Cartoon Fur Texture - CyberBlade

This tutorial is only for those who understand how to do Razz shading. If you don't, then you will not understand anything in this tutorial, nor will you be able to complete it well using pictures. It also expects that you have a basic knowledge of all tools in MS Paint, and at least a basic shading style, but if you can fulfill the requirements, you'll have your furry looking furry in no time. ;P First start out by removing all colours from the area you are shading. You can leave stuff in other areas for now, but you'll have to come back later and erase the colour anyways.

First make a blank copy of the area you are shading, you will use it later. Then use Razz shading in the direction you want the fur to go. I'd suggest using at least 3 colours. You can use more, but remember that the more colours you use, the more difficult and time consuming this will become. This is just the tone though, without the shading applied it will look bland and not quite right.

Now for the shading, this is where this entire process becomes complicated. I will be refering back to this part of the tutorial many times, as it is used throughout the entire process. First take your main tones, in this tutorial we have 3. Now select the colour you are working with and open the colour edit window, and go to define custom colours. Then, find the box labeled "lum." Whatever the number is in there, you change to create the different shades for each tone. When the number goes up the shading gets brighter, when it goes down, darker. For my pixel art, I used 3 tones, and five different shades for each. Getting brighter by ten, than 20 for a bright highlight. I did the same for shading it darker. You can use however many shades you want for a more interesting effect.

Now, remember that colourless copy we made? Make two more. Easiest way is to have them stacked. Now, we need to shade each one for each tone. The lower tone, the middle tone, and the higher tone. (note I'm referring to the colour pallete I showed earlier, and how they're stacked.) I prefer to have my pallete have dark at top, and darkest at bottom, but for the stacking I prefer bright at top. Dunno why, but it's the way I do things. Now shade each one of the copies using the different tones, for the parts of the razz effect you want unchanged, just use the middle shade as this is the shade you use for transparency. Do this with all three tones, and this is what you should get. Remember, anything you want Razzed up in a different colour such as the brown spots on Cake's fur, should also be shade here, using similar tones. The pallete is shown here for brown as well if you need help.


Now, add the middle tones to your pallete at the bottom of the screen. This is for transparency, although you can assign the colour to your transparent colour using the colour copy tool, this allows you to use white transparency to line up your pixel art, then change the transparent colour. Now, take your bland Razz toned pixel art from earlier (Note: It is best to work with a copy in case you make a mistake.) and position it over the brightest shaded copy. (Again, copies are best) and once it's positioned perfectly, change the transparent colour to the lower tone. It will change a bit. Now, click off of the selected object, than reselect it so it's permanent. Now copy, and paste over the middle toned copy. Use the white transparency to line up the copies, then as before change the transparent colour to the middle tone. Repeat only with the darker tone.

And there you have it. This is what the head looks like with the rest of the Razz added. It's exactly the same for the rest of the body, just follow the direction of the fur, rather than the direction of the light as Roareye's Razz tutorial explains, then add the shading. Thats all there is to it, and it's exactly the same on the rest of the body. The final example pic shows how it looks on the final pic.