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.

To start this off, I'd like to say that I'm not trying to promote outsourcing. I'm sure someone will read this and be upset with me for showing a clear cut way to outsource your comic pages causing the American economy to collapse…again.  All I'm trying to do here is get my stupid graphic novel finished before I'm to old to draw.  Plus I'd rather spend time with my wife and son then flatting a page on the weekends.  After all, this isn't my job, it's my personal project/hobby.

Surviving the effects of globalization for an online freelancer?

Now that I've captivated you with that last link, I'll plow forward.  The whole idea of outsourcing arose after reading the book The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss. This book, in itself, is a controversy. I think Tim is a bit of a salesman myself but I did pick up some interesting things from his ramblings.

Outsourcing was one of them. Outsourcing boring, time consuming, or monotonous things that don't need your special attention so you can focus on things you want to do. 

The book suggests a few websites that specialize in aggregating freelancers from around the globe.  Here are a few of them:

• elance.com (what I used)
• guru.com

I suggest Elance over Guru. Guru is slow and it's hard to find anyone for a good price.  Why would I want to pay someone $75 an hour to flat out my pages.  Elance, on the other hand is a pretty fast site to look through and you can find people around the world but it does take some getting use to.

I ended up using a small company of five from India called Dream Computers.  They have a few comic coloring samples in their portfolio.  Their hourly rate said $15 but after I paid them for my test pages they emailed me back, dropping their page rate to $15 a page for finished coloring. Just so you know, I never used what they colored because it wasn't what I was looking for but I'm thinking about emailing my contact at Dream Computers to show them a flatting tutorial and negotiate a new price.  After all I don't want to pay them the same price for flatting a page as I would for finished coloring.  My only problem with this method is it seems like you have to spend time and money to get the right freelancer and maybe even teach them what you want them to do.

Even though I can see how this might work out well with the exchange rates, I'm still curious about hiring someone who already knows how to do flats.  I mean how much more could it cost to have a professional flatter?  But where do I find one?

[Edit] Click here to find out – Outsourcing Comic Flatting – part 2 

P.S. I just got reamed the other day about my lousy lettering job in these pages.  I promise I will make it all better once I learn to do it right and I'll post what I learn. 

[Edit] What I learned – Lettering and Making your own fonts

Here is Spread 5 by the way.

I'm thinking of adding part of a row boat in the bottom left panel foreground. I already redrew Sonja twice and finally asked my wife to pose for me so I could get it right. I worry it looks more realistic then the rest of her frames.  And talk about negative space!

In my last post I brought up Elance or Guru for outsourcing.  This has been useful to know but I almost hate the process of finding the right person, spending money to test them, possibly train them and the whole time wondering if I could just find a more direct route to a professional flatter in the comics industry for a good price.

Enter GutterZombie.

This is an awesome forum started by Dave McCaig, pretty much dedicated to the comic coloring world. These guys really know their stuff and when I asked about flatting they laughed and directed me to a "work for hire section" that is full of Flatters just waiting to get work.  It looks like the going rate is about $10 a page. That's not bad in my opinion.  I can see paying ten dollars instead of using 3 hours of my free time and I don't have to teach them about Flatting.

Here is a link to the work for hire section: Flatters!

There are several people offering their service as flatters but it looks like posting a thread about your project is the best approach.  It seems like everyone finds someone when they post a thread.

I dug through some of the posts and found a few professional looking websites of flatters.  Here are the first five I found but there's plenty more:

Aaron Daly

Alex Petretich

David Burns

Fred Fries

Ruth Lim

I talked to Aaron Daly by email and he offered to flat a page for free to show me how it might work if I hire him for more.  He finished the page I sent him in a flash and it looked amazing!  We talked about a page rate and I must say that it is much better then I expected (sorry I don't want to say his price because he's doing me a favor since I'm paying for this out of my own pocket.) I'll share what he is doing for me in a future post but feel free to check out his samples here.

In conclusion, I'm pretty convinced that finding a flatter through GutterZombie.com is the best approach when looking to outsource. I know I've found my guy and it was pretty easy.

Here is spread 6 along with the pencil lines.  Sorry I'm starting to impose my name and the date of conception on my work.  I've noticed some sites are posting my images which is very exciting but also makes me kinda worried if I don't watermark it from now on. I hope it's not to intrusive into the art.

Here are the final pencil lines of spread 6.

And here is the final colors (I think).  Notice almost a year passed between the pencils and colors.  I'm sure you're also noticing that I'm milking the splash page spreads here.  Don't worry, the whole book isn't going to be like this, although it will have splash spreads throughout. I just wanted the first chapter to be a slower pace to force the mood and feel of the world onto the reader before I jumped into heavy story.

(All this information about outsourcing is my unprofessional opinion only. Please contact your CPA for any tax related questions about outsourcing.)

• Batman
• Superman
• Spider-Man
• X-Men
• Spawn!

JASON BRUBAKER – Hey Ian.  Thanks for taking the time for this interview. 

To start things out, How did you become a comic colorist?

IAN HANNIN - No problem, Jason. I'm a fan of your work- especially, the colors!

Let's go back to 1995. Wow. I was a comic book fan, and a Photoshop enthusiast working at Kinko's in downtown Orlando, FL. On one of my weekly scheduled trips to the comic book store, I found myself with the latest issue of Wildstorm Production's, WildC.A.T.s, drawn by my favorite, the legendary Jim Lee. And to my astonishment, there was an page in the back devoted to their talent search! They were looking for writers, pencilers, inkers and colorists. I figured I'd give it a go since I'd had some traditional painting experience, and was fresh out of Ringling School of Art and Design of Sarasota, having learned Photoshop 2.0! I crafted a resume, collected some of my photoshop work, and dropped it all in the mail to La Jolla, CA. A few days later, I received a call from Wildstorm- a truly life-changing day. I will always be indebted to Alex Sinclair- pioneer in the biz, and Jim Lee colorist to this day, for giving me the opportunity. Within a few short weeks, I had moved to La Jolla, settled into a small studio apt, and begun coloring Jim Lee's comics- with the man himself just down the hall. And by the way, he's still my hero, and a great guy.

JASON BRUBAKER – What a great story.  I remember picking up that same issue of WildC.A.T.S. and spending the next 2 weeks perfecting 4 penciled pages for a submission.  They told me I wasn't chosen but I was second on the list.  Oh well.  So since my blog is about making comics and graphic novels I'll try to get really specific now of your process.

When you color, do you use any photo reference or do you just pull it all out of your head?

IAN HANNIN - If I need photo reference, it's usually for background elements. With deadlines looming, sometimes I'll search online for photos of things I'd have a tough time starting from scratch. A cloudy sky or some ripples in the surface of a pool. Maybe a nice moon with craters and gashes across the surface. In any case, I tweak it heavily- adding contrast, blurring, smudging, adding my own details, and of course changing the hues. By the time I'm done with the reference, it's no more a photo than a Monet is.

JASON BRUBAKER – It seems like that is a pretty common practice now days.  About half the artist I work with manipulate photos for their visual development paintings.  They also make a lot of custom brushes in Photoshop.  Is this something you do as well?

IAN HANNIN - I do have some custom brushes, but I use them sparingly. I'm a big believer of less-is-more. I try to keep the colors simple and clean. Too much rendering is too much to look at. I mean, come on, the reader is READING. If I need some blood splatter, or some rust, then I'll go for the custom brushes. But I don't care for coloring with textures everywhere. Just because you can make blue jeans look real in Photoshop, doesn't mean you SHOULD.

Ninety-Nine percent of the time, I'm using the lasso tool and the airbrush to render the lighting set up by the inker. That's it.

JASON BRUBAKER – I see.  Do you have someone flat out your pages before you start?

IAN HANNIN – To paraphrase one of my heroes, there is no "try". You are DOING it. You're making your graphic novel. To those reading this who's work I haven't had the good fortune to see, I would say only this: Make it your own and do it in a way we've never seen before.

JASON BRUBAKER – Very good advice. And now for the most important question…If you were a color which one would it be?

IAN HANNIN – That would change from day to day, but sitting here right now I'd have to say C 65, M 85, Y 0, K 30.

Help me get back into the top 100 at TopWebComics. VOTE HERE!

These pages were a blast to work on because… you guessed it, ACTION! But I can’t help but wonder if I should change the rating of this comic to PG-13 because of crab blood. I guess I’ll find out if angry mother’s comment. Also, let me know if you can think of a better way to write that 3rd narration box. It seems funny to me and I can’t figure it out. It will all be sent to my editor in the end so I guess I shouldn’t stress on it too much.

_______________________________

This week has been good. I finally finished a lingering page that changed a million times right in the middle of Chapter 2. I also changed up the ending of Chapter 2 and I’m very happy with it now. It was one of those things that I knew I’d have to come back to later. Oh yeah, I also scrapped the first spread of Chapter 3 and sketched a new one adding a pile more work for myself. Yay, the joys of being your own worst critic.

I sent 9 spreads to my flatter, Aaron Daly, and he’s blowing through them like nothing. Do you know how much time that is saving me? Let me think… probably about 2 to 3 hours a spread (at my speed) which equals 18 to 27 hours of work! I can only work for about 2 to 3 hours a night on this stuff so that’s pure gold!

I just remembered, Aaron has an unpublished spread of reMIND on his blog from a while back. Go check it out if you want a look into the future of reMIND.
_______________________________

I did some reading this weekend.

I read How to Make Webcomics and I must say that it was kinda useful. I might just be overly critical because I learned 99% of the stuff they talk about from just doing research online and taking an educated guess. But anyway, it’s geared more towards a daily webcomic which isn’t exactly what I am doing but I thought it might have some secrets to making one successful. There were a few good things that I’ve never heard before but all in all I can’t say it gave me any breakthroughs in what I should do differently. I’ll write a more thorough review later but for now the main things I learned from it are as follows:

• Buy paid ads on networks and forum sites.
• Make free wallpapers and down-loadable stuff.
• Fliers for campuses, cons, and comic stores.
• Look into a freelance distributor to handle my books.
• Use shipping supply company for cheap shipping stuff.
• Offer my books to a retailer at cons so they can sell my books and maybe get more orders later.
• Make press kit online and hard copy for Cons. For people in the press.

I’m not sure if this bullet point list makes any sense to anyone but me. I’m also not sure I’d recommend buying this book unless you were brand new to everything. If you are brand spanking new and want to make webcomics then, YES, by all means, it’s going to be helpful.

But honestly, I’ve been getting more out of the book called Tribes by Seth Godin. Thanks for the suggestion Kelly!

One last thing. I updated my Top-List Sites article. I added a few more I found and moved the Belfry up on the list.

My Top 10 Favorite reMINDblog Articles…so far.

1. Before You Start Your Graphic Novel – This was the first real article I made to try and convey something I learned about the GN creative process. It started as an answer to a question that someone asked me in a forum. I didn’t feel like I was qualified to answer but once I started writing it, it was clear to me that I had some important things I wanted to say and warn people about. I’ve updated it since it’s inception so check it out again.
2. Outsourcing Comic Pages (Specifically Flats) – What I learned in this series of posts on Outsourcing really changed everything for me. I was able to color my last 2 pages in an a hour and a half last night, and it was largely because I learned about flatting and outsourcing. This article has a few parts to it so keep clicking.
3. Interview with Ian Hannin (a professional comic colorist) – It’s not everyday that I get to interview someone working on Batman. Plus it’s very informative of the creative process of coloring comics.
4. Making Your Own Comic Font – When I first started my graphic novel, I didn’t seem to care about my fonts or anything to do with Lettering. After showing some pages on forums, my eyes were opened and I realized that the Lettering is just as important as any other aspect of my comic. I tried to find the right font but had trouble getting one I was happy with that matched my style. Shortly after, I learned how to create my own font and never looked back.
5. Blogger Vs. WordPress – I started out using Google’s Blogger for reMIND but once I starting getting serious about blogging I learned about WordPress and the ComicPress theme. What I discovered completely revolutionized the direction I took with reMINDblog.
6. RGB Vs. CMYK in Photoshop – This has been a tricky learning curve for me because there are so many opinions of the right way to do things. Even so, I never understood the real working difference in Photoshop until I made this video comparing the two modes. Decide for yourself which mode you want to work in but only after you see what the difference really is.
7. 1000 Ture Fans – This is an encouraging article about making a living off your comics or graphic novels. The linking article by Kevin Kelly is a must read and can really change the way artists think about their work.
8. 7 Reasons to NOT use Comic Sans MS in Your Comic – This is by far my most trafficked and controversial article to date. Some hate it and some love it. Before just plopping the first comic font you find into your artwork, check out this article.
9. Easy Word Balloons – I made a quick tutorial a while back about word balloons. I’ve made them many ways over the years and this is the easiest and best way I’ve discovered.
10. Unnatural Talent – I know this is a new article but I think it’s one of my most heart felt posts I’ve written so it definitely deserves to be on this list.

Thank you for all your support and comments over the last 6 months. If it wasn’t for all your warm encouragement I’d still be trying to finish the first Chapter.

These pages went through several changes before I finally figure ‘em out. For example, the first panel used to be Victuals at the doorway of his mom’s house and he was in peasant clothes. All the detail in the room was added after the fact and with a Wacom Cintiq. I think it blends pretty well with the pencil drawings. The beads are also all digital. The third panel use to be 2 frames. One with Victuals giving her a ring and the second with them kissing. The ring idea was bad from the start. I mean why would lizards be giving each other rings like humans? Then the kissing panel just looked silly so it got cut. When I think about it, most of the time when I can’t figure out how to draw a story point, I just cut it out and let the narration speak for itself. What a cheap trick. Anyway, I hope this conveys the story I was intending.

If you want to see thumbnails, sketches, pencils and the first coloring pass of these pages then vote HERE!

6 Month Milestone

Today is a special date for me and reMIND.  Six months ago I published the first 2 pages of reMIND. I had no idea what would happen when I started this blog and I had no idea what I was doing either. But now after six months, I can’t imagine trying to finish reMIND without it. I had concerns and doubts when I started but now I can’t stress the benefits enough. I’ll talk much more about this in the future because it’s a fairly new and misunderstood path for publishing. I also hit a few milestones that I want to share real quick:

• I just hit 200 RSS subscribers about a week ago. For some reason I had 200 as a goal for myself. Not sure why but I’m pumped that I hit it!
• According to ComicBlogElite, reMINDblog has had over 50,000 unique visitors in the last 6 months. That’s cool!!!
• I colored a complete spread in an hour and a half yesterday.  This is really fast for me. When I started reMIND (4 years ago) it took me about 3 days to color a spread because I had no idea how to even start. I’ve refined my coloring over the years and started using a flatter and in turn, whittled down the process to a reasonable time. I’m not saying every spread takes me 1.5 hours now, some may take a good 6 hours until I’m happy but the fact that I don’t have to kill myself to get this done is very relieving.

T-Shirt Update

I just talked to my brother-n-law who is also the one making my T-shirts and he told me that I should have my first batch of shirts this Saturday. So it looks like I will be packing up all the Gorilla Packs next weekend to ship out.(assuming all goes according to plan). I still have a few left to move. I have 3 small, 10 medium, 10 large left. So jump on it if you want it for $10. Once I finish selling these I think I’m going to raise the prices to $15 (plus shipping this time). I’m basically selling them for no profit this first batch just to get the word out there. It also leaves me with the bill unless I sell them all. So yeah, buy a shirt so I can pay my brother-n-law. haha

Click here to order shirts.

Also, thanks to all who donated a little extra to help me cover the shipping outside the US. I’m really excited to know that reMIND shirts will be seen around the UK, Netherlands, Germany and Belgium! In fact, I’ve almost sold as many shirts in Europe as I have in the US. Maybe it’s because I like European comics better than most US comics. Interesting.

Rock Stars and Comic books

In my career as an artist I’ve noticed some strange things. One thing that keeps surfacing is famous musicians making comics. In my article about Agents, I talked about an unnamed famous rock star who hired me to draw his stupid comic and never paid me. Yeah, talk about a looser.

I have a good rock start story though. It’s about Rikki Rockett. You know, the drummer of Poison. He’s pretty much the coolest rock star I ever met. When I was at the San Diego Con back in the 90′s I showed him my portfolio and he immediately wanted to hire me. I was invited to Rikki’s private party that night for his new comic company called “No Mercy Comics”. That was cool.

Later that year my friend, Brian Brethauer and I planned a road trip to LA from Idaho to see Rikki and show him some more work. Needless to say, nothing ever panned out. Rikki was awesome but it just wasn’t the right timing. Talk about a surreal moment seeing Rikki Rockett color one of my comic pages in Photoshop. I’ve never seen Photoshop before that day either. Remember, this was 1996.

Rikki coloring one of my pages.

Here’s another picture of Rikki Rockett and Brian Brethauer. I’m not in the picture because I was the one behind the camera. Rikki was eating a giant sandwich.

Since I have no pictures of myself and Rikki to prove that I actually met him. Here is a picture that has Brian and I so you can at least see that I know the guy sitting next to Rikki.

From left to right: Jeremy Barlow, Me, Jon Barlow, Brian Brethauer. Brian’s face is half covered but it’s really the same guy. Seriously. Brian, help me out here! This proof would never hold up in court. Brian?

I bet Rikki and Brian are off somewhere playing golf right now, laughing.

Anyway, so the point of this rock star memorabilia is this.

Last week, I was contacted by someone who works for the singer VV Brown. I guess VV is really into graphic novels and is making her own called The City of Abacus. I was asked to do a feature review of her book but instead I just want to say how fascinating it is that everyone is in the same boat when it comes to making a graphic novel. They might have more fame or money but in the end, they are the same as you and me, just trying to make a cool comic. It’s kinda encouraging when I think about it, I mean the fact that someone famous is asking me to plug their book? Me? I just have a blog and a comic that’s not even published.

I wish VV Brown all the best in her new venture as a graphic novel creator. When I cut my first thrash-metal-country-opera album I’ll know where to go for some press.

First of all, I highly recommend using Adobe Photoshop in which all the steps below are achieved. It’s an industry standard and will also come in handy for everything else creative you choose to do. I know it’s expensive but it’s worth every penny.

If you are new to coloring comics in Photoshop, here are the very first things you will want to learn. Later posts will get more advanced, so bare with me all you experts.

Adjusting the Levels

Pencil art is usually really washed out when you scan it so I suggest adjusting the levels before you try to flat or color. If you want to keep your line art looking like pencil then it’s totally fine but for flatting purposes you will need to save an adjusted version. If you have inked lines, you can still use the levels to adjust it just as you would with pencils. Everything that follows will still work.  Here is a simple tutorial on adjusting your line art to look like ink HERE.

Now that your lines are nice and dark we need to set the layer with your lines to multiply.

Using Multiply

Multiply is one of the first things I ever learned in Photoshop. It’s also one of the most common layer modes I’ve seen used, and for good reason.

Multiply makes your line art act like a transparency on a white background. Any layers you put under your line art will be visible through your line art layer (unless your line art is solid black, in which no light can pass through) just like an overhead projector.

Here is a video showing how to use multiply and what it does.

Now that we understand multiply we can start making our flats or bring in flats if we had them outsourced.

I’ve talked about flatting before and I’ve found this to be one of the most important parts of the whole comic coloring process so I need to address it more before we can really get to the rest.

My definition of Flatting:

Flatting a comic page is the process of coloring different sections of your panels a unique color so they can easily be selected later. It’s not important what color each section is, only that they are unique colors and properly fitting to your artwork. For those of you who are old school, it’s like cutting out all the stencils for a drawing you’re going to airbrush.

To prepare the line art for my flatter to flat, I converted it to grayscale and played with the levels to make sure the lines are nice and black then I flattened (reduced it down to just one layer in PS) the file so it’s only one layer and removed any hidden alpha channels. This allows the file to be a decent size for emailing. I save the image as a grayscale .PSD file at 300 dpi.

A few days later after the file has been flatted, I get it back looking something like this. Notice the lines are gone and it’s just colors. Perfect!

Here you can see how the flat sections are divided right in the middle of the lines.

In this way it’s not just a matter of using your selection tool to make flats. You must split the lines right down the middle to ensure your color edge is hidden by the lines. For more specifics on flatting your own pages, check out Kazu’s flatting tutorial over at BoltCity.com.

Sloppy flats lead to wasted time. If you hire a flatter or do them yourself, you need to make sure they are perfect so you don’t have to keep repainting selections over and over.

Remember, if your making your own flats, don’t focus on the colors yet. Just focus on making them as accurate as possible, dividing up everything into as many seperate colors as you need. This will never be what people see when your page is finished. It’s just a bunch of colors that can easily be selected when we start coloring later. I’ll show you how I use flats in the next tutorial.

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Coloring a Graphic Novel Series (How I color reMIND)

Part 1 – Multiply and Flatting (You are here)

Part 2 – How I use Flats

Part 3 – Textures – Art Directing your Graphic Novel

Part 4 – Creating your own Texture Library

Part 5 – Adding Textures to your Flatted Page

Part 6 – Masking and Applying Gradients

Part 7 – Light Source and Shadows

Part 8 – Dialing it all Together

When I first started making comics I was clueless about the coloring process. I would paint under my line art that was set to multiply but that was the extent of my knowledge. It always seemed like such mindless work to paint between the lines, to fill in the shapes, like I was doing what any kid could do in grade school. It took up so much precious time, but it had to be done before I could start adjusting the colors to my liking.

After learning about flatting, coloring a page became a quick and fun process. I can cut right to the part I enjoy and the part that needs my special attention.

If you goto GutterZombie.com, you can find all kinds of threads on how to color comics. That’s the forum where I learned about how to use flats. There are MANY ways to approach it and most of them involve putting your flats into channels. I’m not going to say that’s the right or wrong way but it’s not the way that works best for me. Here’s what I do.

First, I bring my flats layer into my file with my line art. I have my line art set to multiply and I put my flats below the lines so it looks like this.

HINT: If you are dragging in flats with the same dimensions as your line art, hold down the shift key as you drag in your file and it should automatically snap to your canvas and line up perfectly with your line art.

To make these colors easy to select, we need to select the magic wand tool.

Now that we have selected the magic wand, we need to adjust the tolerance down to between 3 and 5. This makes it only select the colors that are extremely close in range to the color we click on. If the tolerance is higher, more colors will be selected when we click on something, so keep it really low when using flats.

The second thing we need to look at is the box that says Anti-Alias. Anti-alias blends the edges of your selection to make it look nicer to the eye and less like an old video game. In most cases this is good to have checked, but for flats we need to turn it off so it doesn’t feather our selections. Every time you select something with Anti-alias, it slowly eats away more of your selections, so make sure it’s off.

Third, we need to look at the Contiguous check box. You might be switching this one back and forth as you work because it changes your selection from just selecting the same colors that are touching each other, to the same colors that aren’t. So with contiguous unchecked, if you select a skin color in one panel, it will also select the same skin colors in other panels even though they are not touching.

Now our magic wand settings are ready for using our flats.

The first thing I do with my new flats is adjust some of the colors if I know it will work better one way or another. For instance, I know that Sonja’s skin will always be the same color on the whole page so I’m going to select all the skin colors and make sure they are all the same. Or perhaps I want to darken one of the Victuals layers becasue I know he will be a different color in one panel. This is the time I do that.

Remember, we are still not coloring, only adjusting the flats for easy selection.

Now that we have our flats the way we want, duplicate it.

I rename the duplicate, Colors, and move it below the flats layer.

Now select the flats layer again and slide the opacity to “0″ so that the layer is completely invisible.

Now lock it so you can’t accidentally start painting on it.

Now the fun begins, but it takes some getting use to.

Before I adjust individual parts, I first click on the color layer and hit Apple+U(Mac) or Ctrl+U(PC) for Hue/Saturation.

I usually pull down the saturation to start with so everything is not so colorful. Just a personal preference. It will look something like this.

Now we can start adjusting specific parts. Start with the big, obvious colors, like the sky. So lets click on our flats layer and with the magic wand, click on the sky. You will notice that even though the flats are invisible and locked, we can still select from it. (Isn’t that cool!)

All the sky should have been selected and nothing else. Now click on your color layer and hit Apple+L(Mac) or Ctrl+L(PC) to bring up Levels. Adjust the sky to white and hit OK.

Congratulations! You have officially painted your sky white with very little effort.

Now go back to the flats layer and select something else. Go back to the color layer and use Hue/Saturation or Levels again to adjust it to your desired color. Slide around the Hue sliders until you are happy with the color and hit OK. If you can’t get the color you are looking for then click the colorize check box in Hue/Saturation and try it again.

Another command that I use quite a bit is Apple+B(Mac) or Ctrl+B(PC) for color balance. This makes it easy to add just a little more red or blue or whatever to a selection.

You are well on your way to coloring your page using flats and guess what, if you were simply coloring these pages without textures in a style like “Hell Boy”, imagine how fast you could do it. Here is a little recap of the Hot Keys and what they are best for with this kind of technique.

Keep selecting colors from the flats layer and adjust the color layer. Repeat until you are satisfied with all your colors. Now you’re all done! You can also airbrush inside your selection as I did below with Sonja’s hand in the last frame.

Here’s what my page is starting to look like. I know you’re impressed.

I usually don’t go to far without adding some textures which affect how the final color looks, but I’ll get into that later, along with lighting and shadows.

So you thought coloring a comic was all about using the paint brush to fill in between the lines, eh? Well, I’m sorry to destroy your childhood dreams. Of course you could still do it that way after you select from your flats, but for me this approach is super easy, quick and fun.

Here are the upcoming topics I’ll be breaking down in future posts so make sure to bookmark or subscribe to reMINDblog so you don’t miss out on the good stuff.

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Coloring a Graphic Novel Series (How I color reMIND)

Part 1 – Multiply and Flatting

Part 2 – How I use Flats (You are here)

Part 3 – Textures – Art Directing your Graphic Novel

Part 4 – Creating your own Texture Library

Part 5 – Adding Textures to your Flatted Page

Part 6 – Masking and Applying Gradients

Part 7 – Light Source and Shadows

Part 8 – Dialing it all Together

Before we jump head first into this tutorial I suggest skimming Part 2 – How I use Flats, because this goes hand in hand with it.

Also some of the things I do require Photoshop CS2 or greater (I think).

Okay, so lets look at where we left off. We have our “lines” layer on the top of everything and set to Multiply. Under the lines we have our “flats” layer with the opacity turned down to zero so that it’s invisible and it’s locked. We can still select from it though. Then we have our “colors” layer that is adjusted to our liking. Below that I always put a solid white layer. This is what it looks like.

Now lets pick one of our textures that we made back in Part 4 – Creating Your Own Texture Library and drag it into our file. It will look something like this. Make sure your texture layer is above the colors layer.

Rename the texture layer by double clicking on the layer name. I just name all my textures “texture”. Call me crazy.

While you have your texture layer highlighted, hit Apple+G (mac) or Ctrl+G (pc) to create a group/folder and whatever layers you have selected will automatically be moved into your new group/folder.

This may seem trivial but it really makes it easier later on when you have a bunch of textures. Now, lets rename the group “Textures”.

Now the magic starts to happen. Click back on your texture layer (not the group) and change the layer mode to Darken.

Now click on your Textures FOLDER and change the folder mode to Overlay.

Now things are starting to take shape. Notice how anything that was white stays white even though there is a texture over it. Any of our painted colors suddenly have textures affecting the color. If you don’t want your texture color changing any of the colors you adjusted, then try turning your texture to black and white. I like keeping most of the color from the texture intact though because it adds to the hand painted look and sometimes it creates strange subtile color combinations that look really great.

Now take some time to slide around your texture so that it works with your art. I’ve used the edge of the texture with the edge of the lighthouse to give it the impression that it’s hit by light on the left side. This is where you need to start designing how your page will look and feel.

You can also duplicate your texture and slide the duplicate to fill another part of your image. Since your first texture mode was on Darken already, your duplicate will also be on Darken. This is perfect for making these texture blend together so you don’t see where one ends and another begins. But since all these textures are inside your folder that is set to Overlay, Overlay is the only thing that is affecting the rest of your image. (I believe this is only possible with some of the newer versions of Photoshop like CS2 and above.)

Transform. Rotate and scale.

By hitting Apple+T (Mac) or Ctrl+T (pc) while on a texture layer, you can freely transform it however you please. I would avoid streaching or skewing textures. Try to keep it mainly to rotation and scale to avoid it looking “photoshopped”.

If your textures are too saturated or full of contrast you can always adjust the Hue/Saturation of each texture. On this page I decided to use colorize to convert my texture to a monotone texture so I could control it a bit more. I usually don’t do this because you loose lots of good color information when you hit “colorize.”  Once again, Apple+U or Ctrl+U for Hue/Saturation.

After Colorizing my textures (very rare), I duplicated the texture again to finish filling in the gaps. Now I have three texture layers all on Darken inside a folder set to Overlay.

NOTE: If you have an older version of Photoshop that doesn’t allow this then you can always cover your page with textures set to Darken without them being in a folder. Once you have all your textures positioned then merge them all together and change the mode to Overlay for your flattened texture layer. To merge your layers together, hit Apple+E (Mac) or Ctrl+E (PC).

Now we can close our texture folder to keep it all out of the way.

From here on, we just continue to do the same process that we did in Part 2 by selecting from our flats and adjusting our color layers until we get the color we like. But now that we have textures affecting our colors, we might need to push the color layers even further to get the colors we want. I try to avoid adjusting the textures themselves unless they are really bright and affecting my color layer too much.

Keep adjusting your color layer while selecting from your flats layer until you are happy with it. If you don’t like the texture anymore then drag a new one in and see what happens.

Here’s what my page looks like after adjusting.

The only thing left is to add some shadows and lighting.

But we can save that for another time.

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Coloring a Graphic Novel Series (How I color reMIND)

Part 1 – Multiply and Flatting

Part 2 – How I use Flats

Part 3 – Textures – Art Directing your Graphic Novel

Part 4 – Creating your own Texture Library

Part 5 – Adding Textures to your Flatted Page (You are here)

Part 6 – Masking and Applying Gradients

Part 7 – Light Source and Shadows

Part 8 – Dialing it all Together