Yeah, I'm working on an edited mug but I have no idea how to go about the shading. Could someone point me to a decent tutorial?

I don't think we have any of those, though you might want to check out Merc's Full Custom mug tutorial (which I can't seem to locate at the moment).

Tips:
- Keep a fixed light source
- Avoid pillow-shading; see Spriting Tutorials topic
- Keep posting WIPs; we'll offer critique to help you along

Ok, thanks. :D

EDIT: While I'm at it, what exactly is pillow-shading?

[link] - Nin explains that, here. It's when you over-shade something to the point where the lightest part sticks out like a bubble, or in a 'pillowed' fashion.

EDIT - Give me a moment, I'll show you a better example.

Ok, thanks a lot. But I can't actually see Nin's tutorial, it just says user posted image.

You might have images from his gallery disabled, then. Try right-clicking it, then search the menu for 'Unblock images from..."

Anyway, here's a quick example I whipped up.
The one on the left is BAD; it's pillow-shaded (the clothes). The one on the right is GOOD; it's anti-aliased and shaded, but not pillow-shaded. Since you couldn't really see the difference when shrunk to a smaller size, I zoomed it a bit and changed the contrast a little for more effect. See the difference?
The one of the left just looks like it's been shaded in layers, lighter one on top of darker ones, just slapped on according to the shape they've been given. The pixels seem to stick to the borders.
The one on the right shows depth, using obvious highlights and shadows for effect. Pixels lightly line the edges, but when zoomed out, are hardly noticeable.


EDIT - Crappy zoomed-out version; I didn't save the actual-size version, so I just adjusted the size the lazy way.

The images aren't blocked and when I try to view it using view image it says 400 error.

Repost --------

Still don't see it... I've tried it in Explorer too.

Try again.

Yaaaay! Thanks so much!

NP.

Well one other tip I would like to offer is, when your trying to shade in hair and adding details to it, its a really good idea to grab a mug that has something similar to what you want and use that has reference to it.

Thanks. I'm not working on hair yet but I'll keep that in mind.

EDIT: Can I post my WiP here or should I make a gallery?

You can post a gallery here.

Ok, thanks. I'll make a couple of simple recolors, splices, and customs and post a gallery.