Anti-Pillowing

[official-neosoft]

I always shade in the style of Pillow-Shading, and I want to lose that!


Can people tell me if this is pillow-shaded, or what could be better to make it less/not pillowed?

Ty

[Ignacio]

As a humble newbie, I must ask... what is pillow-shading?

[official-neosoft]

That's my problem. I don't know what it means exactly..

But I thought it ment like shading all around the object, so the dark shade is everywhere, not like right much shading and left none/a little. "not like right much shading and left none/a little" is good, I thought..

But can anyone help?

[Pawige]

Ignacio- Pillow shading is a term (not a style!!) for when you throw all artistic conventions out the window and just make the colors get lighter when you get closer to the center of the object you're "shading."



Neosoft- It is a bit pillow-shaded. You need to think about the surfaces and where the light will hit and where it won't hit. For example, you don't nessicarily need to use all the shades on his neck, because his head will cast a shadow over it and it will mostly be dark. Or you won't want to use the darkest shade on his shoulder, because there's nothing casting a shadow on it! Basically, the best cure for pillow shading is to go and study traditional art for a while, practice drawing on paper, and when you come back to pixeling you'll see a big improvement in everything.

[TrevoriuS]

You currently seem to be shading reasonably, but per object. And in addition to that, some objects have different lightsources than others. Face lit from front, (our) left arm from the top left, right arm from the lower right, pants and left leg again from the front etcetera. So I marked down some light direction errors here in coloured arrows; and am also curious as to why the elbow-pit appears to be at the red circle halfway the lower arm as opposed to... the elbow.

So first I did a quick attempt fixing some shading, and then I'd like to show you that you should bring the total volume more to the front, by applying a more global shading layer. This latter is done with a nasty photoshop edit, so it should be done more correctly and with more care, but it can be taken further than is shown here. What I basically did while doing so was pay attention to the compositional lines and shapes of the image. From the top of the head we can shade a cylindrical shape going straight down to (our) right arm and hand, and let that split up at the neck into a cylindrical shape that is curved towards (our) the left leg. Looking at the actual shape and potential 'swooshy lines' that make out your image and the way people look at it, can be accentuated with applying shading on a larger basis than the piece-by-piece you seem to be doing now. Look more at the whole!