Catching a Vision 006
Learning the Craft: Coloring
Catching a Vision, the weekly column on Comic Related from C. Edward Sellner, Founder and Creative Director of Visionary Comics Studio, provides practical guidance on how to break into the comics industry, as well as insights into this medium we all love. With resources you can order online, interviews and debates with comic professionals, and online workshops, this is your best introduction into the wonders of creating comics!
Before I get started, a couple apologies. I missed last week, I know. After Chuck Moore and Comic Related so graciously hosted my butt at NYCC I go and take a week off. I came back to a ton of things I needed to get caught up on and am still running that race, which is why this is a little late! BUT I was not going to let you all down again, so, let's get back to it, shall we?
Now we move on to one of my favorites...Coloring!
First A Little History...
Coloring is one of the jobs in comics that have been totally revolutionarized in the last couple decades with the advent of digital printing and digital coloring. In the classic days of yesteryear, color palettes were very limited, using a four color base, and they were setup by colorists in order to create color plates for the printer and thus were part of an overall mechanical process.
Today, with the Digital Age, this has totally changed. Comics now are printed digitally and offset, which opens the door for a much wider range of color, that can also now be done digitally. So, instead of a pretty flat, four-color base, there are hundreds of colors on a printed page. Having the color work done digitally allows for a wide variety of shading, texturing, and other digital color enhancements and even...special effects! This is most striking if you simply take one of your old comics, flip it open, then lay it next to an open new comic. WOW! Worlds of difference.
Colorists have always required talent and ability, but I don't think any professional would argue that with the advent of digital coloring and printing, the colorist has truly been able to stretch their own artistic wings into becoming true 'color artists'.
On a whole different note, this even now allows for the fully painted comics that folks like Alex Ross have made so famous, and even now and then the periodic CGI created comic, or fully digitally painted comic. (Note: we won't be dealing with those here, so, check later for an article on the 'Finished Sequentialist') But what does all this mean for today's aspiring colorist?
The Challenges...
Anyone wanting to be a colorist should definitely spend some time learning color theory. They should have a good, solid understanding of complementary and contrasting colors, how to use the color wheel to set tone and mood, and how to use the myriad tones, textures, saturations, shades and values of color to enhance their work. This is where a good art class from the local college can come in handy. Any art course that deals with use of color, in whatever medium, will help the aspiring colorist know how to use color on a comics' page.
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Being a colorist requires you not only to be artistic and talented, but also somewhat technically inclined, at least as far as software. Adobe Creative Suites, as well as Corel Draw are some of the foremost programs in use these days for doing color work on comics, so to be proficient in the art of coloring comics, you also need to be proficient in the software. (I'm a Photoshop man myself, so I will be focusing technical stuff from that angle.)
Not only that, but as we move ever closer to the actual printing process in our grand odyssey of making a comic, we now have to begin thinking about the actual final printing. That means that colorists at least should be aware of limitations on things from the print end in terms of doing their work so as not to cause complications later down the line. For example, what file formats does the printer prefer? PDF's? TIFFs? JPEGS? I've dealt with printers who prefer each of the above, believe it or not. What about the CMYK vs. RGB dilemma? Then on top of that is the whole choice of traditional mouse/screen or tablet approach?
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If you had any trouble following the above, then yes, you still need to learn a lot about the 'mechanics' of coloring.
This might mean actually taking a local college or other course on the software you intend to use. Each of the ones mentioned above has their strengths and weaknesses and your best bet really is to learn multiple systems to increase your own flexibility (a challenge I myself still need to undertake)!
Then once you get the technical expertise, well there is still the art end. Coloring comics is still an art, and a specialized one. In some ways the digital age created something of a backlash in this arena as well as it did in the inking arena. Though while in inking, it raised the question of "Do we really need an inker?" in coloring it was a case of suddenly having all these additional toys to play with, wow, let's stick them all in!
What do I mean by that? Well, in Photoshop for example, a colorist can render lens flare effects, apply artistic filters, import textures, doing color burn and dodge for shadows and highlights, sponge tools to saturate and desaturate, layers, masks etc. etc. etc. The list goes on almost forever when you look at all the 'stuff' you can do.
When digital color work first began to flourish, like any new means of doing a new art there were some who pushed the limits and in doing so, pushed right over the edge. I remember seeing some comics that were so impressed with texturing everything and using multiple filters and effects that they ended up creating crappy looking comics. I myself have been somewhat guilty of this (those dang lens flares just look so cool) and have had to remind myself that BETTER is not always...well, better.
What do I mean? Well, let's take a look at the meat of this article...
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The Basic Mechanics: Complement Don't Compete
Comics is a collaborative medium, and thus each builds upon the other. A writer produces a script and we've got a story! A penciler then brings that script to life by drawing it. An inker then brings weight and substance to that life by inking. A colorist then brings...well, color to that life, but color that enhances and brings out the art, instead of overwhelming or overpowering it.
A professional colorist knows they are there to enhance the art, help make it pop off the pages, fill it with a palette that re-enforces the moods and drama being portrayed. They are not there to see what neat effects they can add that will draw a reader's eye more to the effects than the flow and form of the actual story.
The art of coloring is learning how to complement the art that you're working over. It doesn't mean coloring is subordinate to the rest of the art, or the colorist is subordinate to the penciler, but it does mean that each stage of the process is to enhance what has gone before, bringing the entire package more and more together into a functional whole.
So, to do that, let's break coloring down a bit.
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Flats...
One stage in coloring, sometimes done by a different person than the final colorist, is laying down what we call 'Flats' or the flat base colors. Unless this is someone simply setting up flat work areas to save the finishing colorist time, they are hopefully being artistic here as well. (As for what I mean by that, check later for a more detailed look at coloring.)
A colorist should be aware of their palette, the colors they're choosing and their combinations. Warmer, more saturated colors bring objects forward, whereas cooler, less saturated move them back. A dark horror story will use darker or more 'violent' colors such as dark reds, blues, grays, etc. to set a tone very different than say a big super-hero cosmic adventure that will probably use more primary colors, with lots of yellows, oranges, and bright reds and blues.
Color does not always accurately reflect the color of the object. It's impacted by lighting but also should be impacted by its setting in the story. For example, it's more important to vary colors such that foreground objects pop out from their backgrounds than it is to keep a wall the same color in every panel because THAT is the color it was shown to be.
Finishes...
When going in and adding tones, shadow, texture etc. a colorist should focus on what helps make the art pop, characters and objects come off the page, and what helps set the tone desired. If adding textures or effects in a limited way help does this, then by all means. But overall the effect should blend with the art, enhancing it to better tell the story.
As an example, one of the best colorists of our time is a lady known as Laura Depuy Martin. She's one of my role models in the coloring field! Sometime back she was the colorist on the book Ruse from Crossgen. There she was dealing with a 'detective' book in the spirit of Sherlock Holmes, set in a Victorian era (sort of) over the pencils of Jackson Guice. To fit the mood of the book and its style, she used a very subdued, low saturation palette which helped create the mood and atmosphere of the book. She used patterns and textures to add detail to an elaborate background which helped created the world of Ruse and added to the clean and realistic line of Guice. She later colored a run of World's Finest over Carlos Pacheco. This was Superman and Batman, in alternate timelines fighting alongside the Justice League with villains the like of Rha's Al Ghul and Darkseid! There her palette was much brighter, more vivid. Primary colors abound, with lots of moody colors thrown in for good measure. Highlights and shadows were pronounced to better accentuate the angular and powerful art of Pacheco. Two very different styles of color for two very different books.
Another side story...Erik Larsen hated my early color work (which is okay, because I do now as well). But part of that hatred came out of its 'digitally painted' look. Well, as an artist, that kind of color would look horrible on Larsen's work, which is maybe part of the reason he dislikes the digital painted style. His work, obviously Kirby inspired, is very over the top, dynamic, exaggerated and classic comic. It looks better with a more traditional, flat, with limited shading and texturing, approach.
Like any art form, there are styles and approaches that vary depending on the colorist themselves. But here, there also needs to be styles and approaches that vary based on the underlying art, the story and the look and feel of the book overall. A colorist in some ways has to be a 'chameleon' of sorts, blending their work to what has come before.
As always, I'm also including a number of references and resources below for folks to check out.
Software...
If you're wanting to get started with coloring comics, here is my choice of the best software available.
If you're new to Photoshop, or even if your not, here is a highly recommended visual tutorial series on using Adobe.
Also, here is a reminder about Wacom Tablets, that a lot of colorists prefer to use.
Wacom's site: http://www.wacom.com/index2.php
Book Recommendations...
First, here are a few books to help you learn the underlying theory and art of using color artistically.
Now, Once You're Coloring...
Online Resources...
Dave Law's Creating Comics , yes, again. This goes to the section on illustration where there are several links for aspiring colorists. This includes a message board where you can post questions for a professional who is willing to answer them.
For an online exercise, this article is spotted with pages posted by Laura Martin on her online gallery. Check them out, look closely and see if you can pick up things she's doing color-wise to enhance the art and story. Take note of her choice of color, intensity / saturation, shade, value, etc.
Next...
Hopefully everyone caught the announcement of Josh Williamson's Necessary Evil being optioned for a TV Series, and the recent announcement of his new Image / Shadowline series Overlook. We'll be posting his full interview ASAP.
Next in the hopper on that front is comics legend Pat Broderick who is about to make his return to comics in a BIG way! We'll be letting you know those details as soon as we can as well.
In the meantime, in our regularly scheduled block, we will next look at the fine art of lettering a comic, and yes...it is indeed an art form all its own, trust me!
Join the discussion and add your thoughts on this edition, or the column in general. If you have any questions or suggestions for resources, post them or email them to Sellner so they can be included in future columns. Are you an aspiring or up and coming creator and would like to share your story? Email Sellner and let him know who you are and what you've done.
C. Edward Sellner is the co-founder and Creative Director of Visionary Comics Studio, a studio that within its first two years has drawn high praise from the media and attracted the attention of legendary creators in the comics industry. They have been digitally and print published in the mainstream market and their creators currently work with over a dozen different publishers. Their work has been featured on television news shows, radio programs and internet podcasts as well as featured in every major comics news site online.
Contact him directly at cedwardsellner@aol.com
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