Comic book coloring process

Four color separation comics, comic books, their origins. Breakdowns of my techniques, tips, and tricks in coloring comic books. Review by john erickson, september 2008 hifi color for comics teaches a popular method of coloring comic book art, called the cutandgrad or cutandbrush method depending which of two subtle variations you use, which is a hybrid of cartoonlike cell shading and realistic rendering. The pros guide to digital comic book coloring will not only teach you how to color in comics, but also how to think as a storyteller. Choosing good color markers for your comic coloring should be enough to separate your work from amateur comic book works. We do not currently offer refunds after enrollment. How to become a comic book colorist black ship books. In this video, ill show you what my digital coloring thought process is before.

Learn to use procreate, a powerful drawing and painting app available for ipad, to create stunning digital art. See more ideas about coloring pages, coloring pages for kids and coloring books. How to digitally colour comics with photoshop beginner tutorial. A comic book or comicbook, also called comic magazine or simply comic, is a publication that consists of comics art in the form of sequential juxtaposed panels that represent individual scenes. Introduction to comic book coloring comics experience. Josh blaylocks howto prose book about the business of comic book publishing, now includes tim seeleys companion writings on the behindthescenes realities of being a comic book artist. So you find that your childhood obsession with coloring books has carried over to your adulthood, and you want to color comic books professionally. Gary scott beatty runs aazurn publishing, is publisher of indie comics magazine and recently wrote the comic book retailer story number one. Some of these books below will form the most important and valuable parts of. Dc comics artist alex sinclair, 20 years professional colorist, shares his coloring process in superman unchained cover.

Chris has been very generous both with his time and his resources. So if one day your superawesome, worldfamous webcomic gets collected into a book. But this way gives you a good result and is a good starting point for understanding the basics. I have a very basic approach when it comes to style, so theres nothing particularly fancy, but i do want to go over the various special effects that i use. Comprehensive photoshop comic book coloring courses. Ann siri all of the classes, both the intro and advanced class have been of great help to me. In this case, you can settle for good color markers so the output quality closely reflects the comic books that you see in stores. If you really love what youre doing and care about what youre trying to say, its going to be a lot easier to dedicate the time and effort youre going to need. If you are interested in comic book coloring, a good place to start is hifi. Comic coloring creative comic art become a comic book. In the coloring with photoshop courses, youll learn the entire sequential comic book coloring process with a focus on the most important aspect storytelling. A cartoonist reflects on the subtle racism of shifting skin tones in a marvel comic. Learn how to color comics with his photoshop coloring tutorials filled with tips, tricks, and techniques for colorists of all skill levels.

Become a member today to support us publishing great comics. How to make a comic book, design, characters, and cover. It must have started relatively recently, since you note that newer technologies are responsible for this. The example above demonstrates how one of our students, drew, learned to color her own comics during the course of the project. This actionpacked adult coloring book is filled with readytocolor illustrations of the most iconic characters from dc comics history. This way, you can easily go to the part you want to focus on.

The development of digital coloring techniques was a critical component of this. This course is the result of everything i had learn the hard way. Comic book colorist and photoshop instructor k michael russell. Hiresolution, layered artwork of comic book pages, covers, and illustrations for all those process junkies out there. We are excited to bring a series of colorin comics to our readers. While the ben day process is commonly described in terms of dots ben day dots, other shapes may be used, such as parallel lines, textures, irregular effects or waved lines. Learn the fundamentals of comic book coloring, digital art with. In this second part, of my coloring process, we start rendering out some of the background stuffs. Everything is provided,the basics of the tools and even the tools themselves. Today, comic books are as popular as ever, and the comic book industry is a milliondollar creating a comic book is a detailed process that includes drafting the plot, designing thumbnail sketches and then the original drawings, and finally adding color and lettering. During that time ive had my work published by all the major north american comic book publishers including dc, marvel, image, dark horse, idw, legendary, and many others. Simply put, a colorists job is to apply color to a comic book.

Also, can you quote people who are debating the practice of recoloring comics. You need to really believe in your comic book concept and want to share it with others. Breaking down the types of comic coloring bleeding cool. Flatting is the process in which flat, contiguous, aliased shapes are laid in. Turn pencils into nonphoto blue lines in photoshop. Here is my first attempt to reveal all my secrets of how i color my comics. Several years ago, we created coloring with cell, a coloring book exploring sammy the cells world of cellular biology. This 20page coloring book was the first in the nation to describe the process and excitement of scientific research and to explore the role of animals in this process. The dc comics guide to coloring and lettering comics kindle edition by chiarello, mark, klein, todd, jim steranko. In this class, i will be teaching you from start to finish the process of creating a comic book.

The official site of comic book colorist and instructor k michael russell. Whether you have some photoshop experience or none at all this course is a must for anyone who has the slightest interest in the process of coloring a comic or any illustration with this technique. Photoshop actions to automate certain aspects of the coloring process. This is a detailed walkthrough of my full coloring process for my comics. If you are interested in comic book coloring, a good place to start is hifi color who have a nice howto section along with offer up some really good books on the process. To attend introduction to comic book coloring, you must register online. The goal of the comic book project was to teach new students how to become better storytellers. Comic books were much more disposable back twenty years ago, and the idea of keeping every issue you ever purchased safely. Typically, the job is broken up into two parts, flatting and coloring. Can you walk us through the process of coloring a page, from line work to finished. Fourcolor process and mid20 th century comic art have gone their separate ways one travelling as a computerassisted simulation of archaic print culture and the other as computerassisted art books, featuring crisp black lines, bleedfree white paper, and reconstructions of the original colorists designs. Comic book color swatches for photoshop neil mcallister. It will teach you new skills or expand on your knowledge of sequential comic book coloring.

Since my inks usually have blueline pencils underneath, i scan in full color, which means they can easily be filtered out. To make the colouring process easier i assign action shortcuts to. The thrust of gholsons main argument is that, no matter how good a remastering of these classic comics can be, giving them the look of a modern comic book, any recoloring process, especially one. Four color separation refers to the traditional printing process for comics and comic books, where images would be broken down into four different colors cyan, magenta, yellow and black, abbreviated as cmyk, and dots of each color would be separately printed onto the page.

In the flatting process, the basic areas of color are blocked out so the colorist knows what spaces to color what. Comic book color swatches for photoshop posted on july 9, 2011 by neil mcallister a recent blog post by ed piskor generated some interest in the old craft of coloring comic books in the days before comics were printed using full process color. Since my inks usually have blueline pencils underneath, i scan in. This became so incredibly popular with scientists, educators, and children alike that were at it again. You will only go that route if you really plan to sell the comic book for profit.

Comic book colorist job description, skills and tools. Heres what it really looks like when classic comics get. In this third lecture of a series on comic book illustration techniques, steve. Ive developed an approach to digital coloring that helps to stream line the process. The ben day process, named after illustrator and printer benjamin henry day jr. Dave stewarts interview and video on his coloring process. The practice of recoloring comics has long been hotly debated.

Now, when it comes to the technical side of this stuff, im pretty ignorant, and im completely in the dark as to what applications are the best, how to blend your colors, and stuff like that. No, the first thing you see in a comic book is the color. There are no stakes in privileging one comic book reproduction format over. Colouring comics is the best job in the art world, as far as im. Download it once and read it on your kindle device, pc, phones or tablets. The first alternative comic he produced they were called underground then was on his high schools ditto machine, after hours, without permission. Typically older comics from the 50s through the 80s will be.