How To Draw Ecchi Illustration

HOW
TO
DRAW
ECCHI
ILLUSTRATION
This guideline contains nudity and definitely not recommended for 18 years old or below. Please do
not open if you believe you could be offended by it. Version 1.00. Last revised 03/20/2001
Taka – how to draw ecchi illustration
Before we begin…
Who I Am
While I strife to be anonymous, I will tell you a little bit about my background.
I work as a graphic designer, and most of the time, I am using Photoshop and
CorelDraw or Illustrator to do my work. I am also proficient in using 3D
software. While almost all my ecchi images contain heavy S/M and tentacles,
I’d like to emphasize that they are only a fantasy. Having said that, I do not
condone any real physical violence behavior towards women. Drawing ecchi
images is just a hobby.
Who You Are
You should be familiar with most graphic software available in the market.
You have done some touch -up work or exercise using Photoshop. Although a
high degree of aptitude is not required, but you are familiar with some tools
such as paintbrush, airbrush, lasso, etc.
Equipment Required
You should have at least a Pentium or PowerMac running in your computer.
The more memory the better. While this guide needs only about 64MB, I
would really recommend putting more memory since you’re going to need it
for some other applications anyway. A scanner would be nice if you are
planning to use your own drawings.
The system you need to have:
Operating system (obviously): Windows / Mac / Unix, whatever you
have.
Graphic applications: Adobe Photoshop / Corel Photopaint / PaintShop
Pro, basically anything that supports multi-layers image.
Adobe Acrobat or Microsoft Word to view this document
Author’s Notes
As I have said previously, I do not condone any violence towards another
living being. The reason I added this paragraph is I do not want to be
associated with any criminally inclined people who might use the image as an
inspiration source for their (criminal) activities. I trust most of you can limit
this illustration guide as pure fantasy.
All said, I wish you a pleasant learning experience and share your knowledge.
Taka.
All images and artworks in this document, except the second page (this page), are copyright free. You are
allowed to use them for anything you want, as long as it is within legal law requirement in your area. I do not
and will not make profit from this, so if you are being charged, please liaise directly with the parties involved.
You are allowed to make any modification to any pa rt of this document and the artworks, however, you must
include this page unmodified especially the Author’s Notes section.
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Taka – how to draw ecchi illustration
Part 1
Quick and Dirty Approach
In this session I will explain about making ecchi illustration the “quick and dirty” way. This
level is intended for beginners or anyone who just want to practice coloring any drawing.
01 – Finding illustration source
You can start by finding a simple black and white picture that you wish
to color. I usually draw or copy my illustration from something that’s
available widely, such as manga, TV capture or even ecchi games. For
example, I used an image from my own drawing. You can find it inside
HTDEI-001.TIF file.
First, I drew the image, inked it, and scanned it to be the grayscale
image you see on the right (Figure 1-001). This is a very simple image,
without any shadow and highlight.
If you cannot (or in most cases, too lazy to) draw the image, you can
find any black and white image in the Internet that you like. If you ask
me how to draw this proficiently, then my answer is practice. A lot of
it! You don’t have to be a Japanese to draw ecchi.
Figure 1-001 Grayscale
image
02 – Preparing your image
There is nothing more important than the source of your image. If you have your own
drawing, make sure it is clearly inked and contains no excess of penciling. Or if it is pencil,
make sure it is at least 2B so the scanner can pick the line up. Cleaning the lines in
Photoshop is a lot harder than doing it with your hand, so do it right the first time.
OK, load up the Photoshop and open the image. When
you load the image, adjust the brightness/contrast so the
line will come up crisp and the background as white as
possible. I already clean up the image, so you don’t need
to do anything at this stage. You can convert the TIF
format to PSD now, or you can do it later. It’s up to you,
but you have to save it in PSD format in order to retain
all the layers that we are going to add later.
Next, you need to change this grayscale to RGB by
clicking Image à Mode à RGB Color (Figure 1-002).
Obviously, you cannot color anything in black & white
mode.
Figure 1-002 Change to RGB Color mode
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Taka – how to draw ecchi illustration
03 – Applying Initial Colors
Duplicate this layer by clicking Layer à Duplicate Layer.
This will bring the Duplicate Layer window asking you to
name the new layer (Figure 1-003). Type “Picture” as we will
use this as the original picture foundation for our image.
Switch back to ‘Background’
Figure 1-003 Duplicate Layer Window
layer and fill this layer with any
color you like. In this case, I fill it with red (Figure 1-004).
Select the Picture layer and using the Magic wand,
click on the area you want to get rid of. You can
select multiple areas by holding the Shift key while
clicking. Press Del to delete the area, showing the
red background in return (Figure 1-005). Deselect
the selection.
Next, create a new layer on top of everything by
clicking Layer à New à Layer. Name this layer
“Color”. In the layer properties, make sure you
change it to ‘Multiply’. See Figure 1-006 for
details. This will combine the foreground color against
the white while keeping the black lines intact.
Figure 1-004 Fill Background Layer
with Red
Figure 1-005
Background area
removed
Now it is time to color the skin. One of the things that makes
anime stands out from its U.S. counterpart is they use at least two
tones of skin colors. One for the basic skin color, and the other
one for the shadow. For this image, we will use just 2 colors. I
would suggest that you experiment with a lot of different color
tone. But again, you can just easily pick the colors from existing
ecchi games.
I use a very light skin color (R: 255, G: 239, B: 223) and its darker
shadow (R: 255, G: 191, B: 159). This will provide sufficient
contrast for the skin.
Figure 1-006 Change Color
Layer to ‘Multiply’
Change the foreground color to the
light skin color. And pick the Lasso
tool. Set the Feather to 1 pixel. Make sure ‘Anti-aliased’ option
is ticked. See Figure 1-007.
If you are still seeing the lasso-shape cursor, change it to the
pinpoint cursor in the Preferences window. You can see better
this way.
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Figure 1-007 Lasso tool set to 1 pixel
Taka – how to draw ecchi illustration
By holding the Alt key, cover the entire skin surface. You
don’t have to be exact; in fact you can cover the whole
image with this color. It doesn’t matter. Fill this area with
the foreground color using Edit à Fill… Make sure the
Foreground color is selected, and use 100% opacity.
Don’t choose the ‘Preserve transparency’ option. Figure
1-008 will guide you.
Do you notice that the color seems to blend with the
image? It is the Multiply layer effect. I use this one for
making an object to appear inside another object. Let’s say
if you want to put your photo inside a photo of a blender,
this is the way to go.
04 – Coloring the Rest
Figure 1-008 Cover the entire skin area
Deselect the area that you just created. Load the shadow
with skin color
color as the foreground color. Now, one of the most
difficult parts of coloring the shadow is imagining where the light is coming from. You have
to have an imaginary fixed position of a main light and use it consistently. For this
demonstration, I will assume that the light comes from upper left corner of the screen.
Thus, I will apply the shadow accordingly.
You can see what I am doing in Figure 1-009. Please keep
in mind that you do not have to follow this. It is up to your
taste. You can imagine the light to be coming from below
for all I care.
Make sure your Lasso tool is still set to 1 pixel. Otherwise,
the shadow edge will look harsh and jagged. If you ask me
how to apply the shadow properly, then I suggest you read
a lot of anatomy books. You can get the feel for body
muscles and the way your skin reacts to normal light.
Continue to apply the shadow color throughout the image.
Sometimes you have to zoom in to get all the tricky
corners.
My advice is if you don’t get it right the first time, by all
means, undo the steps and redraw it again. This is not cel
or oil painting. You can even undo until the very beginning
when you open the file.
Figure 1-009 Applying shadow color
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Taka – how to draw ecchi illustration
Notice that the character is wearing a ballgag and several
leather cuffs. I am going to paint the ballgag as slight grayish,
while the cuff as shiny black. To do this, paint the cuff first
with dark color. Then lasso a small stripe where the light will be
reflected and fill it with white. Refer to Figure 1-010.
Next in list is hair color. This will be the trickiest part to do.
You have to use every tool necessary to color the hair. I guess
you can lasso it one by one, but I see no point in adding
another elephant in an already tedious job.
I use two tones for hair color. The basic hair color will be
brown (R: 170, G: 95, B: 37) and the shadow will be dark
brown (R: 76, G: 43, B: 26).
Figure 1-010 Leather reflects light
As a rule of thumb, you can lasso the biggest part of the hair
and fill it up with the hair color. Use small size paintbrush and
line tool to fill in the rest. Be careful not to touch other parts.
Once you’ve got all the hair parts covered, we will move to an
even more tedious task (You can skip this if you think the hair
looks good enough). Load the dark brown color to the
foreground color. Please remember where your light is coming
from. Apply the shadow accordingly.
This is just a matter of preference. If the shadow looks funny,
undo it and lasso another area. With a little practice, you will
get the feel of doing this. See Figure 1-012.
Figure 1-011 Use small size
paintbrush and line tool to reach
smallest hair parts
Optional: Feel free to highlight the hair. This can be achieved
by using plain white or light brown color.
Now look at your image. I’ll say it is 80% done. All that is left
to do is make the nipple and color the eyes.
Figure 1-012 A simple hair shadow
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Taka – how to draw ecchi illustration
To make the nipple, I usually follow the anime standard, which makes it quite light and soft.
Load a light pink color (R: 250, G: 170, B: 172) to the foreground color. Make sure this
color is near to the skin color, so it will blend nicely with each other.
Choose the Elliptical
Marquee Tool. You have to
click the box tool and hold it,
then select the ellipse tool.
Make sure the Feather is set
to 1 pixel. Draw a circle that
will represent the nipple in the
breast area. Refer to Figure 1013 for details.
Do both nipples using the
same technique. Next, choose
a darker color for the shadow.
Change the foreground to
dark pink (R: 205, G: 133, B:
134). Use the airbrush tool.
Keep the brush size to
Figure 1-013 Use the Ellipse tool to make the nipple
roughly a third of the nipples’
diameter. Keep the pressure
low, such as 10% or 20%. Since the pressure is so small, there
is little chance you might be overdoing this. Click repeatedly
on the area you want the shadow to appear. See Figure 1-014.
To make the nipples’ color highlight, you will find no further
than the original skin color. Choose that one and do the
airbrushing again. This time apply it on the side where the
light comes from.
After you make the nipple, it is time to erase its guidelines.
Figure 1-014 Use the airbrush to create
Switch to the Picture layer. Select white color as your
the nipples’ shadow
foreground. Using paintbrush (do not use eraser), paint on
the guideline. Don’t worry, you won’t erase the nipple as it is on another layer.
Right on, now the last thing we need to do is the eyes. Contrary to belief, this is actually
quite easy to do. The first thing you need to do is to switch back to the Color layer (if you
haven’t done so). Zoom in to the eyes area. I don’t know exactly what the medical terms are
for the eyes. I only know that the pupil is usually covered in lighter color than the cornea.
Hence, I use light blue (R: 172, G: 253, B: 252) for the pupil and dark blue (R: 52, G: 79, B:
91) for the cornea.
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Lasso the eye area and fill it with white (Figure 1-015).
Next, lasso the pupil area and fill it with light blue color.
Then, make a slightly smaller lasso area and fill it with
dark blue color. Notice that you have an eye, but it
doesn’t feel alive yet. That’s why we need to put highlight
inside it. Lasso a small circle in the direction where the
light is coming from. Fill it with white. That should do
the trick. Follow Figure 1-016 closely to see the effect.
Figure 1-015 Clear out the eyes area with white
Figure 1-016 Coloring eyes, step by step
Now, hopefully you have something like Figure 1-017. It still
needs a little bit touch up, but the hardest part is over.
To clean up the image, select the Picture layer. Click Select à
Load Selection… A new window will appear. Make sure the
Invert option is ticked. Click OK. This will select the picture
area’s transparent background. Select the Color layer. Press
Del and deselect the selection. Presto! Now the ugly color
excess is gone!
If you plan to leave your image like this with bright background
and nothing else, then congratulations! You’re done! But if you
plan to insert another background, especially a dark one, don’t
pop up the champagne, we’re not done yet.
05 – Cleaning Up
Figure 1-017 Done all the colorings
Have you ever noticed that sometimes if you try to combine a cutout image with a dark
background, there is a white ‘halo’ surrounding it? That is because the original image is done
in a bright background, thus creating a bright outline as well. The same goes with this image.
The original background that we cut was white, remember? While you might see a perfectly
fine image at this stage, when you insert a dark background, then you will found out the
mysterious halo surrounding it.
To eliminate this, reselect the Picture layer. Click Select à Load selection… This time
don’t tick on the Invert selection. Click OK to continue. Next, click Select à Modify à
Contract… In the Contract Selection window, key in 1 pixel. Click OK. This will shrink the
picture selection area by 1 pixel, enough to get rid the white halo. Inverse the selection by
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Taka – how to draw ecchi illustration
clicking Select à Inverse. Hit the Del key and deselect the selection. Now you have got rid
of the annoying halo. Although the outline looks funny, it will not be for long. The last step
we need to is to insert a proper background image instead of blank red.
I have included a 3D rendered background image (HTDEI-002.TIF) for this project. I just
want to go the extra mile, but of course I’m not suggesting that you do the same. You must
have something better to do rather than making a 3D interior by yourself.
Open the background file (HTDEI002.TIF). Select all and copy it. Go back
to your original image. Select the
Background layer and paste the new
background there. If everything goes
correctly, you should have the images
neatly stacked one on top of another.
One last touch up is to make the shadow
area in the background. To do this, use
the Lasso tool with feather size at least 5
pixels, and lasso the imaginary shadow
area. Fill it up with about 40% black.
Finally, we have a quite nice colored
image with a background. Please keep in
mind that this technique is Quick and
Dirty. Just to show you the feeling of
making ecchi illustration. The final image
is rendered below, as well as saved in
HTDEI-QDFinal.PSD.
Figure 1-018 Final image
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Taka – how to draw ecchi illustration
Part 2
Production Quality Approach
I do hope the reason you continue to read this document is because you are not really
satisfied with the Quick and Dirty approach. To be honest, you might not even be satisfied
after reading this Production Quality approach. If you have a higher standard, by all means,
please improve on it.
When I talk about Production Quality, it means you have to make an illustration similar to
the upper echelon ecchi games in terms of image quality. This is by no mean an easy thing to
do. No offense, but I don’t think you will need such a high quality ecchi image just for
hobby. However, if you are planning to sell your artworks, well, that’s an entirely different
matter.
01 – Finding Illustration Source
Unlike in the previous chapter, any image won’t do.
You need something of a higher quality. I have
included an image (HTDEI-003.TIF) from an ecchi
games (which title I couldn’t recall). I have redrawn it
removing the censored part and (surprise!) adding some
tentacles. As you can see, the drawing is much more
complex and it involves even more shades of colors.
You might notice that the dimension is huge. There is a
reason for this. Do you know how to make the fine line
Figure 2-001 High quality B/W image
for the hair tip? The smallest line you can get in
Photoshop is 1 pixel, which is too big for a fine line. There are several ways of making it, the
easiest one seems to double the picture size, and shrink it by 50% in the final rendition to
make 0.5 pixel. Of course, for the regular line, now you have to use 2 or even 3-pixel line to
render it.
02 – Preparing Your Image
We will go to one additional step before we transfer it to RGB color. Usually in the high-end
production image, they very seldom use black line. Black is considered too harsh and strong.
Usually for the skin outline, they use brown color to
match the skin color.
That’s why we will process this grayscale image to
Duotone first. Click Image à Mode à Duotone. In
the first ink window, click the black square and select
brown color. I usually use (R: 158, G: 132, B: 40) for it.
Fill the ink name as “Brown” or whatever you like. If
the second ink is not white, change it to pure white (R:
255, G: 255, B: 255). Otherwise, leave it blank. Now,
you have replaced all the black color to brown. See
Figure 2-002.
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Figure 2-002 Duotone version of the image
Taka – how to draw ecchi illustration
Convert your image to RGB by clicking Image à Mode à RGB Color. Now, we can
work on this one. Be patient though, as this file will be blown roughly double its original
size. Duplicate the Background layer and name it “Picture” layer. Fill the Background layer
with any color you like, except white.
03 – Applying Initial Colors
This process is exactly the same as in Quick and Dirty approach. First, create a new layer on
top of Picture layer. Call it “Color” since we are going to put all the basic colors here.
Change the layer’s properties to Multiply. If you are not sure how to do this, see the Quick
and Dirty section.
I will use 3 skin tone colors. The lightest one (R: 250, G: 231, B: 212) is for skin base color.
The medium one (R: 254, G: 191, B: 156) is for the overall shadow. And the darkest one (R:
233, G: 147, B: 115) is for the really dark areas in her body.
On the Color layer, lasso an area covering all skin parts.
You don’t have to be precise for this. See Figure 2-003
for example. Load the lightest skin color to foreground
and fill the area with it. Deselect the lasso area.
Now load the medium skin color and make sure the
Lasso tool is set to 2 pixels with Anti-aliased option
on. I’m sure you have noticed that the semi-transparent
lines inside the body area are the shadow and highlight
Figure 2-003 Applying skin-base color
areas of the skin. I realize it is quite difficult for you to
tell which area belongs to which color. The picture is
set with the light source to be at the lower left corner of the picture. In other words, it
comes from above her head. In real production, usually the coloring artist will mark these
areas with numbers. But hey, this is just for fun. It’s not gonna hurt to place the wrong color
in an area or
two.
Please refer to
Figure 2-004
for areas
where you
have to put
the medium
and dark-skin
color. Make
sure your lasso
size is at least
2 pixels. You
can even
Figure 2-004 Three Skin Tones
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Taka – how to draw ecchi illustration
experiment with 5-pixel size lasso, as it will give an even smoother shadow line. The
drawback with it is you’re going to lose a lot of details with 5 pixels.
Now we need to clean up the entire semi transparent lines that form the guidelines. Use
paintbrush with white color in “Picture” layer to do this.
04 – Coloring the rest
Next we are going to color the hair. Again, this will be very painstaking and tedious work.
So, prepare yourself mentally. For hair, the base color will be brown (R: 191, G: 80, B: 47).
The shadow area will be dark brown (R: 111, G: 47, B: 32). We will have one more tone for
the highlight. You can choose between pure white or very light brown (R: 254, G: 207, B:
188). Actually, I am going to use both tones.
First, you need
to apply the
base hair color
throughout
hair area. You
might have to
use paintbrush
or line tool for
tricky corners.
Then apply
the darker
shadow and
highlight
properly. See
Figure 2-005
for tone
placement.
Figure 2-005 Hair tone colors
Keep in mind
that this guide is not carved in stone. You are more than welcome to experiment on different
colors and lighting. If you think doing the hair is difficult, it is. This will be the most time
consuming part of applying color to the illustration.
If you really take a closer look, you will notice that I have changed the hair lines in the lower
middle portion (near the right arm) to split the hair. You may or may not follow this, it is up
to you.
Also, don’t forget to color the eyebrow and the small eye hair. You can treat this just like a
normal hair color.
Clean up the line by covering it by white in Picture layer.
Next item in the list is the ballgag. You might wonder why I’m having this ballgag fetish.
Well, the truth is a ballgag is far easier to draw and color than the interior of the mouth. So,
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unless the character’s mouth is closed tightly, I will usually draw a ballgag just to cover it up.
OK, now we can color it with red. The color is
again up to you, as long as it has 3 different
tones. Refer to Figure 2-006 for details. Be very
careful, though, because parts of the upper
front teeth is still showing and you have to
apply a little bit of dark red for the mouth
interior. I told you coloring mouth is hard,
didn’t I?
Next: Tentacles. Ah, I love this part. There’s
nothing more entertaining than a 10 ft multipurpose penis capable of snake-like movement!
Did I mention the host usually has more than
10 tentacles that can move all at once? Even better.
Figure 2-006 Ballgag
I choose the green color for tentacles. It doesn’t matter what color, as long as it is dark. If
you take a closer look, you can find the tentacles in 4 different locations throughout this
picture. One is on her stomach, two are holding her right and left arm, and the last one
penetrates her vagina. You just need two color tones for this as the tentacles don’t have any
glossiness (unless you want to make it so).
Since we don’t have any eye to color, the luck’s on your side. Well, that’s it now for coloring.
05 – Fixing the lines
We are not done yet! If you think being an illustrator is this easy, man, anybody can be one.
One thing in the image that doesn’t look quite clean is the original lines. That’s right, we’re
going to fix them.
Add a layer on top of everything. Name it “Fix Line” or something like that. This is used to
cover uneven and jagged lines below. We are going to use some of the now-incorporated
vector based selection unavailable previously in Photoshop 5.0.
Set your paintbrush tool to Hard Round 3 pixel type brush. We are going to use this quite
often. The other way to ‘ink’ the outline is to custom make a brush with a calligraphy-like
tip. This will make the illustration even better looking. The downside of this is you have to
spend a lot more time adjusting the tip and the result won’t look so much different with
what we are doing now.
We will also use the Pen tool quite a lot in this session. For those of you who are not
familiar or need some memory refreshment, please do read the Optional tutorial below. If
you are comfortable with the Pen tool, skip that section and continue making the outline.
Optional: Tutorial for Vector-based Pen tool
I do hope that you are familiar with the Pen tool in Photoshop. If not, follow the quick
tutorial below.
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Open a new file in Photoshop. Set the dimension to 320 x 240 pixels. We
will try to draw two strands of hair using Pen tool. Click and hold the Pen
tool icon (see Figure 2-007). This will open up some new selections. Click
the second selection (Freeform Pen Tool). For most parts, we will use this
Freeform pen to make curvy lines. If you need to make straight lines or sharp
edges, use the first Pen Tool instead.
Figure 2-007 Pen tool
Make sure the Curve Fit option is set to 1 pixel. Leave the Magnetic option off. Activate
the Auto Add/Delete option.
Follow the instruction carefully. Press and hold the Alt key. Click and
hold on the white image window and pull your mouse slightly
downward until you can see a small line being drawn. Release your
mouse button, but keep holding the Alt key. You are now in ‘tracing’
mode. Trace a line like in Figure 2-008. Release the Alt key when you
have finish clicking the end of the line. The Pen tool will
automatically make this as a curve, smoothing out sharp edges and
straight line. To make it even smoother, you can increase the Curve
Fit option to more than 3 pixels, but you will be unable to follow a
lot of details.
Figure 2-008 Draw a curve using
Pen tool
If you feel that there is still a sharp edge, you can manually smoothen it out using the Direct
Selection Tool. Press Shift-A twice until your cursor changes to a small white cursor icon.
Click the lowest point in your curve. You can see that for that particular point, you will have
a left handle and right handle. Clicking on this handle will adjust your curve smoothness.
Play with this handle for a while, so you can get the feel for vector-based drawing.
While the curve is still selected, right click on any part of the curve. Choose Stroke Path. A
Stroke Path window will open. Choose the Paintbrush tool and click OK. This will draw a
line with the Paintbrush tool’s size. The vector line itself is not an image. It is only a
guideline, so whatever you do, please make sure you either stroke or fill the line. Otherwise,
it won’t even show up in your final image.
Now click on any blank space in your image window. This will deselect the curve. If you find
the curve blocks your view, press Ctrl-H to hide all the vector lines. Pressing Ctrl-H again
will show the lines. Sometimes you have to press Ctrl-H more than once, depending on the
default state (show or hide) of your Photoshop.
Using the Freeform Pen tool, draw another curve similar to Figure 2009. Be careful not to touch the first line’s end point since it will join
the two curves together. When you are done, stroke the path again.
Well, that’s it for starter. Keep practicing on your own and don’t forget
there are still some vector-based tools you have not explore. For the
next section, you will use this technique to trace the image outline.
Figure 2-009 Draw the second
curve using Pen tool
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There are several ways to do the outline. The simplest one is to use the Line tool. However,
I doubt that you can use this tool to outline most of curves in this image. The other (more
time-consuming) way to do it is using vector-based Pen tool.
Using the Freeform Pen tool,
trace the most important
outlines in the image. You
don’t have to do all the lines,
just the ones that will touch
the background. See Figure 2010 for example.
You will have to manually
select the color that is closest
to each line. One-way to do
this is to ‘pick’ the color
closest to that particular line
and make it a foreground
color.
Set your Curve Fit option for
Figure 2-010 Trace the outline using Freeform Pen tool
1 pixel, as it will enable you to
follow most of the details in
this image. Be careful in the breast area. I usually use 4 pixels Curve Fit to get the proper
smooth half circle line.
As you will fill the lines with different individual color, I suggest you stroke each curve as
soon as you finished drawing it. Make sure you stroke it in ‘Fix Line’ layer. Otherwise, you
will have the pleasure of screaming and pulling your own hair just like I did more than once.
To clean up the
initial lines, use
white color to
paint in the
Picture layer. Use
eraser to erase
anything that’s
sticking out from
the line. When you
are done (this will
take at least an
hour), hopefully
your image will
look like Figure 2011. Please study
the final image to
see the complete
lines.
Figure 2-011 The cleaned-up image
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Next, we will have to draw the nipples. The process is exactly the same as in the Quick and
Dirty section. First click the Circle tool. Set the Feather to 2 or 3 pixels. Then draw a circle
around the nipple area in the Color layer.
I use light pink (R: 251, G: 162, B: 145) for base color and
dark pink (R: 207, G: 119, B: 101) for the shadow. We will
use the skin color as the highlight color for the nipple.
Using Airbrush tool (21 pixels size brush), color the
nipples accordingly. Finally, following the guideline, stroke
a nipple line in Fix Line layer using Freeform Pen tool
and set it to slightly darker pink color (R: 187, G: 99, B:
68). See Figure 2-012.
Please remember the direction of light. If you set the light
from the right-hand side of the image, then naturally your
highlight will be on the lower part of the nipple, not the
upper part.
Don’t forget to clean up the original lines by painting it
with white color in Picture layer.
Figure 2-012 Drawing the nipples
Now, we can say that our work is 90% done! That is the
good news. The bad news is there is a little bit more to do.
06 – Adding the Special Effect Liquid
The image now looks perfectly fine, but if you have been watching ecchi movie, you’ll know
something is still missing. Anyone care to guess? You’re right! Where the hell is the love
fluid? This is another aspect of ecchi anime that I’m absolutely baffled. For all I know, the
normal amount of sperm being ejaculated is nowhere near what we have seen in the ecchi
movie, much less the vaginal fluid. On one extreme, this liquid can literally fill the entire
screen. On the other extreme, the normal life, you can hardly see it at all. So, I’m going to
take the middle solution. I’ll make it big enough so anyone can see it without squinting the
eye, but not as much as the anime. What’s more, I’ll call it Special Effect Liquid (SEL).
This will be one of the most interesting sections. You are literally free to explore your
imagination. If you like this SEL all over her body, please be my guest. Anyway, we’re going
to do this on a separate layer, so you can turn it on or off anytime.
Create a layer on top of everything and name it “SEL”. We are going to make this quite
transparent to mimic the nature of liquid. Set the transparency to around 60%. I’ll use a
light green color for this (R: 150, G: 250, B: 209) liquid. You don’t have to follow me in this
section. Do whatever you like, as long as you set the shadow correctly. One suggestion,
though: Try to imagine in your mind first how do you like the liquid to be. This will make
things easier than drawing it first and being confused in the middle.
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Taka – how to draw ecchi illustration
Use Lasso tool with 2 pixels Feather to do the basic liquid shape. Use airbrush to create
shadows and highlights. You can use white for the highlight, but don’t use too harshly, as it
will create a funny-looking liquid. I usually set the Airbrush pressure to merely 10%, so I’m
minimizing the risk of overdoing it. See Figure 2-013 for my version of the liquid. I know it’s
not much, but that’s what I had in mind.
Figure 2-013 Special Effect Liquid
07 – Cleaning up and Shadowing
Finally, we have arrived to the last stage of this guide. What’s left to do is to attach the
background image and creating some shadows.
First, open the HTDEI-004.TIF file. You will find a simple wood background image for
this illustration. Simply copy and paste the content on top of your Background layer. For
the shadow, you have two choices: you can do it separately on another layer, or you can
paint it directly in the background image. I choose the later because you’re not going to
change this background anyway. However, if you plan to change the pose, then I will suggest
you make the shadow in a separate layer.
We can tell quite easily that the character is lying flat on the ground. That’s why we have to
make the shadow approximately close to the background image. Don’t use too much feather
as it can give the unnecessary illusion of the ground being far away from the character.
Remember, for the outer shadow area, you cannot put too much dark shadow. I usually fill
this with 40% black since the wood is quite brightly lit. Work gradually towards the inner
area of the shadow, slowly increasing the percentage of black. Please watch out the position
of the light source. Adjust the shadow accordingly. Finally, for the small area where the body
touch the ground, use 100% black (or something close to it) to fill the area. That should do
the trick.
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Taka – how to draw ecchi illustration
Congratulations!! We are done!! You can reduce the size back to 50% for the JPG
presentation. But I would strongly suggest that you keep the original as it is. I had some of
my old works permanently transferred to JPG format while I deleted the master. That is
something that I will always regret deeply.
Please see Figure 2-014 for the final result.
Figure 2-014 Final Result
Well, I’m certainly glad that you could keep up with me. I don’t have any plan to do another
guide or tutorial in the near future. But you can be sure that whenever there is a new
technique to do this, I will try my best to share it with you all.
Until then, keep practicing and honing your illustration skills! Who knows, someday there
will be a decent ecchi games or anime coming from outside Japan. I believe that day will
come sooner or later.
Taka.
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Taka – how to draw ecchi illustration
Author’s End Words
This is for people who wish to contact me. I have opened up a new mail,
[email protected] for those who wish to ask or discuss my work.
I should warn you first though, that I would only answer e-mails as per my discretion. Please
don’t be offended if I did not reply. I am still working full time and don’t have much free
time. And anyway, it is not like I am getting paid or anything. This is for an ecchi fan to
another fan only.
I will:
- Accept any new techniques to do illustrations.
- Exchange illustration in its native formats (Photoshop or Photopaint). This one also
depends on how big the illustration is. I don’t have any T1 connection; so working
from 56Kbps is quite slow. However, just send me the thumbnail first.
- Gladly accept any suggestion or correction for this guideline. If I think a major
rework is needed, I will release the next version. Rest assured your name will be in it.
- Accept any ecchi game rip. Especially with S/M or tentacles inside. But if you are
looking to trade images, sorry, I don’t have them. I just keep whatever I like and
throw off the rest.
I will not:
- Respond to any attempt to start flame war or invitation to start one.
- Reply to any kind of ‘advice’ from anyone who believes s/he is standing on a higher
moral ground. Please try not telling me this is morally wrong; it won’t work.
- Give away all my drawings. However, I will post my finished work in the newsgroup,
so that should be some consolations to you all.
- Render 3D backgrounds for you. To be honest, it took me around 4 days just to
create the whole objects and arrange it together. Then, it took about 2-4 hours to
render each scene. So, even if you beg, the answer is always NO.
- Accept any payment for this guideline. If you are being charged, please by all means,
do contact me. I cannot get your money back, but you can be sure that I will at least
help you trace the name and warn everyone in the newsgroup.
- Open any e-mail with .EXE attachment inside it. An e-mail virus before had attacked
my system, so any executable file is off limit.
Thanks for your understanding, and I wish you happy illustrating!
Taka.
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