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Here is an example of what I do. I choose whatever it is I want to color (in this case, the boy's skin) and choose a colored swatch for that area. If I don't have one that's exactly what I want, I adjust the hue, saturation, and color balance until I come up with what I need. If it's a recurring color, I may save the swatch for use later. Anyway ... once I get the color I'm looking for, I paste the swatch in between the outline and the background, cut it up, and move it to the places that color appears. When I have all of the areas covered, I trace around the areas with the lasso tool, select the inverse, and delete the overflow areas!
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Here's an example with some other colors laid down. Slowly but surely, the pieces fall into place... Like I said, this may not be the easiest method of coloring a comic, but I like it!
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Here we have the almost finished product. All of the color swatches have been laid down, cut out, and the layers reordered if necessary. It looks good, but a little ... flat. Time to break out the tablet again!
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To shade and highlight, I just pick a color that's quite a bit darker (or lighter) than whatever it is I'm working with and paint at 20% opacity in a new layer between the swatches and the outline. This is subtle enough to allow the texture of the watercolor to show through, yet still solid enough to be visible. If I feel some areas need to be a little darker or lighter, I just go over them again with the same brush. For the barista's hair and clothing, I select areas with the polygonal lasso tool and change the brightness and contrast. This is what it looks like, completely colored, before the text goes on in...
STEP 4: Text and Finishing
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The first thing I do is bring back the sketch layer. There, I've laid out the basic placement of the speech bubbles and banners (if there are any). In Illustrator, I have a few pre-made bubble/banner outlines, so I open those files up in preparation. I pick out one of the basic outlines, copy it, and paste it where it fits best, often resizing them to get an idea of how much space I'm working with for the actual text. I repeat this step until I have them basically where I want them.
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And for my next trick ... text! I polish up the dialog and make sure it fits into the bubbles. I might still have to do a little resizing and redrawing of the actual bubbles so it
does fit all nice and snug, but nobody's perfect, eh? At this point I could just delete the sketch layer if I wanted, but I just hide it again. I might be a bit of a packrat when it comes to drawings. You never can tell if you might need something again, and as soon as you throw it away ... you end up needing it. That's how it always works out for me, anyway...
Now, the finishing touches! I make a new paint layer under the text and bubble outlines, select inside and behind the outlines, and color those bubbles in! I pull the title out of my Illustrator file and add it in the corner, as well as the url and signature at the bottom. I add a little bit of a drop shadow to the speech bubbles and the title to help them stand out a little better and ... ta-da! Finished comic!
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I compress the file down to a PNG, resize it, and post it on it's temporary home page
here, and on it's very own deviantArt page
here (along with a few little extras from time to time).
And that is how it's done! Thanks for sticking with me on this crazy, rambling journey through the creative (and sometimes painstaking) process of disEnchanted! As always, I'm very open to comments, suggestions,
constructive criticisms, and kittens. Feel free to contact me at godfrey.ad@gmail.com with any of the following!
Just ... don't try sending any
REAL kittens via e-mail.
I don't think that could possibly end well...
Oh, and thanks again!
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