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I should now be talking to a crowd with a little more experience. This section will cover how to use shading and light effects to bring your character to life. I will cover how to determine where to shade depending on which direction the light is coming from and how to shade in the folds and flaps of a characters clothing. This section will also include the basics of background effects.

Starting out: Direction of the light: The whole secret to shading your character is to decide which direction the lighting will come from. That is actually a lot simpler than it sounds to, and pictures will be given as examples to show how the direction the light comes from affects how you shade.

Lesson 1: Basic shading.
The basic techniques of shading all stem from choosing which direction the light is hitting your character. Some examples could be from the front, directly behind, the upper left or upper right. These are common directions in shading. After you've chosen the direction, shade on the opposite side of the lighting.

Examples of shading. The lighting comes from the directions in this order: upper left, directly behind and upper right.

Lesson 2: Levels of shading.
The next step is to determine how light or dark to shade an area. Basically, areas further from the light will be shaded darker. If this confuses you, the example below may help.

Levels of shading. Notice how the area shaded darkens as it gets further from the light.

Lesson 3: Adding backround and their effects on the shadows.
The basic background for most characters is a horizon and a darkened mountain range. These backgrounds may affect how you shade the picture. If the shadows travel over the character, than areas that where illuminated by the light become partially shaded also. To do something like this, just take your pencil and shade that area VERY LIGHTLY! This is of course all dependednt on the characters look too. If they have a dark skinned body or dark clothes, it may have little effect.

Tip! Blending Shadows: Blending shadows is combining the light shadows with the dark ones. That is the effect that is shown in most superhero comics and is not generally used for the Anime style. Anime shading usually shades the light areas and dark areas separately and doesn't blend the shadows into each other. The Spiderman, William Birkin and Nemesis pictures for the home, techniques and gallery links are good examples of blending shadows.

Special Lesson: Folds in clothing.
One of the more difficult things to do when drawing a character is figuring out how to draw the flaps and folds in clothing. It is also one of the hardest things to explain, but I'll give it a shot. To draw the folds and flaps in clothing, I guess the best way to tell you is to treat it like the character. When drawing the character, to add folds and flaps on the outside, just extend the parts slightly and indent parts slightly too. To draw folds on the innermost part of the characer is dependent on how you shade. The example picture I drew below may be of more help.

Example: Clothing Folds. For this I'll use the same picture as my example of shading levels. Notice how the folds and flaps on the outside of Aeris's jacket and dress are shown by slightly extending parts of the clothing and the inner parts are shown by the level of shading and with small lines.