Cel Shading
A 3D rendering style that makes digital objects look like flat hand-drawn cartoon cels. Games such as Jet Set Radio (2000) and The Wind Waker (2002) made the look famous.
Spot it
- 01Flat color bands
- 02Bold black outlines
- 03Hard-edged shadow shapes
Why it happens
Lighting values are quantized into a few discrete steps instead of a smooth gradient, and silhouette edges are detected and drawn as ink lines.
Recreate it in Pixio
Image edit prompt“Redraw this image in a cel-shaded cartoon style: flat colors with only two or three hard-edged tone steps per object, thick clean black outlines, crisp stylized shadow shapes, a single bright specular dot on shiny surfaces and bright game-like colors. No gradients or soft blending. Keep the original subject and composition.”
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