Wings of Fire Ideas!

Tutorial: Coloring Dragons and Transparent Bases

For anyone curious about how I color the dragons in this book & my Adoptables book. I've also had a few people ask me to upload transparent bases, but instead here's a tutorial on how to easily make them transparent.

First of all, I use the app IbisPaint X. It's a free app on the Apple Store, I'm not sure if it's available on Android but you can check.

You can use IbisPaint to make images transparent. It works with any image that has a white background, including the WoF bases that I've made in my "Bases" and "Hybrids" parts.

Just click the button that lets you view the layers, it looks like 3 pages with a number and is in the right hand corner.  Then, on the layer with the base on it, click the three little dots. A bunch of options will come up, with two of those being Clear White (Grayscale) and Clear White (Color). I'm not entirely sure what the difference between the two is but I don't think it matters with a black & white photo like the WoF bases. I use the (Color) one. This will clear all the white on the image to make the base transparent, then you can download the image as a transparent PNG which is another option that comes up when you hit the dots.

When coloring a dragon, I do this and then make a second layer by pressing the + button when viewing my layers. Put the second layer below the first one (you can just touch & drag them) and color on the second layer. You can color underneath the lines of the base, which makes the fill bucket work much better and makes it much easier to color in things like small scales.

I use another method to color small scales on bases that have a lot of them like RainWings. Basically, on the second layer color all of the things that aren't the color of the small scales (for example, if the horns are dark blue and the scales are light blue, color in the horns only). Then, make a third layer and put it beneath the first two. On the third layer, use the Magic Wand tool to select the background behind the dragon, then choose "Invert Layer Selection." Then when you color you should be able to color only the parts that you didn't color on the second layer, ie the small scales. This is way faster then coloring on the second layer.

I hope that makes sense. I make it sound really complicated but it's actually easy.

Anyways, about coloring dragons: I usually choose four or five main colors for a dragon. There's also the little bit if pink or red or black I use for the ears and tongue but I'm not including those.

The darkest color is the horns. The second darkest is the scales that line the dragon's back on most bases and the bigger scales if that makes any sense. The third darkest is the main scale color. The fourth darkest (lightest on most bases) is the underbelly and wings. Most people make the wings a different color from the underbelly, you can do that if you prefer it that way. On some bases there's a fifth lighter color, like the bioluminescent scales on SeaWings.

The colors don't always have to be lighter or darker, for example you could have light horns and dark scales. This can look good, especially on NightWings, but generally I follow the pattern I described above.

After I color the bases, for my Adoptables I usually use the app Pixlr to apply a filter. This just makes them a more pleasing color palette (because I know basically nothing about color theory..) and you can make them look pretty unique.

Anyway... that's all. Hope this helped a little :3