Painting Tutorial: Light Bounce and Color Bleed

Dreamside’s vivid colors don’t come so much from using more intense hues, but rather the relationship between objects within scenes. This natural phenomenon is sometimes called “light bounce” and is one of the most complicated aspects of the book’s illustrations. Understanding natural lighting is very important when creating believable scenes.

Have you ever noticed that the color from a bright, boldly-colored plastic will sometimes seem to bleed onto adjacent surfaces in bright light? This is because objects reflect light to varying degrees.

In today’s video, I go through a very simple and basic example of light bounce in a scene made up of basic shapes. Then, I demonstrate its application in a Dreamside illustration. It’s not easy to convert 3D shapes into 2D drawings and doing so requires lots of practice. But, I believe effective lighting is one of the most powerful ways to create stunning imagery.

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