How to Draw NFT's - Add Shadows and Highlights in Procreate

What's up everyone? Today we're going to be talking about how you can add shadows and highlights to your NFT characters and then generate them so there's no weird overlapping issues and everything looks like it stacks on top of each other. And I'll stop talking now and let's get started. I'm going to be working in Procreate as usual. The first thing we're going to do is talk about two ways to create shadows in your NFT characters. This applies to regular character design as well. If you're not turning these into NFTs, that's totally fine. You can still follow along and learn a little bit about how to design your characters in Procreate. So, every character is going to have a base layer. You can see this is the base layer right here of my Crunchy Cow. This base layer has shadows baked into it. So, if you can see that underneath his mouth, there's a shadow. When I move this layer, that shadow is going to move with it. So, when I say baked together, that means the shadow is all part of the layer underneath it. So, what I would do is create this base layer character and create a shadow by adding a layer over top of it and just drawing in with black and then turning down the layer to around 20% opacity. And you can get that by just tapping the N on the layer in Procreate. Some people set this to multiply. I usually don't, but it's totally fine to set that to multiply. I usually keep it at normal and do black at 20% opacity. And then what I would do is merge that with the bottom layer So once that's done, I'm not going to do that there. It can move around together just like that. So once you have your base layer with the shadow baked in, what you can do is duplicate that layer and create different colors and just change the hue and the saturation. So if I have a blue cow like this with dark blue shadows, all I have to do is change the hue and saturation. Then all of a sudden I have a pink cow with dark pink shadows. Where shadows get a little bit trickier is when you have an item, say a hat, with a shadow underneath that overlays the eyes or the eyebrows or part of the face. So let me show you how I would handle that. Here's a hat, and you can see there's a shadow that covers up this part of the face right here. It's this black layer. The way this is built is the shadow is part of this layer. So you're going to export out this whole part as a PNG. That layer right there is going to be all one part of that image. So to illustrate this, let me draw in some Let's do some funky glasses or— yeah, we'll just make some quick glasses here. Nothing too fancy. Let's make them bright purple. Oh, messed that up. Just going to close that gap. There we go. So, we've got our purple glasses right here. So, to create this shadow, I'm going to create a new layer over it or under it, doesn't really matter because I'm just going to be on the edges of this black line here, and I'm just going to draw in some shadows where I think they would fall. Don't overlap your character like I did just here. You don't want the shadows falling off of your character. And then once you have that shadow drawn, just tap the N, slide it down to 20%. I like to go with 20% just so I don't have to think so much. I create so many shadows that when I'm setting these up, I don't want to try to slide— do the slider thing and try to make it the perfect shadow. I just say, all right, it's going to be set at 20%, that's most likely going to work. So I do that, and then I merge that with the bottom layer, and now that shadow and the item, they're all part of the same layer. That is going to be exported as a PNG, and you don't have to worry about having an additional shadow layer. So that covers shadow layers for the base of the character, and that covers shadow layers for the items. In the next part of the video, Let's talk about adding highlights, which is pretty straightforward and very similar to this, and then you'll be on your way. Before moving forward, could you hit that like and subscribe? It lets me know you want to see more of these videos. Or if you have any questions, drop them in the comments. I'll respond there and I'll create videos around those. Creating highlights in your NFTs and your characters is very similar to creating shadows. Pick one direction that you want the light to come from, and anything that would stick out to that direction is going to get the light shade. I use highlights very minimally and shadows very minimally, and I don't follow the rules too precisely. I feel like too many rules hold me back and stop me from actually creating and putting things out because I think somebody's going to comment and they're going to say my shadows or my highlights aren't right and I'm not following the artistic rules. I say forget all that, pick a side with highlights, pick a side with shadows, and let's get on with it. So here we have a crunchy cow, and you can see the highlights are right here. They're usually on the top edge or the top edge of the snout. Something I do for highlights— I'm just gonna fill in this layer here so we can— so you can— so I can illustrate this point. Say I have my black line of my cow here. That's a pretty good crunchy cow, huh? All right, so what I do to fill in these layers is I have my black line layer here, and then I'll duplicate that black line layer, and I will fill it in. Let's go with like a, I don't know, brownish orange. So that's going to fill in that space. So you can see I have these high— these lines on a separate layer, so you— so I'm not going to be drawing over them or interfering with them when I go to add my highlights. Let me get that back in place. In between this color layer and the line layer, create a new layer and pick a highlight that's a brighter version of the color of your base. And then just pick your edge and draw your highlight. And you'll notice that the black line layer stays over top of it and you don't have to worry about trying to get it perfectly. Let me show you what would happen If I did my highlight on the same layer as the black line layer, I'd draw over the black line and I'd think to myself, "Ah, it's not perfect, I gotta redo it." But if you go underneath it, you can just go wild and it will, it'll all be covered up. So it doesn't need to be perfect. And you can focus just on getting this one edge of the highlight right. With shadows, it's a little bit more forgiving 'cause your shadows are gonna be dark and black. And they'll blend with the lines most likely, unless your lines, lines are different colors. Highlights, it's a little bit different. I like to create a layer underneath, but after you're done with that highlight, with the highlights, just go through and merge those layers down. So then your highlights and your shadows become part of one layer that, and now you can just export out that one PNG and you don't have multiple shadow layers and highlight layers that you need to align automatically. They're all baked together into one layer. And it'll save you a lot of time when you're uploading your PNG files to create NFT characters. Really quick before we go— sorry, I don't know if this is focused. All right, I want to give you some thoughts on how to add a little bit more depth to your characters. This isn't really NFT-specific, this is more character design-specific. So there's some things that an artist that I really like that I follow— I love when people double up shadows or double up highlights or create a little thin line of a different color highlight. Let me show you what I'm talking about here. So let's say I have this, this gray rock here. What I love, and it adds a little bit more personality and a little bit more depth, is if you create one layer of shadows like this. So I have my light coming in from this direction and my shadow on this direction. This isn't perfect., but then create, and I'm actually not using a black opacity technique, and then create one more extra level of shadows here and maybe just turn down the opacity on that. So now I have double shadows stacked together. And then over here I can create a layer of, so this isn't isn't perfect by any means. So here's one of my highlights here. I could even step it up, double up my highlights. And I love when people will just do something that doesn't even make sense at all, like take a neon green and just put a really thin sliver of a highlight here. And you might even be able to do it just over here on the edge here. That way— this, this is very crudely drawn, but you get my point— that doubling up your shadows and doubling up your highlights adds a little bit more depth, a little bit more personality. And experiment with adding this thin rim of like edge of a highlighted color. Could give it a really cool effect and make it pop off the screen. That wraps up shadows and highlights for your NFT or regular character designs in Procreate. If you have any questions, drop them in the comments. I'll try to respond to each one, and I might even make a video based on your comment. Thanks for watching.