Coloring Outlines

*The outline used here was made by Rose and used by her permission.  Check out her group for more.

I own the intellectual copyright for the written tutorial.  What you make is yours, but please do not take my tutorial.  Share only my link.

This tutorial is intended for a beginner to learn about making eggs.  If you have any questions, please feel free to email me.

To do this tutorial you will also need Photoshop CS - CS3.  You may download a free trial at Adobe.

Remember to save as a .psd file often!

Download the outline for this cartoon.

There are lots of ways to color and plenty of tips to make them look better.  This is only a basic tutorial.

1.  Open the outline from the zip.

2.  Image > Duplicate.  Close the original.

3.  Layer > New > Layer

4.  Drag this blank layer down to the bottom.

5.  Flood-fill the bottom with a dark gray.  With the magic wand select outside the mice on the top layer.

6.  On the bottom layer , press delete.  This will eliminate the color from outside the outline.

7.  Layer > New > Layer

8.  Click on top layer in layer palette. 

9.  With magic wand select the shoe sections.  Hold the SHIFT down to select more than one area.

10.  Selection > Modify > Expand   by 1 pixel

11.  Click back down one layer (on your blank layer).    Edit > Fill with Color of your choice.

12.  Right-click on the layer and choose Blending options.  Click on the WORDS  Inner Shadow.  Apply these settings:  Blend mode = multiply, color= black, opacity = 75, angle = 79, distance - 5, choke = 0, size = 6.

13.  Filter > Noise > Add Noise.  Amount = 5%, Gaussian, Monochromatic  (This step is optional, you may not want to apply to every section)

14.  Create a new layer and Repeat steps 7 - 13 for each section of the picture that you want to color.

Remember to color the sections on different layers. so that you can rearrange them as necessary or apply certain effects to certain sections.

15.  When you have arranged the layers as you think they should be, and have colored all blank sections:

Right-click on the top and choose Merge Visible.

16.  Layer > New > Layer

17.  Choose the paint brush and set it to color = white.  draw some white arcs where you want some "shine" to be

18.  Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur.  Set Radius = 12.0

19.  In the Layer Palette, adjust the opacity of the blur layer to blend in the shine.  I set my opacity at 49%

20.  In the Layer Palette, right-click on the layer and choose Merge Visible.

21.  File > Save As  in PSD format to use as a tube for later projects.

22.  File > Save As (again) and save in GIF format to show on the web.

 Please do not remove this tutorial from my site.  Share my url.