THE DREGS OF WAR
mai|
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Colouring the comic
Ok, I got a flood of complaints (one) that the “making the comic” page sort of loses steam when it comes to actually describing how I coloured in the comic. There are two reasons for this. Firstly, I lost steam. Secondly, to describe in detail how I coloured in the comic would require a whole lot of application specific jargon. This is why I've decided to do it as a separate page so Photoshop-illiterate people can stop now, and go weave baskets or whatever it is that you people do. Ok, so how did I colour in the comic? How I coloured in the comic Well, the first question you might want to ask, is “which applications, Michael, did you use, and why?”. Well I intend to answer that question. Which applications I used, and why I used Photoshop and Painter. Why? Well, I have them. What's more, they are suited to the task in hand (colouring in the comic), for several reasons, one being that they allow the user to apply colour to a two dimensional image (the pages of the comic book are two dimensional), another being that I have them. I could also do a funky thing (which everyone does, I just got this from every single digital painting forum in existence) where you stick your drawing on the top layer, and set its blend function to “multiply”. This means that anything I painted beneath the layer miraculously got through, without colouring over the black lines. Amazing. I decided to do the backgrounds in photoshop, because I could use quick and easy techniques to get an illusion of light and dark. I guess I could explain what those effects are. The effects I used to get a sense of light and dark Well, I've already mentioned one of the techniques in the “making the comic” page. I happen to have a graphics tablet thing. Not a Wacom. That would be cool, but also three times more expensive than the one I own, which is less good, but gets the job done. Anyway, with this thing, I can set the photoshop brush to interpolate between the foreground and background colours depending on the pressure of the stylus (just check the “colour dynamics” box in the thingy). So I'd select a light colour for the foreground, a dark colour for the background, and effectively “paint” the light onto the objects... I avoided using the gradient tool, because I would have less control, and the effect would be even more tacky. Another quick'n'cheap way of adding atmosphere quickly, which I also found fun, was to stick a layer on top of the image, then fill it with black, then slowly rub out areas where there was light (again, the stylus enabled me to control how much I erased depending on the stylus pressure). This way I could be sure of getting really dark areas... lazy, but relatively effective. I found I got a better effect if I applied this dark layer below the character layers. How did I do the characters? Well, I could tell you, but first I'm going to have a sandwich. How I did the characters Well, I decided I wanted to do the characters in painter, for several reasons.
Taking all of these important factors into consideration, I decided to learn how to use painter. I went for the “artist's oils” brush, because it's really fun (if not fiendishly difficult) to use. In fact, my incompetence at using the brush made for more interesting results, because I had next to no control over what they would be. It was a constant struggle between me and whatever chaotic algorithm controls those brushes, which liked to get messy. But before taking the file into painter, I would block out all the characters in photoshop. I'd use colours that corresponded to characters (like red for Dreg's skin), but wouldn't do any shading. So before going into painter, the page would typically have fully coloured backgrounds, and flat-shaded characters. I've done a little section about making page 8, which shows the different stages it went through. The bit mentioned above would be stage 5... When I blocked out the characters, I sorted the different parts of them in separate layers so that no two differently coloured blocks touched each other on the same layer. This was so that I could use each layer effectively as a mask, and within Painter I wouldn't have to worry about painting over the lines or over other parts of the character (so as an example, I would have Dreg's arms and head in one layer, his orange shirt and his shoes in the next layer, and his trousers in the final layer. Things like his belt and eyes would be layer on top of all those). Blocking out the characters was one of the most time consuming jobs. The two applications work really well together. Painter has obviously been designed with photoshop users in mind. And it has some really cool brushes. Keeping the comic consistent Well, this wasn't as difficult as I had feared. From the very first page, I was adding to the swatches in photoshop, and would use the same swatches for consequent pages (apart from when I started to change palette...). In painter, I could just re-use that funky colour mixer thing that it has. But what about when the colours changed (pages 8 to 14). Even there I had to keep some sort of consistency, and you'll note that, with the exception of page 14, I keep to glowing, prime colours, very rarely using grays. I felt this coincided with the world I imagined, but also kept a sense of congruity within the different pages. With page 14 I used a few dirty grays and yellows, as well as a lot of black, but I felt I could considering the plot at that stage. The experience of colouring in the comic It took me about six hours to colour in the first page. At that stage, I had eleven days to complete the comic, and write a report on “cross-media narrative”. Ideally, I should get two pages done a day. At this rate, I realised, I would have to work nearly every waking moment. So that's what I did... Strange things began to happen. My perception of the world changed, for one. I normally see things as volume and form, but during that week I saw everything as colour, and was particularly sensitive to how colours interacted and blended. I was particularly keen on mauve for a while. Also, as I suppose is probably normal for anyone working so hard, I started experiencing violent mood swings. Page 6 was the low point, where I descended into a dark abyss of pain and misery, the very thought of having to keep this up for the next five days made me feel sick to my stomach. Also, page 6 wasn't working out so well. Two things sorted this out for me... The first was my decision to have the colour palette change. Firstly, this made the rest of the job seem more exciting, rather than boringly colouring the whole comic in the same limited palette. This is why I coloured in pages 15 and 16 after page 6: they have the same colour palette as pages 1 - 6. Also, you'll note that page 6 already begins to have warmer backgrounds, which it didn't have originally, but when I added them it began to fall into place. The changing palette felt like it was the “right” approach, and that page 6 was initially “punishing” me for not changing palette. It wasn't the first time that I've felt that work dictates its needs to me, rather than the other way round. The second thing that sorted out my blue funk was the dreaded page 8. This page was so pivotal to the comic that I've made a web-page just for it. It was the page I feared the most, but is now the page I am happiest with, and after having completed it, I only had six pages to do anyway. I was all smiles and hugs from that point on. Anyway, immediately after the comic, I felt empty. I actually rather miss the dedication and focus that working so much meant. I'm getting back into that rhythm, however, as panic for the major is slowly sinking in... |
©Michael Beeson 2004