Lesson
Concepts of Shading

As far as I know previous pixel class hadn’t taught the lesson I am about to teach. It will be broken into parts that detail the different techniques regarding the topic. The lesson will have an assessments or workshops to partake in. In the first part of this lesson I will cover only part of the topic at hand, I will return to this and edit it more and more segments of the lesson until it is complete. The reason I am doing it this way is it will become a progressive lesson and you will likely retain the information a bit better. Having said that the exercises are entirely optional and you may return to them at any time you feel as this will be an on going topic as oppose to the traditional lessons and so more about getting the information down so it can be used by you at any given time.

Lesson – Light and Shadow

Introduction:
This lesson intends on issuing some information on light source and depth and how it will influence a piece, how the depth in a piece will consequently distort aspects of light. I will discuss this in detail however I will not cover it all in the first exercise. My intention is to come back to this a number of times once everyone has made their assigned pieces as then you can learn the different aspects more distinctly. In this first release I have covered two aspects of the subject and defined them in part A and part B.

Part A:
Depth and Light

Firstly when we define the depth and light of a piece we do not merely darken areas based on how far away or how close they are. Doing this creates an unrealistic effect, and is often a source of pillow shading e.g.


Similarly merely placing light on a piece without knowing how the depth will affect it is also the wrong way of creating a good piece. Here is an example of light being cast on a pipe.


As you can see there is something wrong here. Though the piece has depth for the area that is protruding, the top looks flat, this is due to the artist taking to extreme a perspective of how light affects the piece thus disregarding the depth on the top of the object.


In this pixel piece this problem is taken care of. The top of the piece should in fact incorporate some shading into it. The influence the light is there but depth makes this ‘less noticeable’. It enhances in contrast more steeply on the areas light is hitting it then if it was hidden from the light.

(if this isn’t as clear as you would like, it is also discussed here: Tree Tutorial)

Part B:

Luminosity (the lightness or darkness of a colour) is not the only thing affected by light and shadow. The hue and saturation (colour and its intensity) of the shadow and light is also influenced. This is due to different colours in light having different wave lengths. Here is an image that incorporates no hue or saturation shifts, dealing only with a black and white image. Alternatively it could be a colorized depiction of this as only one hue.


Here alternatively is a rather extreme interpretation of how luminosity isn’t necessary in conveying depth. The image bellow only deals with hues, the luminosity is constant throughout it's colours. It creates a sense of depth and light by moving from cool hues (blue, purple, etc.) to warm ones (yellow, red, etc.) and we perceive the cooler tones as darker. Employing only luminosity shifts tends to look bland however employing only hue shifts rarely conveys realism but is much more acceptable as a stylistic choice, to create an image with a sense of true realism it is best to incorporate both.


Workshop:

Create a piece of pixel art of your choice that uses luminosity and hue shifts, and conveys an appropriate light and depth depiction.

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heh this is pretty crappy but here is what I made (it's for me and sk8's battle)

assuming its a hand shooting fire? how? you should give it some flame comming from the hand itself, or at least around the hand, and howing the hand more... then the flame itself looks like its beveled and then the hand actually looks like a foot. its very short and the fingers are way too short, looking like toes instead.

Fairly good tut, zeid. nice examples, etc. You might want to label the red ball as being a "sphere" or something. Better yet, replace the ball with a pillow shaded version of the pipe (depth without light source)