Weekly Blog Post: Shading

So as I was studying animation styles of Studio Ghibli, I started to notice something. Light seemed to affect characters and objects differently depending on the feel of the scene. I noticed that sometimes the shading looked as if it slowly faded from dark to light. Other times the shading didn't fade at all. After some research I found out that these two shading styles was no mistake. They are done on purpose to deliver a certain feeling.

Soft shading is more of realistic shading. Lights are stronger at the point of which it is emitted, and slowly fade out as it goes. It gives more flow to the work that is being displayed, and is usually used when artists or animators are trying to give a sense of unity. When you look at something that is softly shaded, you don't feel conflicted. The lights and colors flow and blend together just like how they would in the real world. I chose the picture above of Cole McGrath to point out how this artist used soft shading. The artist used soft shading to make you feel a bit at ease, but then uses the use of good (blue) and evil (red) to create mixed feelings about the work.

Hard shading is more of a fantasy-like shading used in 2D animation. This type of shading is the complete opposite of soft shading. There is no blend of color. Each color is solid and does not blend with any neighboring colors. It creates a feeling of conflict. Hard shading is not always used in serious moments however, it is just used whenever artists want to give a sense of conflict. Usually artists will stick with soft shading and just use hard shading whenever they feel necessary; or they stick with hard shading and use soft shading whenever they feel necessary. Some use different types of shading depending on the object they are dealing with (example: soft shading for people, hard shading for hard surface objects).

I would imagine that both types of shading used together in one work would be straight up savage. Soooo I'm going to explore these two shading types and try to get really good at both these next two weeks in order to use both together in Project 2017.