Glowing Effects - Shadow Urtheart

This is the cartoon style glow tutorial which will show you how to create a Marvel style glow around objects.

When creating a glowing effect you will need an already shaded object to base the glow around, however this can be a simple object or even a line. In this tutorial we will show you how to create a basic glow around both Sonic's hand, and createe a glowing sword similar to a lightsaber.

You will need an amount of shades equal to the number of shades that the object you are basing the glow on has, and that includes the outline. We are going to base the glow on Sonic's hand, and since that has 4 white tones and a black outline, we need 5 tones of our glow colour.

If however your object has less than 3 tones (such as our lightsaber, which only has the one) you will need to make at least 2 more shades to be able to make it glow.

Next simply re-colour the object you want to make glow with the relevant glowing shades.

Then replace the outline of the object with the glowing outline tone. Make sure that you only go over the outline that surround the object you are making glow.

To create a very simple glow effect simply use pillow shading outwards from this new outline, going from your darker tones to lighter ones. You don't need to use all the shades if you had many shades to recolour the object, but it is advised you use at least 3.

To give the glow a bit more transparency so you are able to see anything underneath the glow, you will need to take the colours from the objects underneath, and make another set of shades for each line of the glow (so if you were going to use 3 tones of pillow shading you need 3 more sets of shades for the objects underneath). Then reshade the objects, using a combination of pillow shading, and simple recolouring. To do this you need to use each set of shades in the same order as you used your pillow shading (darkest to lightest) and recolour anything on the one pixel width area that the pillow shading would of covered up, then do the same on the next pixel width border, and so on.

Once you have finished your effect make sure to re-outline the piece to make it fit in with the style, in this case, using the Sonic Advance 3 double border outline.

When the object you wish to make glow is either very small or is simply a line, you can use a reverse process. First start off my using your lightest tone to colour the outline.

Then use pillow shading techniques again, this time going from your lightest shade (or the next one down from the one used for the outline) to the darkest tone. Note that if an object is in front of the glow, the glow will not go around it. In this case you can see this in effect around the handle.

Again re-outline the piece and you have finished. remember to mix this technique with other textures and shading styles to create unique pixel art styles.