How to make characters look "smooth"?

I am trying to teach myself how to photoshop, and I was wondering how to get my episode characters to look like the ones on episode official story covers…you know, how they’re smooth, the colors are prettier, they look more real - do any of you know how I could do that? This is what I mean, by the way:

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Hi! Even though I am nowhere near as good as an artist as the Episode team, I’ve dabbled in some edits here and there. In order to achieve that look, you must do some drawing yourself (hair, makeup, clothes, etc.) and enhance features by using brighter colors to shade. For poses that look more real, you may need to combine body parts from multiple different poses to make the desired one. The main thing that makes Episode’s characters more “real” is deeper shading on the hair and skin. I recommend using Medibang Paint!

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I just downloaded Medibang Paint - Krita just wasn’t working for me, I’m not good at this stuff :worried:
Do you mind if I ask how exactly you shade things? Do you just enhance the shadows and highlights on the characters using airbrush? Sorry if I’m being a pain.

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No, you’re not being a pain! To enhance shadows and highlights, make a layer over your “model” and use the eyedropper tool to get the skin color. Lighten/darken for shadows and highlights and you can either use the airbrush or use the pen and blur it. I find that using the pen is easier because Episode characters, at least for ink, tend to have sharper lines, but you can do whatever is easiest for you!

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