time a new tutorial is posted you'll get to watch it before it gets uploaded to youtube and without any advertisements if you have any questions leave a comment below and as always thanks for watching you

Channel: Logos By Nick

Views: 33,209

Rating: 4.964581 out of 5

Keywords: inkscape, inkscape tutorial, inkscape shading effect, inkscape character shading, logos by nick, logosbynick, nick saporito

Id: aGE0aZbcE2U

Length: 12min 58sec (778 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 29 2020