You guys always know how to pull off these fancy tricks, so perhaps you can help me with this. Nintendo's newest round of games all have this amazing "soft" look to them visually, no more hard light-to-dark gradients. Instead, there's backlighting or that layered skin effect, underlighting, *something*. That's what I'm trying to figure out, and then how to do it.
Examples:
Kirby here, and maybe Pikachu's chest just under his arm.
These two cube men, with some ridiculously soft lighting/shadowing system, although I think it might be different from the others.
The back of this girls head, just under her hairline. It definitely glows, but only at the edge of her head.
Here Pascal, the red otter, has the glow all around his head. The girl also has it, but on her jawline.
So I'm guessing the glow is a reflection, due to what fancy-schmancy art class still life taught me.
^art skewl
Although I'm also inclined to think it's a skin transparency layering mimicking thing, like the PS4 demo by David Cage (only significantly cheaper on the processor, I'm sure).
And I still think that Cube Men one is a different shader/lighting/thing altogether, but I don't know how to describe it compared to the others.
So, thoughts? Directions? Help? I want my game to have friendly, soft, and welcoming visuals. So far, all of the above do an excellent job of that, so I'd like to learn what I can from them. Many thanks!