C r y s e l l a

XX: Fifty Icons

2010-03-28T23:51:27Z

Hi all, look who's posting!
...Yeah, so it turns out that I'm still alive and making icons. Either I don't colour a single panel for three months, or I mass produce 50 icons in less than a week's time. It's a relatively small batch compared to what I used to post, but that's really all I can do for now while school is still running. Hopefully this won't be too disappointing; my deep apologies for any eye damaged caused due to blinding colours and non-sense shadings but I kinda forgot how to colour manga properly during my three-month break...yeah. Please enjoy the batch nonetheless!

[16] Durarara!!
[07] Kobato
[11] Olimpos
[16] Pandora Hearts
[50] Total

Durarara!!

001

002

003

004

005

006

007

008

009

010

011

012

013

014

015

016

Kobato

001

002

003

004

005

006

007

Olimpos

001

002

003

004

005

006

007

008

009

010

011

Pandora Hearts

001

002

003

004

005

006

007

008

009

010

011

012

013

014

015

016

profile layouts # 2

2010-01-31T06:03:54Z

There is barely time for me to do any manga colouring recently, so here comes a profile layout post instead. I had been using this one in my own profile for a while and liked it quite a lot, so I thought I would make some modifications and share the code before I change it in a few days :)

LIVE PREVIEW | IMAGE PREVIEW

BROWSER	Tested in Firefox 3.5.7 and IE 7.0
HEADER	Please use and upload your own header. The header above are shown for the sole purpose of preview only. Find HEADER URL HERE in the code, and replace it with the URL of your image. The default dimension of the header is *140450**; you can either adjust the height of your header or the length of the text accordingly to avoid ugly stretchings in the layout.
IMAGES	Background: http://i48.tinypic.com/seoc46.png Spacer: http://i46.tinypic.com/2zp5lsl.png No need to upload these yourself; in other words, you may hotlink if you prefer. The background image is taken and modified from DinPattern.
COLOURS	Borders: #dddddd Headings: #f29838 Text: #707070 Links: #f1c16f Credits: #808080
INSTALLATION	<lj-raw><center> <table width=550 border=0><tr><td> <table cellpadding=1 cellspacing=0 bgcolor=#dddddd border=0><tr><td align=left> <table bgcolor=#ffffff cellpadding=10 cellspacing=0 border=0><tr> <td valign=top> </lj-raw><font size=5 face=Georgia color=#f29838>✿<i>Eden of the East</font></i> <img src="http://i46.tinypic.com/2zp5lsl.png" height="5"> <font size=1 face=arial color=#707070>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Aliquam adipiscing, leo ac malesuada aliquam, justo massa ultrices sem, nec laoreet enim quam vel dui. Cras condimentum ante in ipsum faucibus ut mollis dolor viverra. Suspendisse potenti. Donec eu ante nec tellus tincidunt molestie. Mauris sagittis, est a porta ullamcorper, massa felis consequat purus, ut lacinia justo eros egestas nunc. Morbi tristique pharetra scelerisque. Vestibulum risus diam, semper sit amet consequat sodales, condimentum nec erat. Nulla eu ante odio, non ornare urna. Vestibulum pellentesque, erat eget pretium commodo, nulla dolor commodo orci, eu tristique nibh leo ut est. Aliquam mauris felis, volutpat et dapibus ac, hendrerit eget nisl. Aenean blandit tincidunt dolor, sit amet condimentum lectus sollicitudin sed. Donec purus risus, adipiscing in varius in, adipiscing eu arcu. Cras non justo in neque luctus ultrices quis ut turpis. Maecenas laoreet, nisl id faucibus egestas, leo arcu varius orci, a facilisis erat mi et tellus. Donec sed erat neque. Fusce vestibulum laoreet lorem nec aliquam.</font> <font size=3 face=Georgia color=#f29838>✿<i>Imitate that reason and change</font></i> <img src="http://i46.tinypic.com/2zp5lsl.png" height="5"> <font size=1 face=arial color=#707070>Proin lectus leo, accumsan eget ultricies vitae, ullamcorper vitae enim. Fusce ut urna non turpis pulvinar ultricies in in lorem.</font> <font size=3 face=Georgia color=#f29838>✿<i>Cutting the roots of the future</font></i> <img src="http://i46.tinypic.com/2zp5lsl.png" height="5"> <font size=1 face=arial color="#707070">Maecenas sollicitudin facilisis mauris, id consequat lorem placerat sed. Vestibulum et lacinia nunc. Integer sollicitudin mattis placerat. Sed nunc urna, semper id posuere at, tempus nec orci. Class aptent taciti sociosqu ad litora torquent per conubia nostra, per inceptos himenaeos.</font> <center><a href="URL HERE" style="text-decoration: none"><font size=1 face=arial color="#f1c16f">LINK#1</font></a> <a href="URL HERE" style="text-decoration: none"><font size=1 face=arial color="#f1c16f">LINK#2</font></a> <a href="URL HERE" style="text-decoration: none"><font size=1 face=arial color="#f1c16f">LINK#3</font></a> <a href="URL HERE" style="text-decoration: none"><font size=1 face=arial color="#f1c16f">LINK#4</font></a></center><lj-raw> </td> <td align=right background=http://i48.tinypic.com/seoc46.png> <table cellpadding=1 cellspacing=0 bgcolor=#dddddd border=0><tr><td><table bgcolor=#ffffff cellpadding=4 cellspacing=0 border=0> <tr><td><img src="HEADER URL HERE" width=140 height=450></td></tr></table></td></tr> </table> </td></tr> </table></td></tr> </table> </td></tr></table> <img src="http://i46.tinypic.com/2zp5lsl.png" height="4"><br> <font size=1 face=arial color="#808080">Journal layout coded by <a href="URL HERE" style="text-decoration: none"><i><font color="#f1c16f">layoutmaker</font></i></a> ♦ Profile layout coded by <a href="http://crysella.livejournal.com" style="text-decoration: none"><i><font color="#f1c16f">herinia</font></i></a></font> </center></lj-raw> Customize the code above and paste it into here.
NOTES	Find URL HERE and replace with the appropriate links. Free feel to edit/change/customize anything (colours, fonts, sizes, etc) you want, but please don't remove the credit line unless if you are putting it somewhere else!

Let me know your thoughts on it! If my colouring-muse still doesn't come back soon I will probably make more profile layouts haha. Leave a comment if you have any questions and I will try my best to help.

XIX: Seventy Icons

2009-12-06T08:28:09Z

Not much to say this time (shhh I'm lazy. xD;), last post of 2009 unless I somehow manage to post a big colouring or maybe a tutorial, but oh what's the chance. Otherwise enjoy the holiday and hope to see you all in 2010!

[04] Boukyaku no Cradle
[18] Kobato
[09] Olimpos
[24] Pandora Hearts
[11] Tsubasa
[04] Utahime
[70] Total

Boukyaku no cradle

001

002

003

004

Kobato

001

002

003

004

005

006

007

008

009

010

011

012

013

014

015

016

017

018

Olimpos

001

002

003

004

005

006

007

008

009

Pandora Hearts

001

002

003

004

005

006

007

008

009

010

011

012

013

014

015

016

017

018

019

020

021

022

023

024

Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle

001

002

003

004

005

006

007

008

009

010

011

Utahime

001

002

003

004

1000 watchers!

2009-11-23T07:52:19Z

So yes, a bit after its second birthday, Crysella has got over 1000 watchers! I'm very grateful to all of you for your support, especially to those who has been sticking with me since 2007 when my graphics were still mediocre. Unfortunately my banner composition skill is still made of fail so we are stuck with a bizarre banner with a beautifully smiling Sakura but ugly background and handwriting and texture usage and everything...yeah. Hopefully you are not regretting watching this comm now. *laughs*

I don't know if the 1000 mark is that big of an achievement or if my graphic making (...or maybe I should just call it specifically manga colouring from now on) skill is good enough but to me, the most important thing is to always seek for improvement. I just can't seem to be completely satisfied with my works no matter when; perhaps, the most satisfying achievement to me in the end is to see how my icons and colourings getting better posts after posts. Cheesy sounding, I know, but it's honest from my heart |D; It still leaves a big smile on my face whenever I compare my 2007 icons to the freshly baked ones. That said, I would like to take the opportunity to thank everyone who took the time to leave a comment and give me suggestions in the previous meme! I apologize that I didn't have time to reply to them, but I did read them all (and probably can recite them by heart now...okay maybe not to that extent.). You guys are always so kind :)

Among all those suggestions I got from the meme last time, I have mostly been working on my cropping. It's still far from perfect or what you call "creative," but at least I can promise that next batch will have more variety than my usual plain boring head-crops...hopefully.

Ooooooh right. I forgot to say this right at the beginning for those who have been reading all these lines just for the...requests lol. Sorry, I'm not taking any requests this time as school finals are coming up really soon (and I absolutely, definitely, mistakelessly must do well on them this time otherwise evil parents would shut down my internet OmO;;), and then I'll be on vacation during Christmas break without access to Photoshop or SAI and possibly my tablet too. I will see if conditions allow me to open a request post sometime in late December or early January.

That aside, I have modified the community layout and profile, check them out if you are interested! The layout is still coded by meek at toyhouse, while the profile code was done by me this time. The golden community header features Alice, Oz and Gilbert from Pandora Hearts and the profile header features Elliot, Reo and Oz from the same series, both which I've fallen in love with at first sight and are illustrated by the talent mangaka Mochizuki Jun. (...my graphic journal has just turned into a Pandora shrine. Whoops.)

Lastly, as thank you gift to you all for reading the 3489987423 lines above (or to make this post less pointless), you can have a tiny preview of my upcoming batch in December (♥):

I also started an Olimpos colouring months ago (you read it right; months ago), but lost the motivation to finish it as I realized the shading on their hair was a real mess...and I'm too afraid to redo it again because all those strands give me nightmares Σ(゜д゜|||)

Maybe I will eventually finish it some three years later. Idk. I really like the page myself (and the manga itself, although I'm desperately lacking scans orz) and even spent two hours just to shop away the speech bubbles ;w;

Ennnnnd of post. Hopefully this doesn't bore you too much. xD;

Reflection time!

2009-10-17T18:03:04Z

Since nobody has made an icon critique meme recently and I really like the idea of this one, so here you go!

『the STRONG and weak point icon-meme』

Feel free to agree or disagree, and give me some more feedbacks of your thoughts on my recent icons :) In the meanwhile I will try my best to squeeze out another batch before December.

XVIII: Thirty-Five Icons

2009-10-04T20:35:38Z

School is driving me a bit crazy right now (it's my first year in university \o/) and it seems that I won't have too much time for graphics before the term ends, so I am posting what I've made so far. Enjoy these while I disappear into the dark side of the Earth burying myself in a pile of books!

[08] Gundam 00
[06] Kobato
[15] Pandora Hearts
[06] Misc (Hakushaku to Yousei & Tsubasa)
[35] Total

Gundam 00

001

002

003

004

005

006

007

008

Kobato

001

002

003

004

005

006

Pandora Hearts

001

002

003

004

005

006

007

008

009

010

011

012

013

014

015

Hakushaku to Yousei & Tsubasa

001

002

003

004

005

006

Kobato #4-5 and Misc #3-6 are request icons made for lovelessinma and outou respectively, but thanks to their generosity they get to be included in this post for everyone to use :)

my bad if you've already seen this 50 times today...

2009-08-10T05:41:15Z

animebest is an icon award celebrating 2008/2009's best icon makers. Icon makers nomination is currently taking place, so go nominate your favourite icon makers of the year in SERIES and CATEGORIES!

XVII: One Hundred Icons

2009-08-07T08:04:56Z

Finally an icon post! Hopefully this is worth the long wait. Some of these were made back in May while the others were freshly baked today, so please bear with the difference in quality. Also just ignore if the icons look like they were coloured by ten different persons; my style changes every five days and there's nothing I could do about it. xD

All are manga colourings. The ones with an asterisk (*) beside their numbers are remakes of really old icons.

[14] Akuma to Love Song
[07] Cardcaptor Sakura
[10] Karneval
[17] Loveless
[25] Pandora Hearts
[25] Tsubasa
[02] Misc
[100] Total

Akuma to Love Song

001

002

003

004

005

006

007

008

009

010

011

012

013

014

Cardcaptor Sakura

001*

002*

003*

004*

005*

006

007

Karneval

001

002

003

004

005

006

007

008

009

010

Loveless

001

002

003

004

005

006

007

008

009

010

011

012

013

014

015

016

017

Pandora Hearts

001

002

003

004

005

006

007

008

009

010

011

012

013

014

015

016

017

018

019

020

021

022

023

024

025

Tsubasa

001

002

003

004

005

006*

007*

008

009

010

011

012

013

014

015

016*

017

018*

019*

020*

021

022

023*

024*

025

Misc

001

002

The .RAR file of everything, because someone requested /o/ ♥ The password should be icons...I think.

✔Textless icons are not bases.
✔No hot-linking please.
✔Comments and credits are optional, but they are and will always be loved ♥
✔Let me know if you want any icon variations.

Watch Community / Resources

Colouring #13

2009-07-26T00:51:12Z

Original Scan: Chapitre 35

Series: Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle
Character(s): Sakura
Artist: CLAMP
Medium: Paint Tool SAI, Photoshop CS 3
Time: 4.5 Hours

I'm terribly sorry for the lack of updates; I have been spending most of my free time drawing instead of making icons this summer. I'm working on a batch currently, hopefully I will have it done by next week. In the meanwhile, have a ~shiny~ colouring! /o/

I'm using SAI more and more for my bigger colourings, mainly because it's less time consuming (I still use Photoshop for my icons though). Touch-ups and other details are still fixed in PS. Something about the colours screams awkward to me, but I can't figure out what...hopefully it doesn't hurt your eyes too much.

I had to redraw part of her clothes when I was getting rid of the logo. I hope it looks alright!

As usual, if you are using my colouring for graphics just let me know and credit me for the colouring :)

colouring #12

2009-06-08T00:32:37Z

Original Scan: Score 10

Series: Karneval
Character(s): Nai, Tsukumo
Artist: Mikanagi Touya
Medium: Photoshop CS 3
Time: ...20+ Hours?

Original contest entry I finished for m_c_contest back then in April, but it got killed by me after I realized that there was an extension since just about everything of this colouring went wrong. orz
I can't exactly tell what went wrong, but I tried to blend many different colours together and the result looked weird. This image also has so many tiny parts and I got really impatient at it after 15+ hours of work, and by the time I almost finished the colouring I just wanted to throw my tablet out the window...I probably won't colour another image with so many fancy details in the next three months |DDD

This is also the most layered colouring I've ever done, with exactly 259 visible layers (I can't believe I actually counted them all ;w;)
TL;DR long story short, I wasn't too satisfied with the result. I think I could have done a better job on it.

Credit to extraobsession for the pattern used on the wall and curtains.

Original Scan: Chapter 19

Series: Loveless
Character(s): Aoyagi Ritsuka, Agatsuma Soubi
Artist: Kouga Yun
Media: Photoshop CS 3, Paint Tool SAI
Time: 11 Hours

Reaaaal entry for m_c_contest. Learning from my previous lesson, this time I'm using a simplier, cleaner image. Which means I just advanced to a new level of laziness lol.

If it looks nothing like my usual style, it's probably because I used SAI to shade half of the colouring. SAI's smoother strokes make it easier for me to shade their hair, and it also has some nice blendings and textures. Switching back and forth between PS and SAI was fun...I can't even remember whether I used PS and SAI more on this one. I guess it's about half and half?

I was going to use a pinkish-orange tone at first, but somehow it ended up being blue and purple. Oh well |DD Those glass shards were a bit screwed up as well.
The colouring looked a bit flat initially so I used some light textures by chocoaka set at Softlight to give it more depth. And then the fun part(?), I used some leftover red paint and a toothbrush to create those white dots/speckles, thus making a big mess in my bathroom during the process~\o/

Thank you to everyone who voted on my previous poll! The results are quite close so I think I will make a bit of both fandoms. I doubt I will post anything before July arrives though since I have a ton of exams and rl business in June...thank you for always being patient and sticking with me for so long, anyway ♥

I need some input!

2009-05-19T05:54:51Z

I'm thinking of making some sharable profiles (kinda like last time, basically I'm going to make several manga-colouring banners, code the profile and then you can customize it) but I want to focus on 2-3 fandoms at most. I'm debating between CCS and X, both have many beautiful panels suitable for bannering. As much as I want to do both of them, I doubt I will have the time as the banners do take a ton effort so it will be helpful if I know which one does the majority want more.

View Poll: #1402178

Feel free to vote even if you are not too interested in profiles and banners ♥ And in case if anyone missed it, your requests can be picked up in the previous post. Thank you~/o/

XVI - Request Round Three: Fifty-Eight Icons

2009-05-17T01:13:41Z

I'm terribly sorry for the delay;; Long story short, real life has gotten really busy and I didn't quite have the mood to sit down quietly and make graphics for the past few weeks (most of the requests were actually done a loooong time ago, I just didn't have time to finalize them until today orz). Anyway, I hope you all like them! Let me know if you want me to change anything :)
All requests are sharable.

1	2	3	4	5

6	7	8	9	10

11	12	13	14	15

16	17	18	19	20

21	22	23	24	25

26	27	28	29	30

31	32	33	34	35

36	37	38	39	40

41	42	43	44	45

46	47	48	49	50

51	52	53	54	55

56	57	58

REQUESTERS:
[1-4]aoyagiminato [5-8]bakachuu [9-10]bodyline [11-13]chibi_kiss [14-15]heartbubble [16-18]hoshisenshi [19-20]hydria [21-22]indolence [23-25]involute [26-28]kaneha [29-31]lymle [32-36]meijibox [37-40]ostia [41-42]redeternity90 [43-44]rootler [45-47]suxing [48-49]sweetbunni [50-52]unasuvas [53-54]wannabe_tenshi [55-58]watermist

✔Textless icons are not bases.
✔No hot-linking please.
✔Comments and credits are optional, but they are and will always be loved ♥
✔Let me know if you want any icon variations.

Watch Community / Resources
(Affliates are still down at the moment. Sorry!)

Requests - Round 3

2009-04-11T03:12:47Z

Request CLOSED.
Since I just turned 18 last month, I'm taking 18 requests this time! :D

Comment to request away! Reserving is fine, but please come back with your image in a reasonable time (say, 48 hours?)

You must be a watcher of crysella in order to request.
My strength is manga colouring but feel free to throw me anything; however, NO fanart or doujinshi images. Also, please provide high quality images only or I'm going to cry ;O;

And, colour reference. I prefer fandoms that I'm familiar with, but let's just say that anything is fine as long as you provide me a good colour ref. If the image is pre-coloured or I have iconed that fandom/character a thousand times before then a colour ref is not necessary.

My goal is to finish all the requests within two weeks, but they might take up to a month. Please be patient with me? ♥

One icon/image per person. I might make several variations if necessary.
All requests will be sharable.

Please fill out the form below:

REQUESTERS

o1. velshtein
o2. bodyline
o3. lymle
o4. ashe
o5. ostia
o6. staticlights
o7. meijibox
o8. rootler
o9. petitebellina
1o. curiousity

11. bakachuu
12. redeternity90
13. hoshisenshi
14. catoblepas
15. chibi_kiss
16. wannabe_tenshi
17. genda
18. unasuvas
19. suxing
20. watermist

I'll fill the requests asap to my best ability ♥
Good luck, and happy requesting!

XV: Forty-Six Icons

2009-04-06T03:09:11Z

Look! I made a genuine dial-up friendly post for once. Now I'm sure Jupiter is going to swallow us tomorrow, mwuhahaha.

[16] Kobato
[16] X
[06] CLAMP
[08] Pandora Hearts
[46] Total

Kobato

1	2	3	4	5

6	7	8	9	10

11	12	13	14	15

16

1	2	3	4	5

6	7	8	9	10

11	12	13	14	15

16

Cardcaptor Sakura + Pre-colored CLAMP

1	2	3	4	5

6

Pandora Hearts

1	2	3	4	5

6	7	8

colouring #11

2009-04-03T09:12:16Z

Original Scan: Exam 9

Series: Kobato.
Character(s): Hanato Kobato, Ioryogi
Artist: CLAMP
Medium: Photoshop CS 3
Time: 7 hours

...I don't even know why I'm colouring a summer image when I'm freezing to death in here...

Trying out some more crazy lightings! xD There are definitely things that I should have done better (like Kobato's eyes - I redid it three times and they still didn't turn out as nice as I wished they would), but overall I'm quite satisfied. The water droplets are so hard to colour though, and the purple grapes turn out to be a mess in the end. /too lazy to fix it =A=

Background ~~shamelessly~~ stolen from Google and then heavily modified |DD

Edit: For those who want an icon, here you go!

As usual, if you are using the colouring to make graphics, please leave a comment and credit me for the colouring. ♥

XIV: Seventy Icons

2009-03-05T07:14:15Z

Relatively small batch, because my computer is crashing (;A;) and with all the things going on in rl, I haven't been very productive lately. Thank you for all the comments in the last Icon Critique Meme, I have been working on some of the suggestions already! My anime icons are still not too satisfying so I'm not going to post them this time, hopefully next time though ♥

[03] Cardcaptor Sakura
[10] Deadman Wonderland
[09] Di(e)ce
[08] Gundam 00
[08] Kobato
[03] Kuroshitsuji
[04] Nabari no Ou
[14] Pandora Hearts
[09] Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle
[02] misc
[70] Total

Cardcaptor Sakura

Deadman Wonderland

1	2	3
4	5	6
7	8	9
10

Di(e)ce

1	2	3
4	5	6
7	8	9

Gundam 00
The original images of #1-5 are from the short comics Wanderer
and I'm Home by Kouga Yun, and #6-8 are from the Aoi Kioku
chapter by Shiguma Tarou published in Gundam Ace.

1	2	3
4	5	6
7	8

Kobato

1	2	3
4	5	6
7	8

Kuroshitsuji

Nabari no Ou

1		2		3
4

Pandora Hearts

1	2	3
4	5	6
7	8	9
10	11	12
13	14

Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle

1	2	3
4	5	6
7	8	9

Misc.
Gohou Drug, Crimson Shell

✔Textless icons are not bases.
✔No hot-linking please.
✔Comments and credits are optional, but they are and will always be loved ♥
✔Let me know if you want any icon variations.

Watch Community / Resources

(Affliates are down at the moment as I haven't had the time to update it for a while OTL)

On a small note, I changed crysella's layout recently. The original coding is done by the wonderful meek at toyhouse, and the header image features Shiro from the manga Deadman Wonderland. Lastly, thank you for 600 watchers! :D

icon crit meme

2009-02-06T02:37:23Z

《ICONCRITMEME》
As usual, suggestions/advices are always welcomed, and I will reply to as many comments as I can. I won't bite so don't be afraid to say the truth, really!

...And my Photoshop is half broken right now, so hopefully I can get another batch done before it's completely dead :x

Colouring #10

2009-01-24T11:19:34Z

As promised, a colouring dump 8DD These are all made in January. I sure coloured a lot this month...

Original Scan: Volume 10 Chapter 50

Series: Nabari no Ou
Character(s): Yoite
Artist: Kamatani Yuhki
Medium: Photoshop CS
Time: 3.5 hours

I knew that I had to colour this page the moment I saw the scan ;AAAA;
Anyway. This one's quite straight forward and easy, nothing really challenging. I was surprised that I actually have some sense of the light source this time though. And then I just realized, this is the first time I coloured black hair for real - since black hair is usually already inked in manga scans.

Original Scan: Drug No. 10

Series: Gohou Drug
Character(s): Kudou Kazahaya
Artist: CLAMP
Medium: Photoshop CS
Time: 6 hours

The colour tone I used in this colouring is quite different from the ones I usually use, like the skin is more yellow this time rather than pink. I kinda like the result though. Except the fact that I spent 30 minutes just to stare at the scan and think where should the light source be, but by the time I finished the colouring I still didn't know where exactly was the light coming from |DD I also tried to be brave to add some strong blue highlights; yay me. I didn't colour the whole page since I only wanted to experiment with the tones :x
And Kazahaya, I couldn't believe your hair alone took over 40 layers skldjflksdjfl OTL

Original Scan: Retrace 9

Series: Pandora Hearts
Character(s): Oz Bezarius, Xerxes Break
Artist: Mochizuki Jun
Medium: Photoshop CS
Time: ...I honestly lost track of time. Around 12-15 hours, maybe? orz

It seems that almost everything went wrong with this colouring at the beginning...I had to redo Oz's and Break's hair two times, I think I just have an issue with shading shiny (ie. blond, silver) hair. Then when I was finally satisfied with the shading, I totally disliked the tone and had to use tens of adjustments to fix it (I was so desperate that I even used multiple layers of Channel Mixer - I barely used Channel Mixer before since the effect is so strong D8 ). So here's my story of why this page took so long. Blah.

The rest went quite well after the skin and hair though, I was quite satisfied working with those annoying screentones. xD The lighting was quite a bit of a problem in the left panel, I originally wanted the light to directly shone on Oz from the front and then have Break's shadow darken the lower part of the panel, but I don't know how to shade/create the effect D: Needs more practice with complex lightings, yes.

If you are using the colourings to make graphics, please leave a comment and credit me for the colouring. ♥

{Tutorial} Manga Colouring - Part II

2009-01-18T04:32:10Z

Hair

Now directly above skin ref, create a new layer and name it hair base. Repeat the processes above, paint the base colour, shade, and highlights. Remember to use different hues of colours for the shading to make it more appealing. I used mainly sharp brushes to shade the hair. For highlights, you might want to use the Dodge tool instead of the paint brush for more interesting effects this time.

Click on thumbnails to enlarge.

The Tiny Parts

Let's colour her eye whites and teeth now. I usually do these two in the same layer, since they are both white with shades of gray.

Anyway, create a new layer and call it eyewhite. Use a semi-sharp brush, and paint her eyewhites and teeth with white in brush opacity 100%. Lots of people don't shade the eyewhites, it's really up to you. I usually add a light layer of gray/grayish-blue shades on top of it. If you are shading the eyewhites, use a softer brush with a lower brush opacity (40%-60%). Merge the gray shades and the base layer, lower the opacity to 50%-95% so the white doesn't stand out too much from the rest of the colouring.

After that, create a new layer under eyewhite to colour in her mouth. Use shades of pink.

Now let's finish her hair clips and collar...whatever you call that. New layer above all the hair layers, I named it yellow. Paint the base with a bright yellow, then choose a darker yellow and change your brush's blending mode into multiply (Your layer's mode is still on normal though!). Lower the brush's opacity a bit, and gradually paint the shade on the same layer. The yellow will slowly turn into a shiny, gold-like colour. Now choose a bright yellow colour, change your brush's blending mode to overlay/dodge/hard light, and do the highlights. The result should be...well, shiny. xD If it becomes too shiny for your liking, fix it with hue/saturation or brightness/contrast.

1) Base. 2) Brush set to multiply, dark yellow colour. 3) Brush set to overlay, extremely light yellow.

Colour fixed with adjustments.

Above the Line Art...

As you may have noticed, I usually set my line art on multiply and put my colour layers underneath. Well, here's an exception. Her eyes are pretty much pre-shaded by the screentone, so let's take advantage of that. Create a new layer, called eyes, above the line art layer. Paint some purple on her eyes, maybe shade it a bit on the same layer, and set the layer on overlay/color/screen.

1) Coloured, and 2) Set layer to overlay/color/screen. Remember this layer has to be above the line art!

Create a new layer above the line art, again, and name it dress. Colour her dress with pale orange and shade it. Because her dress was inked in black, overlay and color won't work as well here as the eyes. Try using screen or normal.

Now fix up a few things, and you're done with the colouring!

Here's an optional step, I used selective color and color balance to tint the line art a bit purple. You may also choose to colour the line art parts by parts by using screen/color brushes or adjustment layers, etc.

Touch-Ups

For touch-ups, generally speaking I used a few colour adjustment layers to make the colours more appealing, then some gradient and soft light layers to strengthen the light effects. If you want to be creative, do something with the background and use some Photoshop filters too.

1) Colour fixed with adjustment layers. 2) Added several low opacity gradient and soft light layers.

Ah, and here's where the final sharpening comes in. Make sure your history palette is opened and working, at least recording four steps because you will need it. After all your adjustments are done, save, and flatten image. Press Ctrl A to select everything, and then Ctrl C to copy. Go to your history palette, and click on the step just right before you flatten image. Now the whole thing is back to layers again, press Ctrl P to paste the flattened version that you just copied on top of everything. Sharpen that layer. Lower the opacity to 10-40% so the image isn't oversharpened. I also Gaussian Blurred the image a bit.

HERE'S THE FINAL PRODUCT!

In case if you are confused, my layers look like this at the end (from top to bottom):
Sharpened flatten layer > Gaussian Blur layer > Soft Light > Light Effects > Color Adjustments*4 > Eyes > Dress > Line Art > Yellow > Hair > Eyewhites > Mouth > Skin > Blue irrelevant layer > Background.

How you structure your layers doesn't really matter as long as they work out, as in, parts that needed to be covered are covered and parts that need to appear do appear.

So here's the end of the tutorial. This is my first tutorial ever, so I hope I did an okay job and it will be at least helpful to someone? xDD

This Anemone colouring isn't as elaborated as my recent ones oh god look at this thing I'm working on...the hair alone kills me orz, but it serves the purpose of a tutorial I think :x I didn't realize how hard it is to colour and screencap and write every five minutes. It's like impossible to focus on one task and make the colouring look good |DDD

If you have any questions regarding this tutorial, feel free to comment and ask. As I said, I couldn't explain every step in details or it would make the tutorial twice as long (...not that it's not tl;dr enough already. I even split it into two parts! lsdkjflsd). I know I skipped many steps especially near the end, so I suppose I didn't make everything crystal clear. Otherwise, I still want to hear what you guys think about it ♥

Oh oh oh and of course, please watch this community if you want to see my colourings in the future. I should have another post ready soon, so watch out for it! 8D

{Tutorial} Manga Colouring - Part I

2009-01-18T03:06:35Z

So...finally a tutorial. People have been asking me for one for quite a while, hopefully this will be worth the wait.

Program: Adobe Photoshop CS
Difficulty: Intermediate - It uses combinations of blur and sharpening, and brushes with varying sharpness, opacity and blending mode. Requires certain amount of experience with Photoshop as I won't explain every single step in full details. It's not awfully complicated, but it does take quite a lot of patience and enthusiasm |D

From to

Please be aware that this tutorial is image heavy. And loooooong in general.

I will be using a drawing tablet with 512 pressure sensitivity for this tutorial (85% of the reason I prefer tablet over mouse is because it has pressure sensitivity), but it should be translatable to mouse users...it simply takes more time. I will try my best to show you how to achieve a similar effect with a mouse whenever possible.

I mostly self-taught myself colouring manga. This tutorial doesn't cover every secret I use, but rather, it gives you a general idea and some useful tips of how I usually colour. I am choosing a relatively simple image so it will be less tl;dr (aka boring) - this one is quite nice to colour since it's mostly screentone-free. I use an almost completely different technique to colour screentone heavy images like this one, and usually in those cases I will try to take advantage of the pre-filled screentones 'cause by the time I finish erasing them all I probably don't want to colour anymore orz (The types of images that I enjoy colouring least are those that are half screentoned and half screentone free, that way I will have to use a blend of both techniques and it's really annoying how they often conflict each other sdklfj) Lastly, I don't use the exact same techniques all the time; I choose the right style for the right image. So that means don't expect I'd use the same colours/shadings/touch-ups/whatever in another colouring - variation is gold ;'D

Image & Preparations
I am using this image of Anemone from Eureka Seven. As I have said before, this is probably one of the easiest type of manga images available to be coloured since it doesn't have awful lots of tiny parts, and is mostly free of screentone. I snagged the panel from OneManga so it doesn't have the highest quality, but it will do. I suggest you to spend around 20 minutes erasing the pixels with a white paint brush especially in areas with light colours, such as the skin, or it will look horrific once you add the colours in. Do a bit of leveling if you wish, although it's not entirely necessary for this image. And I realize since there are lots of people doing this, here's an important note: Do NOT sharpen the line art yet. I prefer to sharpen only at the very end of the colouring, that way I can control the strength of the sharpening easier.

I spent 5 seconds using the pen tool to complete the top of her head, but you don't have to do that. And because I don't want this tutorial to exceed 10000 words, I'm shrinking down the image a bit. xDD

Set your background layer to solid white, and put your line art directly above the background in 100% multiply as shown on the right. Make sure your colour mode is set to RGB.

Skin
Create a new layer directly below the line art at 100% normal, choose a pale orange-ish colour and paint the base for her skin (or lasso/polygonal tool with paint bucket if you prefer). I usually use a light colour for the base, and then shade with darker colours afterwards (and maybe a little highlights if required). I'm naming this layer skin base. It doesn't matter if the base colour isn't perfect, as long as you are not colouring her skin with purple and green you can always fix the colours later with adjustment layers. xD

Notice that I'm not giving you any colour values in this tutorial as I believe the combination of colours is the signature of your style, and you really should discover what colours to use through experimenting. Some people build up their own standard set of swatches, but since I have coloured manga characters' skins a million times I can easily pick out the right colour.

Make sure your skin doesn't leak into the background, but it can goes into the hair as the hair layer will be above her skin and eventually cover the leak. Your base must totally cover up every part of the skin.
This is totally optional, but some people like to fill in a totally irrelevant colour (ie. if your colouring is mostly white and red, use blue/green like I did) in a separate layer so they can see and erase their colouring more easily. Hide this layer when you don't need it.

Oh, I almost forgot. Choose a light source to guide your shading later. Choose an angle which would look natural for your image, and one that you are comfortable to shade with. In this case, my light source comes from the top right corner of the image.

Create a new layer above the skin base layer, call it skin 1 and set it to 100% normal (From now on if I don't mention the layer properties, that means it's on 100% normal). This is your first layer of shading. You don't want your shading to leak out of the skin, so here's a useful trick: Look at the layer palette, and while you are on your skin 1 layer, hold down Ctrl and click on the square thumbnail of skin base. This way you have selected the area of the skin, and you can only shade inside the selected area. Magic! 8D

Choose and slightly darker colour than your base and use a large, soft brush, to shade the skin. Remember that your shading shouldn't conflict with your light source! I'm no expert on light sourcing so I can't really explain to you where to shade (and it hugely varies with different images), but you can look at other people's colouring and you will get the general idea. I hate to say this, but practice makes perfect...or at least less imperfect lol.
For mouse users: Because you don't have pressure sensitivity, set your brush opacity (notice it's the opacity of the brush, not the layer!) to something around 30%-60% and gradually build up on your colours. It will look way better than a plain 100%, trust me. Don't freak out if the shadings don't appear immediately, because remember, you have to gradually build up your colours so it will take several clicks.

Create another new layer above the previous layer, name it skin 2 and this will be your second layer of shading. Choose a darker colour (notice as my skin shades get darker, I tend to use a pinker colour), set your brush opacity approxiamtely to 75% so you can gradually build up on the colours. If your tablet has really good pressure sensitivity (I know mine doesn't orz), ignore the brush opacity as you should be able to control the strength of the brush well enough. I prefer to use a smaller, sharper brush for darker shades. Use the Smudge tool to smudge parts of your shading to make the colours more even, such as on this part of her arm.
Mouse users, again, set your brush opacity from somewhere around 25%-60%. And be patient as the colour builds up |DD

New layer, skin 3, and continue with the darker shades. This time, however, instead of pure shading we are also sharpening things.

I notice a common "mistake" that lots of people make in their colouring: when they sharpen/blur something, they sharpen the whole layer. While this method works sometimes, other times I find it does the colouring more harm than good. Basically, rarely does the entire shading layer needs to be sharpened - it's only certain parts of it.
Use your lasso/polygonal tool, set the feather between 3-50 (depends on how big your image and selection area is - in this image, I mostly used 5-14 px) so the distinction between sharpened edges and the neighbouring unsharpened ones isn't too obvious, and select the parts where you want to sharpen. Now go filter --> sharpen. You might need to do this several times to achieve the best results, and if pixels start to appear, carefully smudge them out without smudging the sharpened edges.
I recently find sharpening makes the colouring much more dynamic; the contrast between smooth shading and sharpened edges is appealing to look at.

Blurring is basically the same idea. If you want to make the colours blend better or spread them out and the smudge tool is getting ridiculously ineffective (I always feel that Photoshop's smudge tool is so weak even when I set it on 100%...), select the area with a feathered Lasso tool and Gaussian Blur. Try experimenting with Smart Blur too, sometimes it gives a more interesting effect than Gaussian Blur. The general idea is, you sharpen edges and blur the inside to make it more smooth.

Sharpening: Before vs. After at 300% (notice the nose). Here are the parts that I sharpened in this step.

Add another layer (I swear this is the last one for the skin rofl), skin 4, but this time use a purple-ish colour to shade. The wide range shades of colours give the colouring more depth. You might need to set this layer on Normal, Multiply or Hard Light and play with the opacity to achieve the best results, it really depends on your style and the purple you used. Selective blur/sharpen if you need to.

I don't recommend it, but if you are colouring a huge image and your .psd file is getting ridiculously huge that your computer starts to freeze, merge all the skin layers. It's difficult to edit them afterwards once you merge them, so make sure you are only doing this if you really have to!

Alright. Here's the last one on the skin, I swear orz. New layer, name it skin ref (ref stands for reflection). Use a fine, sharp brush on high opacity with a light colour (or white, although sometimes white looks too boring) and add the highlights on the skin. I also coloured her tears in this same layer. I usually sharpen this layer a few times. Depends on the colour you use, play with the blending mode (usually normal, screen, soft light, overlay or hard light) and opacity (60%-100%) for best results.

End of Part I. Comment is disabled in this post, please proceed to Part II to comment!

( Part II )

XIII: Seventy-Nine Icons

2008-12-13T08:09:02Z

Wow, last batch of 2008! I will be quite busy in the next few months so I might not have too much time for icons, but I'll make sure that I post at least once every three months. Anyway, here's an early Merry Christmas and enjoy the rest of 2008 everyone! See you in 2009 ♥

[02] 5 Centimeters per Second
[04] Bakuman
[04] Cardcaptor Sakura
[12] Tsubasa
[01] Chobits
[09] xxxHolic
[08] Eureka Seven
[05] Kuroshitsuji
[05] Nabari No Ou
[29] Pandora Hearts
[79] Total

1	2	3	4	5

6	7	8	9	10

11	12	13	14	15

16	17	18	19	20

21	22	23	24	25

26	27	28	29	30

31	32	33	34	35

36	37	38	39	40

41	42	43	44	45

46	47	48	49	50

51	52	53	54	55

56	57	58	59	60

61	62	63	64	65

66	67	68	69	70

71	72	73	74	75

76	77	78	79

Bases credits:
jlarinda: 27, 28, 29, 30
evercool: 41, 42, 43, 44
slackwater: 45

✔Textless icons are not bases.
✔No hot-linking please.
✔Comments and credits are optional, but they are and will always be loved ♥
✔Let me know if you want any icon variations.

Watch Community / Resources / Affliates

Colouring #9

2008-11-10T06:33:40Z

Original Scan: here

Series: Pandora Hearts
Character(s): Jack Bezarius, Raven
Artist: Mochizuki Jun
Medium: Photoshop CS
Time: 10 hours

Hi hi! Long time no colour! xDD; No, seriously, I just realized I haven't posted a bigger colouring since...July? orz
I think this is one of the most detailed colouring I have ever done. I still have no idea what I was doing with the clothings (somehow I just can't picture how the folds would look like ;A;), hopefully at least I improved even just a little bit from last time. The background was pretty much half-hearted, but I think it still looks alright...yeah. I also added some purple highlights in their skin and hair for experimental purposes. Overall, this colouring is basically smudge, blur, sharpen and smudge, blur, sharpen...I over-sharpened in some parts though.

My favourite part is actually Jack's shoes.
And if there is ever an official colour reference for Jack, I probably screwed up his canon colours /o/

If you are using the colouring to make graphics, please leave a comment and credit me for the colouring. ♥

XII - Request Round Two: Sixty-Three Icons

2008-10-26T09:13:28Z

HELLO PEOPLE 8DDD I'm done with the requests! I have to admit that some of them were quite challenging, but I tried my best and put a lot of effort into each of them. Requesters, let me know if you want any changes. I hope everyone is pleased with their icons ♥ All requests are sharable, so free feel to ~~steal~~ take even if you aren't the requester.

Oh, and among them are some Kobato icons. Because I don't want to wait till my next batch to post them |DDD;

[14] Kobato
[49] Sharable Requests
[63] Total

K O B A T O

A star (*) beside the number indicates that the icon is made from a pre-coloured image.
1*	2	3

4	5	6

7	8	9

10	11	12

13	14

S H A R A B L E R E Q U E S T S

A star (*) beside the number indicates that the icon is made from a pre-coloured image. [01] asherfoxx; [02-05] chasingphantoms; [06] demoneyeskyo87; [07-12] flowerchorus; [13-15] indolence; [16-19] linananda; [20-22] lovely_fraulein; [23-24] lumireis; [25-26] nametag; [27-31] niconeko; [32-38] pimpism; [39-42] spazzed; [43-46] sugarsparkle; [47-48] suporma; [49] yunie_sigh
1	2	3

4	5	6

7	8	9

10	11	12

13*	14*	15*

16	17	18

19	20	21

22	23*	24*

25	26	27

28	29	30

31	32	33

34	35	36

37	38	39

40	41	42

43	44	45

46	47	48

49

_________________________________________________________________________________

- textless icons are not bases.
- no hot-linking please.
- comments are optional, but feedbacks are always loved!
- credits are nice, but it's still optional.
- let me know if you want any icon variations.

_________________________________________________________________________________

Resources/credits can be found here
Please friend for future updates!
Interested in affiliating?

I just realized that this batch is so gray/blue after I posted it D:

Just a final note: To everyone who left a comment in the affiliation thread, I apologize that I still haven't replied you yet. I'm going to fix the format of the post in a few days (because this one's getting quite messy) and I'll add your journal right after. And to all old affiliates who want to change their samples, it'll be great if you can leave a comment with your new samples so I can upload them all at once when I renew the post. Thank you(♥) and sorry for the inconvenience!

I never thought this day would come...but it did

2008-10-15T00:10:09Z

Which means...
Request CLOSED.
15 spots in total!

Comment in this post to request. You must be a watcher of crysella, and high quality images only please!

Also, colour reference. I prefer fandoms that I'm familiar with, but let's just say that anything is fine as long as you provide me a good colour ref. If the image is pre-coloured or I have iconed that fandom/character a thousand times already, then a colour ref is not necessary.

A-and please be patient with me, I'll post the finished requests in this community anywhere from a week to a month or even longer hopefully it won't take that long though. Of course, if you're super lucky or if I'm in a super good mood then I'll finish them in 24 hours like last time 8D.

Reserving is fine, but please come back with your image in a reasonable time (say, 48 hours?)

One icon/image per person. I might make several variations if necessary.
All requests will be sharable.

Please fill out the form below:

REQUESTERS
1. sugarsparkle	2. linananda	3. spazzed
4. velshtein	5. lumireis	6. tokugawa
7. niconeko	8. gunfair	9. asherfoxx
10. nametag	11. bodyline	12. lovely_fraulein
13. gakurans	14. engwand	15. serah

I'll fill the requests asap to my best ability ♥
Good luck, and happy requesting!

XI: Eighty-Seven Icons

2008-10-12T08:32:36Z

Oh my, it has been a long time. I wasn't going to post this early originally, but I have less and less time to make graphic these days as I put more focus into real life instead. So let's get this batch done before it gets old and moldy, shall we? |DDD; Some of them were made in July, aww. I think I'll be posting smaller batches from now on...

[04] Cardcaptor Sakura
[06] Chobits
[07] Clannad
[05] Code Geass
[05] Eureka Seven
[06] Kobato
[18] Kuroshitsuji
[20] Nabari no Ou
[08] Vampire Knight
[08] Misc (Peach-pit, Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuuutsu, Tsubasa, World's End)
[87] Total

CARDCAPTOR SAKURA
All bases by jlarinda
01	02	03	04

CHOBITS
01	02	03	04

05	06	-no icon-	-no icon-

CLANNAD
01	02	03	04

05	06	07	-no icon-

CODE GEASS
The original image of #3 is from the doujinshi Pizza...orz The original images of 4 and 5 are from the doujinshi Drowning
01	02	03	04

05	-no icon-	-no icon-	-no icon-

EUREKA SEVEN
01	02	03	04

05	-no icon-	-no icon-	-no icon-

KOBATO
01	02	03	04

05	06	-no icon-	-no icon-

KUROSHITSUJI
01	02	03	04

05	06	07	08

09	10	11	12

13	14	15	16

17	18	-no icon-	-no icon-

NABARI NO OU
01	02	03	04

05	06	07	08

09	10	11	12

13	14	15	16

17	18	19	20

VAMPIRE KNIGHT
01	02	03	04

05	06	07	08

MISC
Peach-pit, Tsubasa, World's End, Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuuutsu
01	02	03	04

05	06	07	08

1	2	3	4	5

6	7	8	9	10

11	12	13	14	15

16	17	18	19	20

21	22	23	24	25

26	27	28	29	30

31	32	33	34	35

36	37	38	39	40

41	42	43	44	45

46	47	48	49	50

51	52	53	54	55

56	57	58

1	2	3	4	5

6	7	8	9	10

11	12	13	14	15

16	17	18	19	20

21	22	23	24	25

26	27	28	29	30

31	32	33	34	35

36	37	38	39	40

41	42	43	44	45

46	47	48	49	50

51	52	53	54	55

56	57	58	59	60

61	62	63	64	65

66	67	68	69	70

71	72	73	74	75

76	77	78	79

1	2	3	4	5

6	7	8	9	10

11	12	13	14	15

16	17	18	19	20

21	22	23	24	25

26	27	28	29	30

31	32	33	34	35

36	37	38	39	40

41	42	43	44	45

46	47	48	49	50

51	52	53	54	55

56	57	58

1	2	3	4	5

6	7	8	9	10

11	12	13	14	15

16	17	18	19	20

21	22	23	24	25

26	27	28	29	30

31	32	33	34	35

36	37	38	39	40

41	42	43	44	45

46	47	48	49	50

51	52	53	54	55

56	57	58	59	60

61	62	63	64	65

66	67	68	69	70

71	72	73	74	75

76	77	78	79

1	2	3	4	5

6	7	8	9	10

11	12	13	14	15

16	17	18	19	20

21	22	23	24	25

26	27	28	29	30

31	32	33	34	35

36	37	38	39	40

41	42	43	44	45

46	47	48	49	50

51	52	53	54	55

56	57	58

1	2	3	4	5

6	7	8	9	10

11	12	13	14	15

16	17	18	19	20

21	22	23	24	25

26	27	28	29	30

31	32	33	34	35

36	37	38	39	40

41	42	43	44	45

46	47	48	49	50

51	52	53	54	55

56	57	58	59	60

61	62	63	64	65

66	67	68	69	70

71	72	73	74	75

76	77	78	79