Sunday, April 15, 2007

Comicbook color


I don't know how to color my own work on the computer. I have to surrender my art to someone else if It has to be colored. That's fine. When you draw for a living, you have to accept an Editorial process and evaluations and changes and blah, blah, blah. The problem is that there are a million ways to color a scene, and there are not many colorists that can be trusted.

I do not want to offend the colorists out there. Some of my best friends know how to rock Photoshop. It's just that I came across two examples of a night scene, and I wanted to talk about. The top drawing is a comicbook panel, and the bottom is a still frame from a movie. I love the movie frame and I think the warm hues add a creepy feeling to the scene. The cold blues of the top panel suggest fog and cold, but I think the art could be helped if the color person went with the warmer palette. I will not comment on the black and white line art.

Am I out of line with these comments? Are night-scenes better in Blue/grey as opposed to Red/amber? Gosh. I think I should take a class and color my own work.

4 comments:

Marie Javins said...

I can't see many cases where I would color a night scene red. Maybe in Las Vegas.

Steve Buccellato said...

I think it definitely could work with the warmer hues--but it kind of depends on how the scene is inked. If there is plenty of black (and shadow) on the page, it would obviously be a night scene, and the red hilights on the ground would be cool.

However, there is another factor. That is, that comic book coloring (just like penciling and inking) comes with some storytelling "shorthand" that the readers instantly understand. Blue scenes=night, for example.

That's not to say it is the ONLY way to do it, but it is an easy way to tell the story in a simple way that makes sense to the reader. Like switching palletes drastically when cutting between different scenes or locations. The reader has to do less work figuring out where the action is taking place, and in what context, and therefore can more easily be swept up in the story.

Yes, you should color your own work! I've said it many times! Learn the tools, and then you won't have to have another person read your mind as to the intent of your line art!

:)

Don Hudson said...

I saw the night photo and I thought it looked really cool. Steve, I wish more people had your Vision.

Marie Javins said...

I'm going to learn to draw and ink my own work so that I things are drawn right for me to color.