How to draw character shadow maps?
interpolator
So for a while now, I've been drawing character shadows and while they're sort of legible, I want to stop guessing them and actually know the right way to go about drawing them.
I've learned one technique to drawing shadows is through a vanishing point. See this:
While it's good for drawing simple stuff like a box, how do I do the same for characters who have much more form? Especially when they could be holding stuff like a gun or wearing a backpack?
Example: See how the goblin's entire appearance and their sword is represented in the shadow as opposed to being a blob or something less real.
I've learned one technique to drawing shadows is through a vanishing point. See this:
While it's good for drawing simple stuff like a box, how do I do the same for characters who have much more form? Especially when they could be holding stuff like a gun or wearing a backpack?
Example: See how the goblin's entire appearance and their sword is represented in the shadow as opposed to being a blob or something less real.
Replies
Maybe "shadow map" sounds technical but I thought it was a layman term for any projected shadow. I'll edit the title if that was the confusion.
then check how high and far the lightsource is away, and adjust the lenght of the shadow . Works like a reflection if I think about it. Low angle = long reflection, high angle nearly no reflection
In photoshop, quick and dirty way = dublicate character, make it black, and transform it on the ground
What you were doing above with the box exercise is the correct way to construct shadows. Do that exercise with increasingly more complex objects and with multiple lightsources and on irregular surfaces, it will improve your ability to guess where shadows should be and get convincing results.
When quality is important though, just use a reference...
This is how you do it:
1 - original screenshot
2 - painted out the shadow to have an 'unshaded' image to work from
3 - paint the silhouette of the character
4 - use the 'distort' tool to convert the silhouette to something that appears to lie on the floor, with a bit of guessed perspective.
5 - get rid of the parts of the shadow that overlap the character, and you're done.
Mind you, that's still not a proper/accurate shadow, but it's good enough in a pinch.
Though you might be better off just estimating how the shadow falls by imagining how the rays from the run interact with the three-dimensional shape of the character. Because this photoshop trick doesn't really teach you how light works, it will feel a bit flat, and it actually costs a bit more time than a good artist quickly painting down a rough shadow shape.
since the sun's basically at optical infinity (really far away), your shadow vanishing point will be underneath it and on the horizon line.
drop some guide lines straight down from any overhanging limbs or whatever that the character might have (basically major silhouette points) and intersect them with the ground plane. this is an extra step you have to do which you don't have to do with the cube, because it's a rectangular prism to start with. if you're using 3-point perspective then these guide lines should be aligned to the "vertical" point.
draw lines from the shadow VP through those silhouette points you plotted on the ground, and draw lines from the light VP through the corresponding points on the actual figure. the intersections should be where the silhouette points fall on the shadow.
do a reasonable number of those and connect the dots.
hahah ok my bad!
The characters are being lit on the right so the sun would be outside the picture. I took your advice of the vanishing points being both on the horizon and underneath literally, assuming that was the correct way to problem solve this.
Edit: Oh man, getting the light vanishing point to line up with the shadow is hard because it's only on the horizon.