Art & Story – Your Comic From The Ground Up, Pt 7

[private]We’re back with another installment of the Your Comic From The Ground Up series, and this time it’s all about digitizing, toning, and coloring! As with previous episodes, we begin with a theoretical discussion on this stage of the process, followed by some practical strategies to make your comic a reality.

Theory

Considerations when choosing between coloring and toning your comic:

Thematic Tones

Determine the level of vibrancy/sophistication in your story’s tone

• A wider range of colors lends to a more energetic, bombastic storytelling style
• Limited color palettes lend to a more sophisticated or subdued storytelling style
• Greyscale color palette leaves more opportunities for the illustration itself to deliver tonal data (can be bombastic OR subdued, but linework/layout/blocking/moment choice delivers more of this data)

Rendering Style

Regardless of color palette, the style of rending affects story tone and clarity

• Don’t compete with your line style (ex. over render colors on highly detailed line style)
• Choose a rendering style that contributes to the tone of the work
• Flat colors/tones
• Painterly
• Gradient
• Mechanical Tones/Ben Day Dots

Delivery Mechanism(s)

Will it be digital only, or will you print it, too?

• In digital distribution, color is virtually free (though you have to worry about audience monitor calibration)
• Color is expensive in print, and you have to learn a little more about file prep

Time

Choosing between color and b&w and which rendering style you land on will affect the time required to complete a page!

• It’s okay to choose a rendering style with this as your top concern–the rest of your production values/style will adjust to fit

A few thoughts on Digital vs. Analog coloring/rendering

Pros for digital

• Easy to edit/redo
• Easy to store
• Easy to prep for printing
• No tools to clean

Cons for digital

• More tricky to make it look analog (if that’s what you want)
• Software/hardware is expensive
• Storage solutions get expensive

Pros for analog

• Immediacy of completed work
• Original artwork to display/sell
• Cheap to store

Cons for analog

• Tool maintenance
• Tools may be hard to find
• Digitizing may be trickier, depending on image size

Practical

Digitizing and Cleanup:

Scanning

• Scan line art @ 600dpi grayscale (no sharpening or filters–raw scan)
• Open in Photoshop
• Image>Adjustments>Levels (input levels set to 129, 1.00, 131)
• Image>Adjustments>Threshold (set slider around 128)
• Use Pencil tool to clean up lineart (fixing inking errors, filling in blacks)
• SAVE THIS VERSION IN A FOLDER CALLED “INKS”
• If grayscale or color, reduce file size to 300 dpi If pure B&W, leave at 600 dpi
• SAVE THIS VERSION IN A FOLDER CALLED “COLORS” OR “TONES”

Flats Prep

• Once line art is cleaned up, duplicate the layer and call the copy below “flats”
• Isolating lineart on its own layer (tutorial here)
• Using Cocoapotrace to turn lineart into vector art
• Hide line art layer and use Bpelt plugin
• Finish cleaning up flats (using magic wand & lasso tools w “Anti Alias” OFF)
• Duplicate flats layer and name it “colors” or “tones”

Coloring/Toning

• Lasso Tool
• Quick Mask
• Creating a color/tone Swatch Palette
• Color holds
• Using layers to create color harmonies

Analog Coloring/Toning

• Preferred Brushes
• Paper
• Using Mechanical Tones

Assignment for this episode:

• One chapter of comic cleaned up and toned/colored.

For more on the subjects covered in this episode, check out these past Art & Story podcasts:

• A&S 105-The Big Tone

The Art & Story Theme is written and performed by Mike Gilmore & Mike Johnston of The Northwoods Improvisors.

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