Deranged Laine’s Fold Tutorial

How to: Folds !

Hi hi ~! I will try my best to do a tutorial on Folds here! Please forgive Laine if I commit any mistakes! I’ve never had any formal art lessons so… ^^;;; Please click on the thumbnails too!! m(_)m
Here’s a list of the steps~

Step: Descriptions
One: What are Folds?
Two: Where to draw Folds?
Three: Types of Folds
Four: Shading/Coloring Folds! Pt 1
Five: Shading/Coloring Folds! Pt 2
Six: Common Mistakes When Drawing Folds
Seven: Common Items of Folds
Eight: Common Folds for Women

STEP 1: What are Folds?

Here we have a normal piece of cloth laid out smooth…



What happens if you grab it?



Folds and creases, well, appear. You’re prolly going “like DUHHH i KNOW that you dummy”. Well yes, it’s an easy concept, but like many things, our brain seems to forget this when we are actually drawing, and we go blank as to where to actually put folds!


As you can see, the folds in both the examples above don’t make sense because they’re drawn without keeping in mind that folds happen at certain places. Here, the folds look like they were placed haphazardly in an attempt to draw folds, but failed because of a lack of understanding of where to draw folds.

STEP 2: Where to Draw Folds?

Folds happen at the following places mainly:
• At Joints
• At places it is being pulled
• At places it is being pushed

In short, folds happen at places Where there is external pressure applied to disrupt the smoothness of the fold.

Er… okay , that wasn’t worded very well… How about looking at some examples?









…and back to the first example, where it is being pulled:



…and where it is attached to something, but gravity if pulling, like in this cape:

STEP 3: Types of Folds?

Well okay now that you have an idea of where to draw folds , you’ll need to know what exactly makes a fold look like……a fold…..

First ye got the typical straight-ish folds that go in one direction…



Note that the widths of the folds are VARIED. This is very important because beginners tend to draw their folds in uniform widths, like this:


Of course, there are exceptions to this but…usually in nature, there is no uniformity and no straight lines . Only man made stuff is straight usually…

Then you get a fold that is caused when two creases bunch together, making it look like a “hole “…




Another type of fold happens when you have more than one point of force acting upon the cloth:


An important note however is that when drawing these kinds of folds, the folds NEVER CROSS.

What I mean:

STEP 4: Shading/Coloring Folds – Part I

So now you know how and where to draw folds, now for coloring!! I used Painter and a tablet for this, but the basic procedure for shading and coloring folds is pretty much the same.

First, this is the line art for the fold:


I like to start off with base coloring first… so lay down the base color!

Then, I like to start off by shading the shadows first… keep a light source in mind!!



Notice that the shadowy parts fall on the opposite sites of the light source? Also, you seldom/never get two same-tone shadows lying side by side.

STEP 5: Shading/Coloring Folds – Part II

Next, I like to start laying down the lighter tones!



Note, the lighter colored areas are colored on the same side as the light source. Note there is also a base color area between the light and shadow area…

So now you have base – shadow – light…. you can finish off here really, but i like to touch up on the folds more to give them more er…outstanding look? (ie. Tone variation!) In this step, I add darker shadows, and lighter lights , the tone variation makes the picture have more “depth “and more interesting, not so bland and flat!



Lastly, you can choose to erase the lines! When you color/shade folds, the lines you drew in the outline are usually erased off, coz they…look better that way…well use your own judgment! Sometimes the lines look okay/better if left there, and sometimes they look better erased!

It’s not very obvious here, so i used this Meis cg of mine….see the outline on the left and then compare it to the finished CG . I erased off the lines ne? If you look around pro work, you’ll notice that folds usually have minimal outlines when they are colored too!

STEP 6: Common Mistakes!

Now let’s review some of the common mistakes done by beginners that I see… some were mentioned in previous sections but some are new!

When drawing outlines for folds, don’t use furry lines! Sketchiness is cool and all, but there is something to the sketchy style…and in examples like below…..it just looks bad and uncertain, like you’re not confident with the pencil instead of showing a style of yours:



And remember, fold lines don’t criss-cross like these. Observe folds in real life and you’ll notice this too!


Remember to have variation in folds! Folds are ..alive…they’re different in lots of cases, and I believe the best way to learn folds is to look at real folds and then practice hard!!!! This tutorial can only help you so much, the rest is up to you!



And don’t place folds where they don’t belong, they don’t just happen everywhere ya know? Gotta have a good knowledge of folds to place them properly! [ er..that don't make much sense but...]

STEP 7: Stylized and Common Folds!

Okay, some of the more common types of folds that you will find in clothing are as below.

First we got the humble tee-shirt, unlike common belief, the tee has folds too! [ Hikaru no Go has good examples of these] …



Then you got the coat kind of folds… coats have folds too! Unless they’re made of really thick materials… and even those have tiny folds and creases at corners so that they look interesting.



If the pants are baggy, the folds collect at the heels… if they’re jean-ish type of pants, the folds would happen as follow.

STEP 8: Common Folds for Women!

Now that we’re done with the guy’s clothing, let’s move on to common types of folds in female clothing …

Here we have the dress-ish type of folds that are tight fitting. Since tight fitting clothes are…tight…they tend to have not many folds [ duh ]



Sometimes when the top shirt is tight …



…and sometimes you get those neck wrap-around as shown…



Finished~!

Article source : www.mangatutorials.com/2010/deranged-laines-fold-tutorial