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Coloring in Photoshop – 5 Steps for the Absolute Beginner

by Palle Schmidt Leave a Comment

Make sure your line art is in a separate layer from your colors!

Digital coloring can be just as elaborate and detailed as an oil painting. But if you’re just getting started, here is a simple step-by-step guide for getting ready to color your comics in Photoshop.


Step # 1: Scan your line art.

I would recommend scanning in Grayscale and converting to Bitmap after. The resolution should be at least 300 dpi (dots per inch), maybe even 600 dpi. I would also recommend converting your line art to bitmap before you start working on it, to make sure the lines are crisp and clean.

Step # 2: Grayscale to RGB

I know I just told you to convert your line art to Bitmap – But in order to start coloring, you need to convert it back to grayscale, before you can convert it to RGB.

Step # 3: Copy your background layer

Making a copy of your line art layer is a good precaution, in case you screw something up. Click the visibilty of the original layer off and set the layer mode of the copy to “multiply”. This basically transforms your line art layer to the equivalent of clear plastic film that you put on top of your color layer.

Step # 4: Color layer(s)

Make a new layer in “Normal” mode, and make sure to place it under your line art layer.

Step # 5: Start coloring!

That’s it! No more steps really, unless you want to get creative – which you should! But this post is meant to just get you started, so these 5 steps are all you need to know for now, except this:

Bonus step: Save, flatten, save again.

When you have finished coloring your page (and along the way, just to be sure) save your work as a Photoshop file, so you have a back up including all the layers.

Then go to the “layers” menu and click “flatten image”.

If you intend for your comic to be printed, convert the color mode to CMYK and save it as a Tiff file. If it’s for web use or an inkjet printer, keep it in RGB and save it as a Jpeg.

Related post: Tips for Digital Coloring

Filed Under: News Tagged With: artwork, bitmap, cmyk, coloring, digital painting, how to, layers, Photoshop, rgb, tiff, tips for making comics, workflow

Step-by-Step Guide: My Comics Process

by Palle Schmidt 6 Comments

This is my next graphic novel project! Filling in the blanks should be no biggie, right? Well, there’s a little more to it than that.

I recently posted this picture on Instagram and Facebook that got a lot of likes – and a lot of questions! So I thought I’d elaborate a bit on how I actually tackle the creation of a comic or graphic novel. I go into detail with certain elements in my premium 10-video tutorial series, but these are the basic steps I go through every time.

1: Script

Having a finished script before you start drawing increases your chance of actually finishing with about 3000 percent. The first 2 videos of the premium series covers this (and those episodes are free). Sometimes I’ll get a script from another writer but I often work off my own or have to break the story down into pages.

2: Thumbnails

This is little scribbles just to get a grip of the page breakdowns. I don’t neccesarily do it for every page but it can be very helpful. The more I plan before I start drawing, the more smoothly the rest of the process. There is a podcast episode about making those hard choices here.

3: Rough sketches

Once I know sort of what the layout of the page will look like, I can start rough sketching pictures. As you’ll notice, this is bare bones storytelling, just enough for others to make out what is going on. No more, no less. I usually sketch on half pages, not full size. No need for bigger format when I’m not doing details – in fact the smaller format often helps in creating a clear layout.

4: Borders and lettering

After scanning my rough sketches, I put them in an InDesign document. If it’s an issue of a comic, I’ll make seperate 22-page files that stick to the same template. I’ll start by creating a standard border for the entire project and just plunk that in between all the frames. Then I’ll put the lettering in where it needs to go. Please note, that this is not the final document! I can adjust the lettering once I have the finished art. For full breakdown of this process go here.

5: Borders and balloons

Using a print-out of my now lettered rough sketches, I am ready to draw the actual pages. BUT, since I might need my borders and speech balloons in a clean format, I do the boring work of inking that part first. This is what the image I posted on Instagram portrayed – I can see why there was some confusion as to how I actually worked!

After I’ve traced the borders and balloons on the board I intend to do the rest of the artwork on, I scan the whole thing. Why? I’ll explain in step #8.

6: Sketching

Using my rough sketches as a guide, I’ll sketch the pages going into more detail, especially on backgrounds and stuff. A picture might change from my original ideas, but I always stick within the frames I already decided on. There’s a video of that process here.

7: Inking

Using a lightbox I trace my skectched pages on the boards that already has the borders and balloons. I can adjust the images a bit if needed. Sometimes I do painted art and other times I ink with black markers. There’s a video of me inking a page of Thomas Alsop here.

I don’t need to worry about paiting outside the borders in this stage because I’ve already scanned the clean pages with just balloons and borders, and no art.

8: Scanning and clean-up.

Remember when I said I might need the borders clean? This is the step. I used to I scan my inked pages and clean up mistakes where I painted outside the frames or over speech balloons. Now I just use the already scanned borders. I just smack my clean borders over the finished art in Photoshop, turn the opacity down a bit so I can see what I’m doing and adjust the corners. It took me a while to figure this out, because sometimes a scanner will skew things a little bit. But I discovered that if I do a “free transform” and focus on the four outer corners of the borders, the rest will sort itself out.

Once the two layers match up, I’ll select all the white within the frames on the top layer and delete that. Then I turn the opacity of the layer back up to 100% and viola! I now have a layer with nice, clean borders and balloons on top, and whatever mistakes (painting outside the borders) I made are hidden underneath. I flatten the file and export it, usually as a high-res tiff file.

8.1: Coloring (optional)

I’m not gonna go into detail here, but you might want to check out this post on coloring in Photoshop.

9: Repeal and replace!

Admitted, I don’t really call it that. But I do have to go through my already lettered InDesign file and delete all the border blocks and replace my rough sketch with the finished art. Some adjusting to the lettering is usually neccesary but then I have the entire book or issue ready to send to the graphic designer or export as a PDF directly for print.

10: Celebrate

I usually skip this step, honestly. But having typed up this post and seeing how much work goes into creating a graphic novel, I feel like I should make a point of this going forward.

Hopefully this answered some of your questions and gave you a few ideas to implement in your own process. Please share this post if you found it helpful!

 

 

Filed Under: Pro Tips Tagged With: A. J. Kazinski, art hacks, Art Tutorial, balloons, borders, comics, creativity, graphic novel, how to, inking, making comics, mistakes, painting, Photoshop, planning, pro tips, process, sketching, speech balloons, storytelling, Thomas Alsop, tips for making comics, workflow

Art tutorial: Tips for digitally coloring comics

by Palle Schmidt Leave a Comment

coloring-in-psd

Coloring digitally in Photoshop or Manga Studio can save you some time and grief, and it is pretty easy to learn. Here are a few pro tips to make it even easier!

  • Start with the background color and the general flow of the page and save the best for last: coloring your characters.
  • Make a seperate layer for your characters and foreground objects, and flat them out first. This saves you time when coloring, because you can select the entire shape and not be afraid to paint outside the lines.
  • If you are coloring for print, please note that your screen is backlit, which means it looks a lot brighter there than it will on paper! Beware of colors that are too dark.
  • Convert the image to grayscale, to see if the color works. I know this sounds weird, but thinking of coloring in shades of grey can really help. It’s all about light and dark, and everything in between. By converting to grayscale, you will instantly spot where if it is all the same value, too dark or too muddled. You can always undo the conversion and get all your colors back!
  • Always put your line art on top, so you paint under the line art. Set the line art layer mode to multiply, that should work perfectly.
  • Colors should not compete with line art. Try not to have colors that are too dark. 80% black is probably too close to the black of the line art.
  • Use a seperate layer for the background color and another on top for people and objects etc. Experiment with the opacity of your regular color layer, to let the background color shine through.
  • Having a seperate layer for speech balloons and borders placed at the top of your color layers is also a good idea, as it prevents the risk of painting over your borders or into the whites of the balloons.

Related video:
Episode 8: Coloring in Photoshop

Filed Under: Pro Tips Tagged With: Art Tutorial, coloring, digital, digital painting, how to, making comics, painting, Photoshop, tips for making comics

Process, pixels and pitfalls – Comics for Beginners podcast episode 27

by Palle Schmidt Leave a Comment


I got an email from a VIP subscriber who had a bunch of questions regarding his process. What program or software do you suggest for paneling or arranging the images with boarders on a computer? How much bigger should I do my drawing than the actual panel size? Is It important that all my drawings be consistent with that rule? Should I draw out panels into the page and start working on that or draw separate images and put them together on the computer?

I try to answer these and other questions in this podcast.

A shot of my desk, as requested by Joe!
A shot of my desk, as requested by Joe!

 

Filed Under: Podcast, Pro Tips Tagged With: art hacks, artwork, creativity, drawing, how to, improving as an artist, inking, making comics, painted art, painting, Photoshop, pixelation, pro tips, process, scanning, test page, tips for making comics, workflow

Making Comics with Patrick Yurick – Comics for Beginners Podcast episode

by Palle Schmidt Leave a Comment


“I find that art is 90 percent fear!”

Artist, teacher and CEO of MakingComics.com, Patrick Yurick, visited Copenhagen and I got to show him the better parts of the city. We also managed to record a podcast on his view on the craft, career, his experiences with teaching comics to teens, his zombie buddy comedy Hipster Picnic and the future of making comics.

Links to stuff mentioned on this episode:

My video on lessons I learned from working on Thomas Alsop

GutterTalk podcast interview

ThomasAlsop.com

Webcomics Underdogs

TheHeadComic.Com

@patrickyurick

MakingComics.com

StoryForgeProductions.com

Patrick-Yurick-in-Copenhagen
CEO of MakingComics.com Patrick Yurick (left) hanging out in Copenhagen with Palle Schmidt.

Filed Under: Podcast, Pro Tips Tagged With: Adam Greenfield, Anime, art, artists, Comic Con, comics industry, cosplay, craft, DC comics, fear, Gutter Talk, Hipter Picnic, Illustrator, Little Fish, making comics.com, Manga, Marvel Comics, online, overwhelm, Patrick Yurick, Photoshop, podcast, publishing, reference, social media, StoryForge, storytelling, talent, teaching comics, Thomas Alsop, webcomics

Bonus Video: Making borders and balloons black on painted art

by Palle Schmidt Leave a Comment

When you’re making comics as painted art, getting the borders and balloons nice and black can be tricky. I found a workaround that I share in this quick tip.

Filed Under: Pro Tips, Video Tagged With: art hack, Art Tutorial, balloons, borders, drawing, how to, making comics, painting, Palle Schmidt, Photoshop, pro tips

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