[Rinaldo]

I was wondering if all those people out there who do a bit of comic colouring (or otherwise colouring line art) would care to share ideas on the subject. Techniques, methodologies etc. I've been doing a bit of it lately and wanted to know how other people do it.

I posted a brief explanation of my approach in a previous thread http://www.sijun.com/dhabih/ubb/Forum2/HTML/004805.html
Any comments and especially criticism on this would be much appreciated.


Here's a few things I've been working on:

Just a sketch of mine that I coloured.


Chapel's character and drawing. Only the colours are mine.


Heh... on another note, I was looking through an old Previews and saw the cover for Steampunk 6. Ouch!... realised where I got that pose for that Mech arm pic I posted a while back. Not a rip in the true sense of the word but I can just see myself being flamed when the book comes out I remember thinking that I had seen it somewhere before. Pretty sure it would have been in steampunk. But I couldn't see it in any of the issues I've got.

*Sigh*


[This message has been edited by Rinaldo (edited September 23, 2000).]

[Chapel]

Cool Rinaldo. Nice choice of colors. Only thing is he was supposed to have on gloves, but it looks cool anyway. I have a new pic I'm going to post in a few days. Finally got ahold of an E.V.E. Protomecha comic. Liquid! is pretty good.

By the way, when are you going to get a website? Need to put one up so I can link to you.

[This message has been edited by Chapel (edited September 23, 2000).]

[Rinaldo]

Chapel-
Yeah I noticed too late that he was supposed to have gloves on It doesn't look that bad tho.

I've got all six of the protomecha issues. I have to say that I think Liquid are getting sloppy. They're just making everthing shiny. I mean cloth, metal, skin, plastic. all have tha same specularity. The older stuff they've done like Battle Chasers is a lot better IMHO. a lot more texture as opposed to just making eyerthign look like plastic. They can't write either

I've gonna get a site up soon. My Girl friend was going to do some of the design for it because she wants to get into web a bit. but she's a bit busy at the moment. I'll do a link exchange with ya when it's up tho.

The charachter was a lot of fun to colour. a lot more colour friendly than I thought. (sorry about the gloves That was a bit sloppy)

Got any colouring tips?

[Chapel]

Not really any tips. I make a line art layer. Then I block in the sections on seperate layers. I set the layers to multiply. Then I use the radial gradiant set to screen mode at about 25% opacity. That helps the light source. I then use the lasso to mask off sections and use the airbrush tool set to the same settings as the gradiant. That is for the highlights. I'm going to try some different techniques with my next pic though.

[jasonN]

Where's Scoop? He is da bomb when it comes to things like this.

Very nice pics rinaldo, the colours you selected are coherent and the highlights are very nice. Props to chapel for the illustration and inking.

I really like comic style stuff, but I guess all I can add is that when I'm doing anime pictures, I don't use the gradient when I do the highlights. I just use the polygonal lasso tool. Does anyone else do that for anime style pics? It gives a really nice, crisp, animation cell look. Plus, the images are simpler so you can get a great presentable piccy done in a relatively small amount of time.
-jason

[CapnPyro]

great job, im a fan of comic art.. well.. its my style. cool choice of colors, the girls face is nice and warm. the goblins top half looks nice and well shaped, his lower half gets a tad flat though. If you ever need any comic art to color *hint hint wink wink nudge nudge say no more, say no more* be sure to check out my site, id love to see any of my stuff colored

-CapnPyro-

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http://home1.gte.net/capnpyro

[ArMaDoN]

What is left to say. Hey you know what art is done very welll. i live in south africa and comic art is cool over there where you people live .. here in south africa i am almost the only person that draws on a graphics tablet... ehhehe well then TitanAE is done very well what do you guys think .. i would do art for that

or then again i maybe wrong

[Rinaldo]

Jason-I'm gonna try some anime style stuff in a bit. Like you say it's very neat and crisp. Stylish

CapnPyro- I've had a look at some of your pencils. If I get some time outside of what I've got lined up I might have a go at colouring. Can't promise anything tho

ArMaDoN-Thanks Haven't seen TitanAE.

I just realise I screwed up my mini tut in that link. the seperations were not what I wanted. I saved those and then changed it but never got around to uploading. fixed it now.

I'll repost it here just in case anyone missed it and is too lazy to click on the link (ahem...plug).
I'm really interested in the workflow. I want the fastest way of doing this as possible.

quote:

---

Originally posted by Rinaldo:
[B]
This is what I'm doing at the moment. The idea is to separate the line art onto a transparent layer so you can paint underneath it. I'm not sure how much you know so I'll just do a brief run down. I've been thinking of doing a big tut on this but I need to work out a few things first. I've managed to make it all pretty quick. I�m using Photoshop 5.5 and I�m not sure if the magic wand tools works as good as in previous versions because I noticed that things were working out better now that I upgraded from 5.
First I scan (duh) in greyscale. Then In the case of a sketch like this I'll do a bit of clean up. I can either use a light table to do another cleaner drawing of I can clean up in PS. It depends on which I think is going to be better and faster. On this occasion I go around with the rubber stamp tool. And get rid of all the construction lines. And stuff I don�t want. I use the RS tool because I want to keep the texture of the paper. If I wanted a cleaner line traditional of most comic books and the scan was a bit messy like this one there are other ways of cleaning up. You can use a brush set to Overlay as a blending mode. Set your colours to the default B+W. Now if you go over a sketchy line with black it will make everything darker. If I use white it will posturise the lines. If I play with tis a bit I can get a cleaner line that is solid Black. It won�t be as nice and clean as an inked line but it will look ok. (If this is unclear then I�ll explain more, use the tools and you will probably see what I mean). When you have the lines as you want them. I use an action that separates lines onto a layer, makes more layers and names them as I want). You can make your own by following the steps. But the action allows everything to work very fast.
First I go into the channels palette. Hold down control (I�m on a PC so all you MAC peps make any translations, shouldn�t be hard). And click on the single greyscale channel that should be there (I have anti alised unchecked in my magic wand options but I�m not sure what effect this has, I remember doing it a while ago and it worked better). This selects all the white on the page. Then inverse the selection. This selects all the lines and shading. Then make a new layer and name it lines. With your selection still active select this layer and fill with black. Get rid of the selection. You should now have some lines on a new layer. Then I make another layer and fill it with white. I call this �flats�. I make another layer and call it �shading�. Make another one and call it �cuts�. The layer order should be from the bottom; your original lines on your background (these don�t matter any more and can be hidden or deleted. Then your flats layer. Then your shading layer. Then your cuts layer. then on the very top your lines layer. You can also have a layer on top of this, which you put stuff like shines on and stuff but I don�t do this all the time.
All this is done via an action. I scan, clean up if required, and then play the action.

Now I can start painting. The idea is to use the flats layer to put down the base colours, you can then use these colours as a selection tool. This saves lots of file space that would otherwise be taken up with channel saved selections etc, and makes it easy to select areas. Have a look at the pic to see what I mean. I tend to work from dark to light. Or maybe a bit more of a dark middle tone and then put in some shadows. Once I've got all the colours on the flats layer I play around with the colours a bit. Using the paintbucket tool I can change the flat colours by clicking on them with the colour I want selected. The colours will change a bit because as I said before I�m working from light to dark. But I can get an idea. Put in a BG colour now if you�re going to have one.
Then I use the shading layer to do�well�shading. I select an area like the face for example by using the magic wand, making sure the flats layer is selected and then clicking on the bit I want to work on. It is important to do the shading right. I avoid actually rendering on this layer. No definition here. I use a big airbrush or the gradient tool. The shading gives visual interest. Even if it�s just a tiny colour variation it will make the difference. I�ve done a bit of modelling on the guy in the pic but not much. The face gets a bit more attention here because it is a lot smoother, and thus needs modelling with the airbrush. Use the selections to your advantage.
It actually looks pretty good at the moment. And some of the cut�s I�ve done are not quite right in the example (I�m still learning).
But now I go to the cuts layer and put in all the little bits. The highlights on all the greblies etc. You also do the cuts here. This refers to when I make a selection with the lasso tool (or if you want a precise line use the pen tool and convert to selection) and then airbrush it. You don�t have to airbrush the whole lot. play around with only airbrushing parts of the selection so some of it fades off. The cuts are where you define the sharper edges etc.

I don�t really know what else to say. This is what I�m doing at the moment. I don�t think it�s perfect. I�m also thinking about organising the layers differently. Maybe have a flats, shadows, highlights setup. Or whatever. Different things for different purposes. For Manga style colouring use a flats and shadows setup of whatever. The reason it�s important to work this way with layers is that if you have bits everywhere, it wastes time and makes editing harder. I can easily erase a cut or something without effecting the rest. Change the flats colour, delete some lines that are looking wrong. It�s hard to make a habit of changing to the right layer. I always start doing stuff on the flats layer because I�m on it from selecting. But it�s better to undo and swap layers than to leave it and be unable to select from that layer.
Have a look at comic books to see how they have handled different things. I can�t really go into great detail about everything.

This is the way that I do it, not the �right way�. I haven�t been doing it for all that long so I�m no authority.

Hope this helps. Any questions just ask


B]

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[Dean Welsh]

Hey man, Looks like you're WELL on the right track.

I don't know if anyone mentioned it but..

check out http://www.comiccolors.com/ and the forum there Laura Depuy (the eisner award winning Colorist for 2000) and Dave McCaig and a bunch of others post on the board. They'd probably have an easier time answering your questions.

Someone said earlier about Liquid Slipping? I agree totally. Protomecha has like everything covered in Baby oil and Bathed in Blue light.

There's also http://www.figma.com with a few tutorials to your aid.

[Seraphire]

Did someone say comic coloring? Wahoo! Thats my thing.

I use the same basic techniques to color as Chapel. I don't do the cell look, but the polygon lasso is a good way of achieving that effect. I use the basic lasso for cuts. I use various techniques for actually coloring. I like to try a match the lineworks style. Other times I just experiment.

I hate Liquid. I can't stand that everything plastic look. And its spreading. Everyone is copying it. Its just eyecandy. The use of shiny colors catches the eye. But it ruins the artistic aspect. It's compareble to a penciller drawing girls with double D breasts and a 2 inch waist. Dynamics are one thing, but many pencillers are taking it past that and are creating disgustingly disproportional figures to reel in the suckers. And Liquid is doing the same thing. And they are becoming more popular. I've had people refer to my colors as being Liquid quality, or Liquidish. I don't color anything like them.

As for pros I like. BadAss, Drew,(My favorite), The Guy, Joe Chidido(sp?), Edgar Delago(He does Battlegods. The textures he does are very cool.), and there are others that I can't think of now.

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The Groove is in the Heart!

Seraphire
Michael Jon Birkhofer
Seraphire's Cafe/The Monochrome

[Chapel]

Seraphire: Joe Chiodo and he is the best IMHO. He is a natural painter though, so that helps. I like Joe Quesada's color stuff too. I know he is a penciller, but when he does covers he usually does the colors on them too. Check out the last uh.. 6 issues of Daredevil to see what I mean.

Sucks.. I get more responses about my lineart in Rinaldo's post than I do in mine.

[Rinaldo]

Thanks people. I've been to comiccolours.com before but I didn't know the MB was active. looks interesting.

I don't really understand the technique Chapel described. what's the layer order? and when you say that you block in the sections on different layers what do you mean?

Liquid used to be good. They were one of the first to make it all work IMHO. Does anyone know if they're going to be colouring Battle Chasers again? Maybe the total shiny style is just somethign they do for their own books.
I'm not a big fan of all that "good girl art" that Chiodo does but his colours are pretty darn good.
Bad@$$ rocks

Oh and Chapel I think that David Mack painted over Quesada's pencils for those Daredevil covers.

[Chapel]

David Mack is the writer for those issues. I think they just put his name on front for the heck of it. It looks like the stuff Quesada has done before i.e. Ninjak. In either case its pretty good. The colorist on the inside artwork is pretty good too. Richard Isanove.

[Rinaldo]

Mack painted those covers or Quesada is a compleate hack . Mack is writer artist of Kabuki. The painterly style that they used for some of those interiors was based around mack's style. Maybe we're talking about different stuff tho, Ish 11 with the little cupids and stuff. I know that was painted by Mack. He did some of the layouts for those DD books as well.

Heh doesn't matter. I thought the colouring in DD was pretty good.

[This message has been edited by Rinaldo (edited September 24, 2000).]

[Chapel]

I never heard of David Mack before that. Oh well, the covers are good. I know Quesada's old covers are simular and I like those too.

[Liquid!]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Rinaldo:
Liquid used to be good. They were one of the first to make it all work IMHO. Does anyone know if they're going to be colouring Battle Chasers again? Maybe the total shiny style is just somethign they do for their own books.

---

Sorry to hear that you don't enjoy what we're doing. We put alot of time and effort into our work and ultimately hope that the fans get a kick out of it. If they don't then we've missed the point.

quote:

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Originally posted by Sepahire:
I've had people refer to my colors as being Liquid quality, or Liquidish. I don't color anything like them.

---

I had a chance to look at your site, and I think your stuff looks nothing like anything we do. Not even remotely

Best,
Christian Lichtner



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Liquid!

[Dean Welsh]

Hey Christian,

Remember way back in Prophet #3 or so where they did that little write up about the coloring. I just wanted you to know after seeing the little thumbnail of your Guides, I actually started paying attention to the coloring for the first time. Wondering what was lost in the translation. Thank whoever was responsible for those pages for the eyeopener for me would you?

Dean

[Chapel]

Chris: Just how many people are at Liquid! out of curiosity? I sent an email in to find out about job openings and haven't received a reply yet. Oh well, in Rinaldo's defense he did like Liquid! he just doesn't like the new stuff. In my opinion it looks like you guys are getting a little carried away with all the shiny stuff. I mean come on.. the little scientist guy in EVE has a shiny beard. Almost like making a pic in photoshop and running the Lens Flare filter all over the place. I just noticed your name on the cover of EVE #5, so I wont go in to details of what I think about the rest of the comic.

By the way, I just started buying comics again to use as reference material, because I want to pursue a job in the industry. What are some other titles that your company has done? Oh and the whole reason I bought any issues of EVE is because Rinaldo recommended it because of the colors.

[This message has been edited by Chapel (edited September 24, 2000).]

[Seraphire]

Kick ass! LOL.

There's nothing like making an attack on someone like I did ,then finding out they are listening. Oops.

My stuff isn't at the quality of yours, yet. Yet. Some day, I'll be there. LOL.

But I still like other pros, better. Sorry.

I love Graza's pencils on EVE.

On another note.
Dean mentioned he didn't like the blue overtone. I do. Not many colorists, take that route to create an overall tone. Most are too shy about that kind of thing. They keep it minimal. I like the dominate blue. On the other hand, If you look at the comic, Wildcats, It is very monochromatic. It has a yellow, brown overall tone. But the colorist doesn't create enough depth, or motion. The Liquid guys do create those items within the blue.
With my luck, the wildcats colorist is going to read this...

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The Groove is in the Heart!

Seraphire
Michael Jon Birkhofer
Seraphire's Cafe/The Monochrome

[Liquid!]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Dean Welsh:
Hey Christian,

Remember way back in Prophet #3 or so where they did that little write up about the coloring. I just wanted you to know after seeing the little thumbnail of your Guides, I actually started paying attention to the coloring for the first time. Wondering what was lost in the translation. Thank whoever was responsible for those pages for the eyeopener for me would you?

Dean

---

Thank you very much. Actually that was me begging an pleading, because I felt that no one had any idea how much work went into making guides and that what you were looking at, in terms of coloring, had very little to do with my work, rather was an 'interpretation' of what I had done on the guides. In truth, the reason we started Liquid was because we just wanted to do everything directly on the page, rather than doing guides. Thanks for the kind words.

quote:

---

Chapel wrote:

I sent an email in to find out about job openings and haven't received a reply yet. Oh well, in Rinaldo's defense he did like Liquid! he just doesn't like the new stuff. In my opinion it looks like you guys are getting a little carried away with all the shiny stuff. I mean come on.. the little scientist guy in EVE has a shiny beard. Almost like making a pic in photoshop and running the Lens Flare filter all over the place. I just noticed your name on the cover of EVE #5, so I wont go in to details of what I think about the rest of the comic.
By the way, I just started buying comics again to use as reference material, because I want to pursue a job in the industry. What are some other titles that your company has done? Oh and the whole reason I bought any issues of EVE is because Rinaldo recommended it because of the colors.

---

The 'shinyness' of things tends to be a stylistic choice we make. Although keep in mind that it can be 'exagerated' by the fact that we're trying to increase contrast in our work so that we don't loose the standard 20-30% of rendering your work loses when it hits CMYK Presses and paper. However your basing this on ONE (EVE #5) issue out of hundreds we've done (Not saying that others haven't printed this way).

We try to be very good about answering EVERY single email we get. I think that if you took the time to write, then the least I could do is write back. Of course, deadlines tend to make that a difficult proposition. Anyways, if you haven't heard back from us you should email again. We're not in the habit of not answering direct requests.

SoulSaga is another book that is creator owned by Stephen Platt and myself, and is colored by Liquid!.

quote:

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Seraphire writes:


My stuff isn't at the quality of yours, yet. Yet. Some day, I'll be there. LOL.

But I still like other pros, better. Sorry.

---

No need to apologize. Afterall, half the beauty of art is your own perception of it.

However, allow me to make a note here, that what limited amount I've seen from the 'Battlegods' promotional stuff it seems that their 'textures' are heavily inspired by our work. As far as other things are concerned I would recommend that you look at paintings for inspiration, rather than other 'colorists'...

Just my thoughts.

-Christian



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Liquid!

[burn0ut]

Liquid goes beyond color, they make the pages come alive. if youve seen alot of there stuff, they add alot of uNF to the pages with there blur they do to things like breakin rubble/ and gunfire, to make it look like rapid movement and really gives the pages some zing, Colors, they do quite well, i dont understand what you guys are saying about making everything look plastic or shiney, if you read BC (battle chasers) Nothing looks plastic, i think most stuff looks Real good for the type of armor/clothing they color, and you must be looking to close to one point of the picture rather then as a whole.

Rinaldo i think your coloring is turning out great, id like to see your stuff inked real nice then colored too

have a nice day!@

[Gigabyte]

Hey Seraphire! How's your foot taste LOL. You goofy guy! BTW Hi everybody. I already know some of you slackers already. Hi Dean! Long time so see

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Website | Message Board

[Chapel]

Chris: I'm not basing my opinion off of just one issue. I have issue 6 too. But like I said before I've just recently started buying comics again to use as reference. I threw down about $200 in the last 2-3 weeks on random comics. I try to pick up different style comics to see what is out there. I will tell you this though.. out of that $200 worth of comics the 2 EVEs I have do stand out. I like your stuff I just think its a little too much eye candy right now. Just my opinion I guess. Out of recent comics the coloring I like the most was in a 4-issue mini-series for the Inhumans. I think the guys who did it call themselves "Studio F".

By the way, pay no attention to me. You have the job that I wish I could have.

[This message has been edited by Chapel (edited September 24, 2000).]

[Dean Welsh]

GIGS!!! Hey man! e-mail me Your newest piece or something or get yourself on ICQ and look me up.

Want to Bitch about Dave Stewart's work and see if he feels compelled to put his two cents in like Christian did?

I'll Start: That Dave Stewart doesn't he know there are already entirely too many Daves working at Darkhorse? Geeze.

Seraphire: Well truthfully the blue overtone is what compelled me to buy the whole series. Plus Gunner looks wicked-cool. but then he's supposed to be shiney and blue...

Christian: So it's you I should be thanking fo the prophet thing? Thank you SOOO much.

-Dean

[Gigabyte]

Hell I'll just post it right here. I hope Rinaldo doesn't mind since it's his thread and all. It's a bit different than my regular stuff, I was going for that monetone look



Hope you like!

[burn0ut]

looks good giga, i think you could have gone into more detail with the dragon scales tho

[Rinaldo]

Chris-
Ouch! I�ll never be a whining little fanboy again. You guys are actually listening.

The first comic I saw after a huge hiatus was the BC preview in FF Fantasy. It was literally what got me into art. I spent hours working out how those colours were done. I Didn't know they where done on comp so I learnt watercolour and gouache�Heh. Don�t get me wrong it�s not that I don�t like Liquid! I get most of the stuff you do and you�re definitely my favourite colourists but if I look at EVE #1 and then #6 I think the earlier stuff has a lot more sophistication. The shininess works ok for EVE because of the nature of the subject matter. But, That level of spectrality doesn�t fit with something like Battle Chasers. Or with Soul Saga where there�s a lot of cross hatching/texturing. Just MHO.

I�m totally loosing it here LIQUID!!!??!!? Ahhh man.


Gigabyte- I have no prob, That�s why I started this thread. Just give us some idea of how you work. Your stuff looks very nice

[dEATH.Tool]

There's a lot of Oz and Top Cow MB people in here! Freaky.

[CapnPyro]

hey Giga, i know you from the top cow board, go start your own thread with that vagrant pic, its sweet! youll get more/better replies that way

-Capn

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http://home1.gte.net/capnpyro

[Darkmoon]

your colouring would work better with a clean sketch... its distracting.... but good

the face especially. very cool.

the pink is weird tho *just noticed it*
or magenta, whatever.

peetie! do more

-Lisa