anime coloring

A style of coloring used in 2D anime, consisting of hard-edged highlights and shadows, as opposed to the soft, smooth shadows used in fully rendered art. Also known as cel-shading, it is the art style seen in most anime screenshots.

It is a step beyond flat color: instead of base colors without any shadows, there are highlights and shadows on top, but the shadows are still solid blocks of color rather than smooth gradients.

For the similar technique employed in 3D artwork, see cel rendering.

Examples

Solid highlights and shadows

Left: Painterly
Right: Anime coloring

Top right: flat color
Bottom left: anime coloring

Non-examples

Flat color

Cel rendering

See also

• 1990s (style)
• 2000s (style)
• anime screenshot
• anime screenshot inset
• cel rendering
• flat color
• official style
• Tag Group:Colors

The following tags are aliased to this tag: cel_shading_(2d) (learn more).