Simple Lighting Effects
If you've been using Flash for a while then you may have moved on from the 216 Websafe palette of default colours. It's quite easy to mix your own colours, but beginners might asking where to start.
My advice would be to start with one of the default colours.. that is, paint your character or element with a basic palette of the default colours, and then adjust each colour in turn.
I'm going to show you how to mix a tone, or shade of an existing colour. This will help you liven up an image or a scene as you'll see in the example images.
The Brightness Slider: By far the easiest way to mix colours is to use the Brightness slider of the HSB mixer (Hue, Saturation, Brightness). You'll find it in the context menu of the Color Mixer panel (Window > Color Mixer):
You can still mix colours with the RGB sliders (Red Green Blue), but it's much easier to mix tones and shades of an existing colour with the HSB sliders.
So let's say you have a character painted with some of the standard colours. There's nothing stopping you from sticking with those default colours if you're happy with them. It certainly saves a lot of work if you can get something working from the Web 216. But suppose you now want to add lighting effects to this character. You want dark and light versions of all the colours of the character's palette. Here's an example of a character painted with a few of the default colours.. right now, he's fairly cartoony:
So to start by mixing a darker tone for his skin, we select that colour first, then bring the Brightness slider down until we're happy with the tone.
See the preview showing the two colours at the bottom? This is where you should be looking as you slide.. trying to visualise how the tone will look on the character. When you're happy with it, paint in the tone with the brush tool (you might wanna put the Brush mode on 'Paint Inside') and fill it with the paint bucket.
So adding tones to the other colours now.
And finally, add some sparkle with some bright highlights. Instead of mixing darker colours here, use the base colour and move the Brightness slider up.
OK so his hair's a bit greasy, but using only the Brightness slider, there's so much more depth in this image.
My advice would be to start with one of the default colours.. that is, paint your character or element with a basic palette of the default colours, and then adjust each colour in turn.
I'm going to show you how to mix a tone, or shade of an existing colour. This will help you liven up an image or a scene as you'll see in the example images.
The Brightness Slider: By far the easiest way to mix colours is to use the Brightness slider of the HSB mixer (Hue, Saturation, Brightness). You'll find it in the context menu of the Color Mixer panel (Window > Color Mixer):
You can still mix colours with the RGB sliders (Red Green Blue), but it's much easier to mix tones and shades of an existing colour with the HSB sliders.
So let's say you have a character painted with some of the standard colours. There's nothing stopping you from sticking with those default colours if you're happy with them. It certainly saves a lot of work if you can get something working from the Web 216. But suppose you now want to add lighting effects to this character. You want dark and light versions of all the colours of the character's palette. Here's an example of a character painted with a few of the default colours.. right now, he's fairly cartoony:
So to start by mixing a darker tone for his skin, we select that colour first, then bring the Brightness slider down until we're happy with the tone.
See the preview showing the two colours at the bottom? This is where you should be looking as you slide.. trying to visualise how the tone will look on the character. When you're happy with it, paint in the tone with the brush tool (you might wanna put the Brush mode on 'Paint Inside') and fill it with the paint bucket.
So adding tones to the other colours now.
And finally, add some sparkle with some bright highlights. Instead of mixing darker colours here, use the base colour and move the Brightness slider up.
OK so his hair's a bit greasy, but using only the Brightness slider, there's so much more depth in this image.
14 Comments:
Awsome. This would have to be the best of your tuts
Hey i have done that before but i never knew about the inside paint thing anyway nice work.
Matt
Thanks guys.. I'll be revisiting colour and lighting effects in future articles.
mmmm i wouldnt put that much detail into hair though :P hee hee
HSB in the colour mixer?
I've Got RGB (red green blue) do I need to do something to change to HSB? (obviously I do, but, what?)
Apologies for previous comment, I skim-read XD
Hey Adam,
Thanks for fixing the issure with IE (even though I've recently started using Firefox). I was wondering if this blog was going to be kept up even after you're finished your 30 days? I've found all the information you've given very helpful (especially the staggering tweens tute).
Thanks for all the wonderful info!
Derek
awesome, i never knew u could change it from RGB to HSB, lol. I always turned the Brightness manually from directly from the pallette. Thanks man =)
sorry for my english... i speak spanish
Hi, thank you so much for all the help you write to us flash beginners! :)
But the reason of my post is another:
In one of your post you said something about havin' some problems with buying sound or something like that... well there is a really good free website with lots of sounds, there's only one problem, but if you translate what your searching with any web translator i think it should work....
Here is the website:
http://recursos.cnice.mec.es/bancoimagenes/sonidos/index.php
I hope it works for you!
;)
Ok that was the reason of my post!!
Good luck, if you have any problem with the language let me know... my english writing may suck, but im very good in translating to spanish, bye!
Juahah the problem was that the website is in spanish...
I forgot to write it!
:P
wow thanks for that link! Tried a couple of sounds and they're excellent quality. Definitely will be my first stop in future.. glad you're finding the articles here useful :)
Thanks again!
wowow awesome site!
One question... Between picture 2 and picture 3 there are some modifications in the dark lines. How you did them?
i gotta try that thx!
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