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.
