Flatting? What’s that?
For about 3 years now, I’ve been slaving away at my coloring process about as slow as possible. I would spend hours and hours filling between the lines all while throwing textures over everything to see how it might look. I would work on a page for half a day and then just leave it alone for a while. Perhaps I might dream of a better color pallet that night. Or maybe I’ll be able to see something better if I open it up in a week or a month.
One time I actually hired some freelancers from India and Japan to color a test page to see if they could match my style and save me precious time. I gave them specific reference of how I wanted it to look and even examples of the color pallet. I even gave them my homemade texture files.
When I got the pages back they looked…well, lets just say I deleted the files even after revisions so that I wouldn’t be influenced in any way by what I saw. Don’t get me wrong, they did a great job coloring the pages but it wasn’t right for my project. Even though it was far from what I wanted, it was money well spent because it sent me on a quest to figure out more efficient methods of coloring my pages.
Later I thought about hiring one of them to paint all the sections of my pages a flat color on layers so that I could easily adjust it all and add textures and lighting myself. This would save me so much time but how would I explain this crazy concept that, obviously has never been done before, to a guy across the world with a language barrier. Maybe I can pay him less if he’s just PREPARING the files for me, I thought.
I never got around to it. Finishing the line work for the first book was all I could think about. Good thing too. It was only a month ago that I came across a blog in which I learned all about the common practice of comic book flatting. Or to flat out colors.
Flatting is what comic guys call preparing line art for coloring. It’s exactly what I needed the whole time but had no idea what it was called. On top of that, I’m now noticing that EVERYONE ELSE knows what it is. I guess that’s what I get for trying to do a graphic novel all by myself in secret. Here are a few excellent tutorials on flatting.
- Tutorial on flatting – BoltCity.com (My personal favorite)
- Free flatting plug-in for Photoshop
- ProjectWaldo (where I learned about it all)
[edit] If you’re wondering how I outsourced to a few guys on the other side of the world, I talk about that here: Outsourcing.
Here are some images of my process for spread 4.
hey i am really glad i found you're blog. i have just started writing and drawing my first graphic novel myself (started in september) and i am going to try and self publish it when it is done. your blog is really inspirational to me because i think we are both working towards the same goals. your work is lovely and you have alot of great insight also. i've also started a blog to monitor the progress of my comic. if you have some time i'd love for you to check it out, however it's still in a very primitive state. the address is http://www.soulsadriftx.blogspot.com. thank you for all your tips and i'll keep checking to see how your comic is coming. i hope to keep in touch as our work progresses!
Erich – Thank you for your comment and compliments on my work. It's always super encouraging to hear that someone has gotten something useful from my work or blog. Making a GN is a big challenge but at the end of the day when we can hold that book in our hands it's all going to be worth it. Plus I'm a believer that it's our personal work that really opens doors in life. Not to mention being able to say what we really want to say to others.
I looked into your link but had no luck. It just says it doesn't exist. I'm very interested in seeing what your doing so please get back to me on this when it's fixed! Thanks again for stopping by.
wonderful to see your process jason! :)
Thats some great art right there, I love sign. Why is it called cripple peaks, or do we have to wait to find out? Also the Project Waldo flatting tutorial is most appreciated. I never even thought someone would make a plug-in for it.
Can't wait to find out about these Japanese Freelancers too.
Will
Scheier – Thanks again buddy!
Will – Cripple Peaks is the name of a partially submerged mountain range that this city is built on and around. Sonja's lighthouse is there to keep ships and oil rigs from hitting these rocks that have crippled many sailors in the past. Those are my thoughts anyway.
Yeah, the plugin looks neat but I still haven't tried it out. All the pages I've been working on are already flatted and I'm still tweaking them. But when I start to flat a new page I'll definitely try it.
The outsourcing thing is very interesting but I'm still trying to explore every option before I just send off my files across the world. I'll explain what I know though.
Thanks again for your comments!
Hi Jason, thanks for these links and information,
the plug in is a huge time saver!
:-)
First I must say that I really admire your style. And your comic is great, I really love it.
So I've been reading many webcomics lately and am thinking of making my own, now.
I hadn't really thought of what that would imply, so finding this blog was a bonus with the beautiful comic.
I've already learned so much from you with flatting and lettering (goodness that was good to know) and even making text bubbles! I almost feel silly as how exciting all this is… it's awesome.
I don't know if you take tutorial requests, but I'd love to see how you create/use textures and some tips on how you make those amazing lighting effects on your panels, it would totally be the best!!!!
I'm glad this is helpful. Just so you know, I am working on a big coloring series of tutorials right now. I'll try to post the first one in a week or two if all goes well.
8DDD
You don't know how happy I was when I saw the 'making graphic novels' page with all the upcoming tutorials!
I downloaded a flatting plug-in, put it in the folder Photoshop CS. I then went to PS, clicked Filter, BPelt-> Flatten. Nothing happened.
Am I doing something wrong? :(
I know there are a few things that are important to do before the plugin works but I’m not the best person to ask. In my forum there is a thread on flatting and this plug in is discussed quite a bit. Here is the link to the thread. If your question isn’t answered then feel free to ask there. Hope this helps.
http://www.remindblog.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=25
Ah, thanks. I think I know what I’m doing wrong, now. I’ll try it out once my computer returns from the land of the Dead.