I'm Coloring!

As Ms. Natalie mentioned in the announcements thread, I've been working with her on a comic project. It's only in the very infant stages at the moment, but I've taken the liberty to color a few of the character sketches she's sent to me for approval.

Also, these are my first attempts at digital coloring. I did them using GIMP and my laptop (touchpad, no mouse or tablet) so they're bound to be rough.

Anyways, first we've got a little guy named 'Kid Latrans'. Yes, that's me. Sort of. You'll notice the lines are very pixilated. That's because 1: I can't do proper inking. I lack both the talent and tools and 2: I didn't really know what I was doing so I played with the threshold. Gave nice, solid lines, but no gradients in them. the pixels were either there or not. Shading was pretty simple. Just painted in the shadows on a separate layer and then turned down the opacity.

My second offering is 'Lady Shannon'. Here I used a different technique to bring out the lineart. Instead of playing with the threshold, I instead turned down the saturation and then messed with the levels. I think it turned out a lot better, though it also left me with a lot of extra bits to erase afterwards. I also used a different shading technique. A single shadow color didn't work for the red hair/blue cloak so instead I copied the color layer, darkened it, and applied a layer mask so only the shadow bits showed up.

A friend of mine pointed me at a couple tutorials he'd drawn up for digital coloring basics. They're for Photoshop, but I was able to figure out the GIMP equivalents. Here's (FA) linkies! (The links are Safe, but his gallery isn't, so don't go digging unless you want to see smut. You've been warned.)

HTDC: The Basics This is just the basics of how to start putting flat color to (previously cleaned) linework. Nothing fancy, but gives a good starting point for people who've never done this sort of thing before.

HTDC: Cel Shading This is a quick guide to adding shadows/light. Of the two methods shown here, I used the first on 'Kid Latrans'.

HTDC: The Single Flat Layer This gives some tips and suggestions for various tricks you can pull off by collapsing all your color layers into one. I used this guide as a starting point for shading Lady Shannon.

Lastly, these are NOT final. They're just me getting hyped about the project and blowing off some steam. The comic may not even be in color, depending on how much time it ends up taking me to do each page among other factors. That said, feel free to deflate my ego and point out all the bits I screwed up on.

Awesome! I was curious how the colors would work out.

I will be adding my coloring to it as well as soon as I have finished them. lol

looking good

Here is my first try at coloring.