Here's an early christmas present for those supporting real, properly shaded anime art! None of this new grey crap! ^^
This is what I use for every anime piece I do. My secret weapon, actually. I'm constantly adding to it, but this is the latest version and such a valuable resource is wasted on one person... so I thought I'd release it upon the world.
It's a cel-shading palette. Each colour has been meticulously picked from the best-shaded and coloured professional cels in years of searching. Especially Bubblegum Crisis, Dangaioh and Satoshi Urushihara. It's not just a case of taking shades from any picture... they all had to be tried out against each other and various filters applied to the original pieces to get the proper colours. Only the best-shaded art was used, too. As you'll know if you've *seen* Dangaioh...
So use this without guilt. It's not stealing, as studios in the golden era didn't make up their own colours for every new anime - there were often ready-made palettes from other shows to dip into, which is what we're doing here.
Give it a try and see what a difference it makes. And remember to use wise colour combos...don't use the "darkened room" skin tone with some bright pink hair that's clearly from broad daylight!
Have fun!
PS - suffice to say that this will sort out any colour problems you might have with shading anime, but it can't help you with where to actually place the shading. Have a look at this for a couple of tips: [link]