BAH Studios: Comic Coloring Tutorial

I actually use a few different coloring techniques, but this particular one is fairly new and one I'm pretty fond of using for my short comics. This coloring style works for single images as well as comics, though, so don't think you only have to use it in comics. Also, if you have a preferred way of doing things than what I mention here, feel free to differ from the tutorial if it best suites your needs! :) My way is not the only way, and I'm still learning new techniques myself. Think of this as a guideline to get you on your way, or to find a new way of doing something you already know.

Unlike most digital-coloring artists, I use Paintshop Pro instead of Photoshop. This is for a few reasons:
+ I have 5+ years of personal (home use) experience with Paintshop Pro 6-8, whereas I only have about a semester's worth of educational experience in Photoshop 5, 6, and CS.
+ The only version of Photoshop I own is at my parents' house some five hours from where I live now.
+Said version is PS 5 LE, which, in my opinion, sucks anyway.
+ I'm currently too poor to buy a newer version of Photoshop (one day, though...)

So... This tutorial is made using Paintshop Pro 8, which, while it has many similarities with Photoshop, is still different enough that you might have to figure out some things on your own... Sorry. If anyone knows the PS equivenlent of doing something I do here in PSP 8, feel free to e-mail me and I can point out the alternative for PS users. :)

Without further delay, here is the...

Comic Coloring Tutorial

Materials Used:

*These are what I used and are a general guideline -- for the most part, if you have other tools that you use that give the same results, feel free to use them instead)
+ Scanner =P
+ Paintshop Pro 8
+ Mouse to "draw"
+Tablet to draw (with and/or instead of a mouse;I own one and usually use it, but either a mouse or tablet is fine)

Step 1: Import Lineart

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1-B1:

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1-B2:

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1-B3:

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1-B4:

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A. First and foremost, import your artwork into PSP. This is a coloring tutorial, so I won't go into depth about inking or cleaning up lineart here, but I did create a seperate tutorial on lineart found here if you need it.

B. Once the page is imported and cleaned up, I "break up" the panels into seperate images:

*NOTE: If you're just coloring a normal picture and not a comic page, you can skip this part and go to section C in this step.*

1. Click the Selection Tool.

2. Click and drag the selection box around the first panel.

3. Once it's selected, copy it (Ctrl+C) and paste it into a new image (Ctrl+V). See screencaps 1-B1 and 1-B2.

4. Save the panel as a .psp (or .psd if you're using Photoshop/prefer) file. I name my panel files by page number, stating it's a "source" file, then by panel number. For instance, the first panel of the first page would be "1src1.psp (the "src" standing for "source"), while the third panel on the second page would be "2src3.psp". You can name them however you want; I just find this method handy for keep track of multiple pages and panels.

5. Repeat the process for the other panels.

6. Once all the panels are saved as seperate images, you can delete the original scan file, as you'll no longer need it. Since your artwork may not have fit into your panels perfectly, you may have to do a little extra line art cleaning up for those lines that didn't quite make it to the bottom of the panel, or the lines from another frame that made it into your panel. Take note of these "seeping" lines in screencap 1-B3. I simply white these lines out, and behold! Problem solved (See screencap 1-B4)!

C. Time to finish up preparing the lines to color. I strongly suggest "prepping" the lineart for all the panels at once, as it's easier to keep track of things.

1. Select the Magic Wand tool.

2. Look to the top of the program window at your tool settings. If it's not there, right-click anywhere at the menu choice; a new menu window will pop up by your pointer. Choose "Palettes >> Tool Options" and it will appear.
3. Set your Magic Wand tool settings as such (here is screencap of the settings):
A. Match Mode RGB
B. Tolerance 0
C. Feather 0
D. Anti-alias UNchecked
4. Using the Magic Wand, click on any white area of the image. The area should now be selected.
5. While the area is still selected, go to the top menus and choose "Selections >> Modify >> Select Similar." A window will pop up; ensure that Tolerance is set to 0, "Discontiguous" is selected, "Anti-alias" is UNchecked, and "Sample Merged" is also UNchecked. Hit OK.

6. All the white areas should now be selected. Hit "Delete" on your keyboard. This should remove the white areas and leave you with a checkered background, indicating anything aside from the black lines is "transparent." If not, check your Layers palette (shortcut "F8" in PSP 8 and "L" in PSP 6/7) and ensure that your image is a raster layer (It will be titled "Raster 1" by default). If it says, "Background," right-click it and select "Convert to Raster Layer." Once this is done, try deleting the white area again. It should now work.

7. Right-click anywhere in the image to remove the selection. Next, hit "Ctrl+C" to copy the lineart.

8. Hit "Ctrl+L" to paste the lineart as a new layer in your image. You will probably have to move your lineart around to perfectly align it with the lineart below (zoom in and use a small reference point to tell when the layers are aligned properly). This can be done with the Move tool

by click, holding, and dragging the upper lineart until it's aligned with the lower layer. Here is an example of how it might look.

9. Rename the layer "Raster 2" to "Lineart" and "Raster 1" to "Colors."

10. Repeat for the other panels.

Step 2: Coloring the "Flats"

2-A1:

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2-B1:

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2-B6:

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A. Now it's time to color the base colors, or the "flats." I use the term "flat" loosely here, though, as I use gradients as my base colors. Also, we will be coloring "section" by "section" -- For example, Person 1's skin first, then Person 2's skin, then Person 1's hair, etc.

1. Make sure you're on the "Colors" layer. If not, obviously, click on it to switch to it.
2. With the Magic Wand Tool

still selected, and the same settings as before, select the areas you want to color (remember, go in "sections"). To select more than one area (for instance, the face and the arm), hold down "Shift" when clicking on other areas. Similarly, if you select an area you don't want, hold down "Ctrl" when clicking in that area to remove it. See Screencap 2-A1.

3. Now, go to your Materials (colors) palette and select your color, the same for the background and foreground color.

4. Right-click on your foreground color box to open up the Material window with the Color tab open.

5. Go to the Light number and move the slider down by about 30-60 numbers, depending on how light/dark your base color is (see screencap). Once the color is significantly darker than its base, hit Ok.

6. Back to the Materials palette; Underneath your (now darker) foreground color, click on the button with a black circle on it. This will show a list of three buttons with circles in them, including the intial black. Click on the second button, a cirlce with black and white vertical stripes going down it. This is the gradient option and sets your foreground color as a gradient.

7. By default, the gradient is linear, black to white. We're going to change that. Click on the foreground color like you did a few steps ago. This will open the Materials window again, only this time with the Gradients tab open.

8. This part is somewhat a matter of personal preference -- when I'm coloring organic parts of an image (skin, hair, eyes, teeth, etc) I use a radial gradient instead of a linear gradient, which I use for anything non-organic (clothes, weapons. You can change the gradient to radial by clicking on its button:

9. Whether you use a radial or linear gradient, now you have to change the color of the gradient. Click the down-pointing arrow by the gradient box. This will open up a fairly long list of different kinds of gradients. Scroll down until you come to the "Foreground-Background" gradient (see screencap). Select it, of course.

10. Before you exit the Materials window, make sure the "Invert" box is checked. Also, adjust the direction of the gradient by either:

- Clicking on the line and rotating it around until it's at the desired angle (linear gradient)
OR
- Clicking on the smallest/lightest spot on the gradient and moving it about until it's at its desired location (radial gradient)

You will probably need to return to the Materials window every now and then to readjust your direction and such, depending on where your light source is coming from. Hit OK to exit.

B. Now you can finally get to actually coloring the image. Well, almost.

1. Select the Flood Fill Tool.

2. Go to the Tool Options palette and make sure the settings are as such:
A. Match Mode NONE (Very important!)
B. Blend Mode Normal
C. Opacity 100

With the Match Mode set to None, the flood fill tool will fill in everything that's selected on the current layer, ignoring all other parts of the image. If no specific area is selected, it fills the entire area, which is why back up in section A I had you select which area to fill. The reason for doing this instead of simply clicking and filling is that the gradients look better and the change in color more obvious. Here's a visual of what I mean.

If I haven't utterly confused you yet, let's move on to finally filling in the colors.

3. Simple enough. Using the Flood Fill tool, click inside your selected area in the image. This will, of course, fill in the color. See screencap 2-B1.

4. Switch back to the Magic Wand

and right-click on the image to deselect the selection.

5. Repeat the whole select-section, set colors, fill, and deselect-section process. I strongly suggest before switching colors, however, that you go into the other panels and fill in any areas there that use the same color, if any (for instance, if you have a character in multiple panels, and you colored their skin in the first panel, fill in their skin for all the other panels). This insures the colors for that particular area remain consistant throughout the page.

Note: To change the foreground color without having to switch it back from gradient mode, click on the smaller color boxes in the corner of the Materials palette:

If you are coloring a long-term comic with at least a few dozen pages, I suggest making a seperate image with source colors for certain characters, objects, etc. Heck, even if you're just coloring a single image with this tutorial, if you draw the same characters often, a color reference file is still handy.

6. Keep coloring until you've got all the flats done for all the panels. See screencap 2-B6. Once that's done, you can move on to shading and highlighting. Whee.

Step 3: Shading and Highlighting

3-A1:

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3-A6:

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3-A8:

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3-B5:

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3-B7:

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A. Here comes the part that gets kind of tedious (in my opinion), but really adds more to the picture. Shading and highlighting! How I do my highlighting is pretty similar to how I do my shading, but a bit more in-depth, so I'll go into each of them in detail, shading first.

1. By now, of course, all your flats should be done, like in screencap 3-A1 (I'm using a different panel for this step. I got tired of looking at the pair of assassins with throwing daggers sticking out of them. :P).

2. Create a new raster layer above your Color layer, but below your Lineart layer ("Layers >> New Raster Layer...") Name it "Shading" and set the Opacity to 50.

3. In your Materials palette, set it to no foreground color (hit the Transparent

button below the main foreground color box) and change the background color to black, and put it in gradient mode.

4. Click the background color box to open up the gradient properties. Change the gradient to linear (if it isn't already) using the "Fading Background" scheme. Adjust the angle of the gradient as needed, then hit OK to exit the window.

5. Select the Pen tool.

Ensure that no foreground color is selected and the background color is a gradient in your Materials palette. Go to the Tool Options palatte and make sure the settings are as such:
A. Simple Mode UNchecked
B. Drawing Mode ON
C. Freehand Segment Type
D. Anti-alias UNchecked

6. With the Pen tool, draw ONE section of your shading (I did the neck first).

As mentioned in my lineart tutorial, "Simple Mode" just shows the lines you draw as they are. When it's off, it shows all the points that make up what you drew with the pen tool, allowing you to adjust the lines by clicking, holding, and dragging the points to other locations. You can turn simple mode on and off as you please, but keep in mind that you can no longer edit a line's points once you've saved or switched to another tool unless your line is a vector (and it shouldn't be here).

That being said, after you've drawn your one section of shading, use the points (Simple Mode off) to fix it until you have it the way you want it. See screencap 3-A6.

7. Once the shaded section is as desired, go to the Tool Options palette and click the New Shape button.

If you don't do this, whenever you go to draw another shaded section, the gradient will "expand" as you go along, and that won't look good. Here's what I'm talking about. Notice how the shading is too solid over by the far eye and nose, and doesn't even show up at all at the ear? That's due to the gradient "spreading", so you don't want that. You want each section to shade to look pretty similar to the way the shading is around the neck.

8. Go back to the Pen tool and draw the next section of shading. Repeat the whole process of drawing the shaded sections (changing the direction of the gradient as needed) for each area you want to shade in each panel until you've got everything done. It will probably take quite some time, but as you can see in screencap 3-B8, it's already looking a lot nicer.

B. Next is the highlighting, which, while in execution is similar to the shading, is a little more complex.

1. Create a new layer above the Shading layer. Name it "Highlighting," set the Blend Mode to Screen, and the Opacity to 70.

2. Decide what section you want to highlight first (I decided to go with skin first). Using the Dropper tool

, right-click on the lightest area in the section you want to highlight. You may have to hide the Shading layer to do this (To hide a layer, click the Visibility Toggle

button next to the it. Click it again to make the layer visible once more).

Right-clicking with the Dropper tool will change your background color, which should still have the Fading Background gradient set.

3. Draw one section of your highlights at a time, in the same manner as you did shading.

4. For areas with extra bright highlighting, first draw the highlight in. Once it's the shape you want, use the Magic Wand tool to select it. You might have to hide the Color and Lineart layers to select it right; PSP 8 has an annoying habit of selecting stuff from layers above/below the current one unless they're hidden.

NOTE: If you want to add a stronger highlight spot within another highlight, instead of drawing the new highlight, simply use the Freehand Selection tool

to select the particular area you want to brighten.

5. Once the area to extra-highlight is selected, click the Flood Fill tool. In the Tool Options palette, change the blend mode to Screen (this makes any color you use fill in lighter than it actually is on the image). Right-click inside the selection to brighten it. You can click it again to brighten it even more, but I wouldn't recommend brightening it any more than that, unless you have a very strong light source. See screencap 3-B5 for an example of the result of highlighting and extra highlighting.

6. Use the Magic Wand tool and right-click inside the image to deselect the highlighted area once it's at its desired brightness.

7. Repeat the process for other highlighted areas, switch colors when you highlight different sections (i.e. use one color for the skin, another for the clothes, etc). This will probably take even more time to do than the shading, but patience pays off (as hard as it is to keep...). Look at screencap 3-B7. Seems a lot nicer now, doesn't it?

Step 4: Effects/Adding the Background

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A. Once you've finished all the shading and highlighting, check through your panels and make sure there aren't any mistakes you missed, and fix any that you do find.

At this point, this is where I add most of my "effects" like blood splatter, action swish lines, etc. However, this lesson's already long enough, so I won't go into detail about it here. =P That's another tutorial for another day... perhaps.

As soon as I'm certain I have all the details and effects I want that I need to "work bigger" to add, I reduce my panels by 25%. To do this, I open one of my panel images.

1. Hold "Shift+S" The resize window will pop up.

2. Make sure "Lock aspect ratio" is checked and the default number in the box ("0.6970") remains.

3. Under "Pixel Dimensions," make sure you're resizing by percent, not by pixels (there's a drop-down box next to the "Width" and "Hight" boxes) and type in 25 in the first box -- the second box should automatically change to 25 as well.

4. Check "Resample" and Choose "Smart Size" from the drop-down list.

5. Check "Resize all layers" and hit OK. Here's a screencap of my settings if my descriptions weren't clear enough. The image will now resize -- this may take a few seconds to process on your computer, depending on the memory available.

6. Repeat for the other panels.

B. As many of my friends can attest to, I HATE drawing backgrounds. So, being the cheap, lazy shortcutter that I am, I "cheat" on my backgrounds using photos and Flash tweaking, which is described in depth in yet another tutorial (didn't I already say this one was long enough? =P)

1. Go to each panel image and create a new layer. Name it "Background" and move it to the bottom.

2. After I've made a satisfactory background in Flash and "published" it as a .png file, I open it in PSP8.

3. I copy the background image ("Ctrl+C") then open up the panel image and paste into the Background layer ("Ctrl+E").

Note: Sometimes I have to resize the background image before pasting it into the panel. By how much varies on my needs, but I use the same principles in resizing as explained in part A of this step; I just vary the percentage of resizing.

4. I repeat the process for the other panels, using/making different background images if need be.

Step 5: Arranging the Page

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Once all the panels are finished, it's time to put them all together onto a page.

1. Open up a new image with the dimentions 672x861.

2. Name the current layer "Page" and use the Flood Fill to make it black (or white, or whatever color you want the "paper" to be -- I use black all the time, personally).

3. Make two more layers on top of the Page layer. Name the first one "Panels" and the second (top) one "Dialogue.

4. Go to the "Panels" layer. This is, of course, where you'll put your panels.

5. Open up the first panel image and go to the "Layer" menu and choose "Merge >> Merge Visible"

6. Once the layers are merged, copy the image and return to the comic page. Paste ("Ctrl+E") the first frame into the Panels layer, moving it to its desired location.

7. Repeat the process for the other panels until you have the whole page laid out as you wish.

Step 6: Inserting the Dialogue

6-B6:

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6-B9:

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6-B12:

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A. What's a comic without dialogue? Often, not much, though there are times when you might need a page to speak for itself without words. Of course, I'm assuming this isn't one of those times.

Before I go on, keep this in mind: I don't like speech bubbles. Well, I don't mind seeing them in others' comics, but I don't like using them. They often block out part of the image, which I don't like to do, or you have to make extra space for them so that they don't block out part of the panel. Since I change around things, I don't like doing that either. =P

So, what do I do instead? I just put the text in there on its own. How can I do that without getting characters' words confused/making it hard to read with certain backgrounds? Well, I keep the main text black (sometimes white if the outline color is dark and/or if the background is dark enough to make even outlined black text hard to read). The outline for the text is a seperate color, different for each character. For example, the outline of Saeola's dialogue is always a dark shade of green, while the dialogue for Falear (not in this page), is always outlined in brown.

So, if you want to figure out how to do speech bubbles, you won't find out here. Sorry. I shall proceed in my own style.

Note: I use custom fonts downloaded from sites such as Blambot and 1001 Fonts. What font you use is up to you, but I highly suggest at least looking through those sites -- much of them are free, and well-suited for comics.

B. All right, I'm finally getting to the actual insertion of dialogue. =P

1. Go to the "Dialogue" layer, of course.

2. Make sure your colors are all back to solids instead of gradients.

3. Set the background color to black and the foreground color you use for the current character talking (in this case, I'm doing Sab'vrae first, so the foreground color is a lighter green).

4. Click on the Text Tool

and use the following settings:

A. Create As: Floating
B. Font: Comic Book (This is a downloaded font, and you can acutally use whatever you want -- this is just my personal favorite to use for most "normal" dialogue)
C. Size: 12 (For "normal" speech, I use 12 or 14, depending on the amount of text and space I have in the panel -- if someone is shouting or whatnot, I'll use a bigger size, even if it's just for a word or two).
D. Anti-alias and Warp Text checked
E. Auto Kern checked

Notes: I also make the Stroke Width (that's the outline width) about 4-6 so it's noticeable around the text) and keep my Alignment centered.

5. Click anywhere on the image with the Text Tool. A window will pop up for you to type in your dialogue.

6. Of course, type in your text. We're going one character, one "bubble" at a time, so remember that. =P Also, depending on the size of your font, amount of text, and amount of space in the panel you have, you probably won't write your text all in one line. I usually keep it to about two-three words per line. See screencap 6-B6 of what my first block of dialogue looks like in the editing window.

7. Make sure "Remember Text" is checked, then hit "Apply" once you've got your font the way you want it and move it to where you want.

What's this? Only the outline's visible? Where's the inside of the text? I can't read it! Yes, if you made the Outline 4-6 thick like I did, and aren't in a larger font size (as in 18+), it will look like this. You're not quite finished. =P Remove the foreground color in your palette by hitting the

button below it.

8. Hold "Ctrl+D" to deselect the text. Still using the Text Tool, click inside the image to bring up the Text Entry window again. Your last entry of text should still be there. (If not, you'll have to retype it exactly as it was before. This is why you want "Remember Text" on. =P). Hit "Apply."

9. Yay! There's your text without the outline. Move it within your last entry of text until it's centered within the outline. See screencap 6-B9. Hold "Ctrl+D" to deselect the text once more.

10. Repeat the process for all the other lines of dialogue. I suggest doing all the lines for one character first, then moving on to another character (and thus changing the outline color).

11. For "sound effect" text, I use the same principles as above, with a few changes:

A. I use the "Comic Book Commando" Font (There are many fonts that have a suitable "SFX" appearance. Look around for them)
B. I type in all caps, often with bold text as well.
C. I use a reddish gradient for the text and a lighter solid red for the outline (most of the time; sometimes I use blue sor greens instead, depending on the sound effect)
D. I usually add some effects, like Blur to make the hold a bit more "impact," so to speak.

Those are just my preferences, however. Use what you wish.

Once all the dialogue/sound effects are finished, save your image as a .jpg (or .png, or whatever compressed, web-friendly filetype you wish), though you should keep the .psp version too, in case you need to fix things later.

12. Well, that's it! See image 6-B12 for the finished result. (You may note that the third panel has a few parts that are blurred that weren't so a few substeps back. That's something I forgot to add and realized it as I was doing my dialogue. Eheh.) Check out my other tutorials if you're interested, and have fun!