I've mentioned before that I'm most likely putting out my comic in black and white first, and then color second, when I release it digitally. The reason for this is that it's cheaper to put out the physical comic in B&W, and honestly I'm not the greatest at color. But then again this is all about the learning experience so I thought I'd give folks a Valentines Day 'treat'.
When it comes to starting the coloring process, most industry experts will use flats. And what are flats you ask. Think of it like a palette for choosing colors, and if you're working with an expert colorist, a way of saving time and heart ache as the the colorist will know what your looking for. A friend of mine used to do flats for a certain comic company that starts with I, wink wink, so I think I'll try to badger him into doing a much better article than I am. Also DC Comic's book; Guide to digitally drawing comics, while focusing a lot on creating everything in a digital space (which requires the expensive but awesome tablet interfaces) can be a great help as can 'Digital Pre-Press' for comics.
But I created something for a really basic example, a zombie that for obvious reasons loves turtles:
Now you may want to look at the lined art. One thing I personally have a problem with is closing off lines. What I mean by this is that I don't connect all of my lines, so when I use the paintbucket tool in either Gimp or Photoshop that I flood the entire 'canvas' of the peice. So this time I tried to keep the shapes simple and basic, and connect every open space. The result was it took just a few moments to create the finished flat. Which looks liiiiiiiike:
Now in no way would I consider this anywhere near a finished colorwise, BUT it shows whats great about using flats: I don't like the way the belt buckle looks. I know to change it. Also with the color in, I now know that I need to take the right side of the torso and fill that in better. So in a word, if you're doing a color comic USE FLATS (technically you'd have to in the long run anyway) but use them as a tool to check and see problems about your art and composition.
Still stuck at work (on Valentine's Day yeesh. My wife's going to be really thrilled) so if I can I'll post so more updates later.
this a great share, Trevor -- I love seeing the process. When I do flats digitally, I'll use the magic lasso to grab areas and then expand the field by a pixel or two and fill. I do that for each color, and put another layer of the black artwork on top with "darken" so that i maintain the lines but see the color I've sketched out.
ReplyDeleteThat's a really good tip, thanks Issac. Might edit the post to include that (crediting you of course).
ReplyDeleteAnother couple of tips if you don't mind.
ReplyDelete1. Make use of layers! In fact, overuse them, as long as you keep them organized. Make a layer for your turtle, and one for the zomb and one for the background. Hell, make one for the floor and one for the wall. And one for the turtle's head and legs and another for his shell, likewise separate out the zomb's clothes from his flesh and his head from his body and his hair from his head. This seems like a lot of extra work, but it will save a lot of time and effort when things have to be isolated and re-done later on.
2. Make good and sure that no matter how you're doing the flats, that anti-aliasing is off. Jaggies are your friend. This is so that precise selections can be made quickly after the flats are done and you can be sure that you're selecting everything you want at a time, and nothing that you don't.
3. I've done flats for myself and flats for other colorists. If you're doing them for yourself, you can cut yourself some slack. If you're doing them for somebody else, don't worry about getting the color right. In fact, I worked for one guy who insisted that all of the flats I did were grayscale. Think of it this way. What the flats are for is to pre-select different areas in the artwork so that the "real" colorist can isolate them and go about rendering the final colors as quickly as possible and still put out quality work. I did flats for a big-publisher's book once. I had loads of fun making a certain sightless lawyer (rhymes with "Batt Burdock") wear pink trousers and a green shirt under his cranberry suit. When the book came out he was in a boringly tasteful charcoal tweed.
One more thing...
ReplyDeleteI effin' LOVE your drawing.