How does one shade with vectors without making a mask?

[warioteam]

How does one shade with vectors without making a mask? When you have dozens of layers for a character, it gets tedious to line up a shape that acts as shading for every layer, and masking a whole character for shading is nigh impossible. Another way to view the question may be, "How do I draw under strokes without using a mask?"

[Greenlaw]

If you need very specific shading, you can draw it directly in your artwork. Create the curve for the edge of the shading and connect it to the contour curve of your drawing (an arm for example,) then select only the points for your shading and create a new 'shading' shape. if the shading needs to be behind a line, you can stroke the edges of the element where you need the line and hide the edges where you don't, or you can make the contour a separate element that sits on top of the layer.

Or you can mask it. Either method is valid but one can be easier or more difficult depending on the character and the look you're going for.

Alternatively, you can just use the Shaded effect. That's the method we used in 'Scareplane'. Using a Shaded effect works reasonably because it automatically follows the contour of your shapes. For example, if you draw a filled S-curve for a tail, the shading will follow the S shape. You can apply Shaded in either of the two Effects lists. You can even combine two for a more complex effect. The drawback is that you don't really have a lot of control over the actual shape--it always follows the contour of the shape it's filling.

That said, there's no rule saying you can't combine the above to suit a given situation.

Some of these shading tricks can get very complex so be sure to take advantage of the Styles panel and Style Library so you can easily reapply saved styles to different characters and across multiple scenes.

G.