Metal Textures - Shadow Urtheart

This is the metal texture tutorial, which will show you how to make items look like they have a metal surface.

One of the biggest features of metal is its reflective surface, which will cause light to shine off of it. This is what we try to show when modelling it in Pixel Art. To start off, you need at least 4 tones of the colour metal you wish to use.

Next you need to decide the direction of your primary shine line. This line usually follows a diagonal path, following the direction of your light source (if you have one) or the area with the longest width. With this direction decided, create a one pixel width line on each piece of metal in the piece, in the direction of your primary shine. If you have a large area to cover, then you may wish to use a slightly bigger line.

Now use your next tone down to create a boarder around your shine line. This boarder should be at least one pixel bigger than your shine line. For very small areas, you can consider doing a single width boarder.

Continue to boarder each layer with the amount of tones that you have. Make sure that each boarder is at least as large if not preferably bigger than your original shine line.

From this point you can combine the technique with other shading and texturing techniques, to give the desired effects wanted for the object.

Combining this technique with techniques such as IBS shading and Sunset style shading can give great effects for some forms of tilting or rounded metals. To do this you will need another set of shades for each level of shine you decide to add on top of the original base of your object, remembering to also re-shade areas which either dip or go further away (such as the channel in the center of the sword)

If you want to shade a whole Character in this style, you must remember to make sure that the shine always follows in the same direction throughout. It is sometimes easier to shade your character in it's base tones first before applying a metal texture style to it.

Two things to remember with this technique is that you can alter how shiny your metal is by adjusting how much your lighter tones are, the closer they are to white, the better sheen your metal has. Also remember that this technique works on any coloured metal.