Paint Tool Sai coloring?

*Amondo-Mi Aug 18, 2012 Hobbyist Digital Artist

I notice how smooth and perfect people color, and when I try it it looks choppy and terrible. I've used tons of tutorials but still don't get how they do it, because they just say "then I use the pen tool" and I am wondering HOW they make the pen tool look like that? Every ones brush strokes on sai are incredibly clean but mine are uneven. I'm thinking it's because I use a mouse, but I'm not sure, I think I'm just doing something wrong. How do you color? Maybe it's brush settings, maybe I have a disease that makes it to where it's impossible for me to hold my hand steadily enough to draw a clean line.

Basically my question is how to color so clean? I know how to add the basic color, it's the shading I'm having trouble with. People always have this clean gradient or these smooth lines I just can't manage. How do you?

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Devious Comments

~ava-ire Aug 21, 2012

It's definitely because of using a mouse. Your choppiness, that is. When people have tablet, they can manipulate pressure sensitivity easily - that's why it looks smooth. Using a mouse usually makes it so that there is no pressure sensitivity; after all, it is just click, unclick, click, unclick. When I used a mouse, I had to set it to a line art layer and then change the thickness of the lines by dragging the dots on them and whatnot. I don't really remember how I did it, but it wasn't really too effective. I suppose it's possible to do quite well with a mouse, but it is hard and takes a lot of practice.

In terms of colouring, I tend to do a tonne of gradient lines next to each other - darker, darker, darker, then blend it together with the water tool, or the brush tool. But, when I used a mouse, I couldn't really use the brush tool. It didn't really work.

~Zapydos2 Aug 18, 2012 Digital Artist

A tablet would be better with SAI.

~shininginthedarkness Aug 18, 2012

I have noticed that strokes made with a mouse are a bit shakier than those made with a tablet, in SAI. So that might be part of the problem.
I usually use the brush instead of the pen. But I'm not trying to do extremely clean shading, I'm going for more of a painted look.

Honestly, if you're trying to do cartoon cel-shading, and you don't have a tablet, I think GIMP would be better than SAI. With GIMP you can make a nice smooth path with the mouse, change it to a selection, and then you've got your nice clean line. But maybe someone else knows how to do that in SAI.

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