2D2 Process - Shadows and Highlights (Patreon)

Hey all!! 2 posts in one day!!!So! Usually adding highlights like this, especially in drawings. Take a whole lot of time, thankfully Harmony allows animators to not worry too much about drawing each highlight. I did this using a method with the Node part of Harmony. It's kinda hard to explain. But the Node view is a tab in Harmony that allows you to see all of your layers and even change them as well as add some special stuff to it. It does not necessarily mess with your drawing and strokes. But it messes with how you organize them and make it look nice.

A somewhat easy way for me to explain what I did:I created a """Copy""" of the characters drawn in the animation and then moved a little tiny bit down, still on top of the character though. Then I made the copy "behind" the other copy look brighter, and that way you add a "fake highlight" to it.

It's something a lot of animators do because of how easy and yet useful it is. As well as it makes the character pop a lot more.

Also, for the "shadows" I actually made it as a "gradient"You can barely see it to be honest, but if I do take it off you will notice a bit of a difference.But for the gradient, I added a gradient on top of the entire animation, but then I attached to the characters only. That way it only affects them. As my professor says, it's exactly like a "clipping mask" but for Toon Boom Harmony.I uploaded a picture of how the Node view looks like for the characters right now.

I'll also try to see how to get Twilight and duplicate that run cycle for the entirely of the page tomorrow.