Razz Shading - Roareye Black

Razz shading is used on pixel art to show an anime-like shine, usually on hair. Also on smaller pixel art, it can be used to make objects appear cylindrical to some effect, however it also can be used for texture smoothening and realistic fur detailing. First of all, you want to find a character with alot of hair, although this does work on smaller hair to an extent, it works best on longer, thicker chunks of hair as it has room to give a more full style.


Now set up your palette, we're simply going to use Knuckles' default palette in this tutorial. To do this, select each tone with the colour picker and place them all next to each other at the top. When this is done, select each tone with the right mouse button, so they become your secondary colour and using the Rubber Tool trick erase all the colours from his hair only, like in the third image.


Select the lightest tone of red as your primary colour, and using the Pencil Tool, begin to make the lighter hair markings on your character. This is the main thing to be able to get the hang of in Razz shading, as it is almost random, but still very controlled. The key thing to remember is that no two pixels at the top and bottom (Or left and right if you're making it horizontally) should be equal, and should jump up and down in a fashion similar to a heart beat on those hospital machines (I believe the real name is a Defibrillator, well the Defibrillator Monitor anyway).
After this is done, Draw a line from the top of the shading to the outer curve of the hairline as seen in image 2. Using this as a base, start creating the Razz effect up along this line and fill it out around the outer round of the hairline.


Now, using the same technique as before, surround all of the lightest tone with the medium tone (So surround the light red with the medium red in this example). To make this most effective, restrain the length of each column of pixels to a set number (In my case I've usually used 4 pixels high) and make that height increase or decrease with the thickness of the lightest tone. Once you've surrounded the lightest tone, make a spike of the medium tone inside any areas where there is alot of blank space (A large area of the darkest tone looks bad). Once you've completed all of that, simply fill in with the darkest tone in all the gaps. You can blend this shading in with the head, which I have done by simply using the lightest tone instead of the darkest at the point where the hair and head connect. The end effect should be like the final picture.


So now you know how to apply this into hair in an anime style, but what about for limbs? Razz shading can be used on both smaller and larger pixel art limbs to give a more cylidrical effect. SNK actually uses this in their game sprites and some of their portrait art for their King of Fighters series. First of all you need your limb, then you need to create your colour palette. I used this default Sky Blue as the base colour for this jacket sleeve.


Select your lightest colour tone and begin Razz shading. The best way to get it to work, especially with the distance effect of this arm, is to begin at the armpit using two or three pixel widths for each line (Remembering to keep the lines looking random and out of synch with one another) and gradually increasing the width of the pixels. I started at the armpit using two pixel widths, gradually increased it to four pixel widths at the elbow and then to five at the end of the sleeve, but this could have easily become six. Also near the armpit, the Razz shading goes from moving vertically (up and down) to horizontally (left and right). For this effect, it is a good idea to form the curve normally, not trying to make it random.

Once you've finished the first part of Razz, simply do the same with the darker tones, surrounding each tone with it's darker counterpart. To make this look the mose effective, try keeping the same pixel lengths in each darker tone at each area (So whenever the lightest tone is 3 pixel lengths, so are the darker tones) below the lightest tone, where there is more area to cover. However above the lightest tone, you have very little room for more shades, so generally keep the pixel lengths down to one or two for all tones to allow you to put more in. I've seperated the jacket sleeve with the yellow stitching, which is always wise when the jacket sleeve is this big, which means that starting from the second lightest tone, I can start a seperate Razz effect on the opposite side of the stitching. This prevents the bottom of the jacket sleeve from looking too dark. When you've finished putting in all your tones, you should get the effect of the third image.