Technical Essentialess's Guide To Shading Skintones

Hello. I am Essentialess, and this is my guide.

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This guide will show you how to shade the FLESH of your Minecraft roleplay skin.

If you are new to skinning I also reccomend the following tutorials:
The program I use during this tutorial is McSkin3D, the predecessor to PMC's in-website skinning tool.
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Step 1. Choose your base color.
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→ For human flesh, I choose a color within the drawn box and pick something with medium saturation.


Step 2. Outline the shape of the face
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Step 3. Add shadows to the corners of your outline
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THERE'S BLOOD UNDERNEATH THE FLESH.

→ When picking your shadow color, choose something with a reddish undertone.
(IT DOES NOT MATTER IF YOUR CHARACTER BLEEDS "GOLDEN ICHOR" OR WHATEVER)
→ The less redness you use, the more lifeless the flesh will look.

→ You'll notice for the deepest skin, I use something purple for the blushiness. Don't be afraid to dip into that range, it'll still look brown.

Step 4. Increase lightness towards the center
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→ Once you have the first two colors down, this is the last step.

→ I do the same thing no matter what part of the flesh I'm skinning: darker on the corners, lighter towards the middle.

→ When shading skin, I make it lighter in SMALL increments. It's easy to over do it, I only go very bright for the highlight (I talk about this in my original tutorial)
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You can do different shapes and patterns for your character's face based on the outline

→ Still keep the darkest shadows on the cheeks, forehead, and sometimes the lips.
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→ The shape of the hair and eyes is what makes your character look more unique, but the way you shade the face is the same!
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→ It's easy to do muddy shading by just darkening your base color for the shadows.

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→ When you want this sort of look , take the same steps as before.

→ But, for the darker part, pick something that's only slightly warm. Don't just darken the color. Still do small increments when going lighter.

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→ I made this character into a rad vampire by turning his skin into something more purple, brighter and desaturated.

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→ If the character is blue or green, I still shift the wheel towards something warmer to do the shadow. But, because it's fantasy there's a huge range. You can mostly do whatever.
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→ Avoid neon colors, and pick a color with more white in it if you want to do pastels.
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(I don't have a closer. I hope this was helpful)
 

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