General Colouring Discussion

[Emperor]

Just general colouring discussion thread for tips and tricks on how to best pull this off.

We have the first colouring challenge running here.

• Colouring in Photoshop
• Colouring Tutorial Link

You may also find some useful links in the tips and tutorials thread.

[Jim_Campbell]

All the links in the Colouring Tutorial thread are dead, Emp ...

You could find a lot worse place to start than pro colourist Mark Sweeney's extensive range of tutorials, real nuts & bolts stuff, that are available as PDF downloads from his website.

Cheers!

Jim

[Emperor]

All the links in the Colouring Tutorial thread are dead, Emp ...

The Internet is rubbish!!

Here is the new link to the D'Israeli colouring tips. You can also go via his main site and click "education". He is, of course, The Man and his advice is pretty clear and straightforward.

[mygrimmbrother]

I've bumped this to hopefully stimulate a new discussion. It has become apparent that I spend longer colouring a page of comic art than I do pencilling and drawing it. Probably about twice as long. Surely this is backwards! I know this is probably down to my own style - I tend to build up several dense layers and then paint areas out to reveal the inks. This is time consuming but produces a satisfying result (usually).

But seeing as I'm taking the idea of 'going pro' a lot more serious lately and that I do actually enjoy the colouring process as much as any other aspect, I wondered if anyone fancied sharing or briefly describing their own process?
(and hopefully I'll then be able to speed up my own colouring!)

BTW - does anyone knwo if Chris Blythe ever posts on here, or has his own blog/site? I'd love to get an insight into his techniques. Those short video tutorials Disraeli posted were fantastic - if Chris produced something similar, I'd be a happy bunny sir.

[Mike Gloady]

I'm finding colouring very difficult I have to say.  I tend to slap down a layer of whatever base colour is going on a secion and build up highlights and lowlights but I'm sure there's an easier way of figuring which colours should go where......  I end up treating it like a painting but I reckon there must be an easier, more intuitive method given the digital gear most of us are using. 

The D'Israeli stuff is certainly handy though.  Gives me some ideas.

[uncle fester]

D'Israeli's method is interesting but I'm not nearly precise enough with pencils for it to work well

If I've got a finished ink page I normally have about five layers underneath to mix colours in and one on top of the inks for lighting and other things I want to emphasise.

Within the five underneath, normally one is set aside for actual background tones, one for base colours (that end up as deep shadows and/or what I call 'second inks', two for main colour (one for Balance Adjusting if I start to second guess my initial colour ideas) and the fifth for detail.

This does involve a lot of sodding about but I prefer the painted look to things as opposed to the neat and tidy airbrushed look that most strips seem to have. Plus, across five layers you can afford to experiment without losing other aspects of the colour that you like. This process (in theory), saves the time you might lose when changing colour schemes mid-way through when you decide you're not keen on them anymore. It does occasionally go tits up, mind 

[Mike Gloady]

Fester, I'm currently attempting a Mongrol piece so I'll be sure to give that a try as soon as I've got finished inks.

[Emperor]

I've mentioned colour holds to Matt before and they are a very useful technique to use for fire, energy or atmospheric distance effects (and it can just help the main figure "pop" more in a complex scene) - Jim uses a few in or latest FF.

Some links on that (note Sweeney also covers this):
www.penciljack.com/forum/showthread.php?57023-Color-Holds-in-Photoshop
www.thecomicforums.com/forum2//index.php?showtopic=160841

Just using sparingly as some don't like them, although that might be back in the day with more primitive printing technology, from Steve Grant's favourite things in comics on Steranko's Nick Fury work (illustrated by this image):

Comics publishers and production staff, not to mention printers, have never been fond of color holds, the use of color as shapes without black lines to anchor them down. Jim Steranko, in his fitful run at Marvel, was a color hold pioneer, and the main proponent of op and pop art in comics art. (Which, given Roy Lichtenstein's series of recreated panels from war and romance comics as fine art, and works by other painters that either mimicked or incorporated comics, was a by then belated but necessary bringing it all back home.) By the time Steranko produced this sequence, the tossing around of "massive energy" was a mainstay cliché of superhero comics – but nobody ever visualized sheer energy better on a comics page.

I also found this link while nosing around which gives more "old school" tips (including the use of vellum):
www.hoboes.com/pub/Comics/Comics%20as%20a%20Career/Rob%20Davis/Colorists%20Part%201

Also there is a book Hi-Fi Color For Comics: Digital Techniques for Professional Results:

www.amazon.co.uk/Hi-Fi-Color-Comics-Techniques-Professional/dp/1581809921/

It gets great reviews:

www.amazon.com/Hi-Fi-Color-Comics-Techniques-Professional/dp/1581809921

One of my links above is from the forum dedicated to the book so if you need help with anything they have there (or want to take it further) that'd be a good start:

www.thecomicforums.com/forum2//index.php?showforum=207

[Jim_Campbell]

Jim uses a few in or latest FF.

FWIW, that was a rather interesting learning experience -- I thought I was inking that page for colour (using very little hatching or feathering) but I still horrendously over-inked it and then had to waste quite a lot of time turning about 2/3 of the inks into colour holds.

Had I been a better artist, or at least planning ahead more, I would have either used less black and trusted the colours to do more, or more black and tried to go for a much more watercolour-y, wash style of colouring.

Cheers!

Jim

[mygrimmbrother]

Yeah, but the finished result was awesome!

[Gibson Quarter]

Thanks for the links all, I've never really been able to color well yet, and I've been lucky enought to have other great folks work over my stuff. (like jamie Grant, Radiator and shortly....MGB!)

That said, its on the radar screen to tackle soon, so I'll be sure to put some of these links to work. Please keep them coming! 

[Jim_Campbell]

Also there is a book Hi-Fi Color For Comics: Digital Techniques for Professional Results:

www.amazon.co.uk/Hi-Fi-Color-Comics-Techniques-Professional/dp/1581809921/

It gets great reviews:

www.amazon.com/Hi-Fi-Color-Comics-Techniques-Professional/dp/1581809921

I will say of the above that it tells you how to produce coloured artwork in a very specific, US-centric style using the 'cut and grad' style, where you create a selection with the lasso tool (cutting parts of it out with the minus lasso if necessary)  and then filling it with gradients of varying opacities. This isn't a brilliant example, but you can sort of see what I mean here.

That said, the sections on trapping and flatting techniques are worth the asking price alone.

Cheers!

Jim

[Emperor]

Also there is a book Hi-Fi Color For Comics: Digital Techniques for Professional Results:

www.amazon.co.uk/Hi-Fi-Color-Comics-Techniques-Professional/dp/1581809921/

It gets great reviews:

www.amazon.com/Hi-Fi-Color-Comics-Techniques-Professional/dp/1581809921

I will say of the above that it tells you how to produce coloured artwork in a very specific, US-centric style using the 'cut and grad' style, where you create a selection with the lasso tool (cutting parts of it out with the minus lasso if necessary)  and then filling it with gradients of varying opacities. This isn't a brilliant example, but you can sort of see what I mean here.

Yes I was meaning to point out that there work is fairly mainstream comic book work:

http://comicbookdb.com/creator.php?ID=971

So, while top-notch, some of the techniques might not suit your style (and might give it a more... uniform, standardised feel) but if you take what you need and adapt what you can then it might be useful.

[Jim_Campbell]

I've  stumbled on some incredibly useful stuff here, mainly about colouring linework.

Cheers!

Jim

[Jim_Campbell]

Yeah, but the finished result was awesome!

Aww, shucks! It was the dragons that made it ...

Cheers!

Jim