Looking for a specific shader for my neo-traditional tattoo style

Hello, I am looking to adapt a graphic design style into a shader but I have no idea where to start after trying a cell shading technique that didn’t quite fit well.

Attached is a sample. The idea is to have an out line, which i have achieved, but also to have white space between the outline and the “colour”(black or red) . I would appreciate if anyone can point me in the right direction tutorial wise or suggest any existing shaders I can tamper with that is within this aesthetic.

Thanks in advance.

The background needs to be transparent to use as a tattoo.

  1. Connect the transparent alpha value to the alpha in the shading.

  1. Extracts white by making it an alpha region.

This may depend on your source image/vector… for an image a simple color select and border grow and overpaint the selection with any image app might do like so:

… also possibly using any color to transparent function…


Thanks so much for taking the time to break this down for me. I was more so asking how make a shader that looks like the concept/illustration. So using the provided concept on this

What to you think “the shader” can do for you ??? You have some geometry and you have to color some faces accordingly. Maybe per face so you have to build the geometry appropriately or via UV map and you have to make the image accordingly…

If you use curves for the legs you might use something like this…

You may want a look at greasepencil or freestyle lines.

Otherwise if you really want a shader route, volume absorbtion (slow)
Or a fresnel/ layer weight shader?

Hope that helps.

I spent some time last night figuring it out. I admit I had to use an existing shader, KOMIKAZE TOON SHADERS, provided by a Doublegum on Blender Market. It was a combination of creating and outline using the solidify mod. method (may try geonodes next) for the black outline and an edited KOMIKAZE “Aqua” shader to achieve this desired look…I can upload the shader-nodes if needed.

Thanks for all the feedback from the community.


Looks cool.

Thank you!