Black and White vs Colour

[Luminosophy]

I'm struggling between the two. My method of line art evolved from Manga pages. It's heavy, bold and black. My major gripe is that it's never looked good in colour. The colouring method derived from animation (cel-shading) but it's typically used in conjunction with much thinner line art. In addition since I love details so much, making full coloured pages is very taxing on my time. I'm starting to think it was a bad idea to make my pages coloured, and I should go for black and white toning instead. I also believe it's where my passion lies more. I'll be honest, I kind of hate painting.

I know a lot of fantastic detail and depth can still from B&W works, but my writer is siding on our projects be coloured. Well, our real projects are probably going to exceed more than 500 pages. So I'm very concerned about this. I know he wants colour and yes it would be nice but I don't think it's feasible. Do coloured pages really make that big of an impact on audiences? Are they considered better? Because I see a lot of artists who do B&W comics here.

The writer's reasoning for colour is that it leads to a lot of misinterpretations of characters, backgrounds and pretty much everything. I agree with it. It's the same reason he doesn't use names or words that phonetically sound different in English when read compared to their native language or how they're supposed to sound. Because you don't have the accompanying audio to fix it for you. Do you think a comic is jarring as a reader if every odd page were colour with mostly black and white? Or should it be structured like every first page of a chapter is in colour?

[foervraengd]

I've also grown up influenced by the B/W manga format. And it's still what I stick to, although I do have made one graphic novel all in colour and it was pretty challenging at first until I found my own process.

To be honest, you can avoid misinterpretations of characters, distance etc in a B/W comic if you know how to work around it. That's just a matter of skill and have little to do with being B/W or in full color. Manga comics in general are a great example of how much you can get out from ink and screentones if you do it a certain way.

I think the best way is to find a balance between the colors and the linework is the amount of detailing.
From what I've seen, comics that put most details on the linework tend to use very simplistic coloring - many times it's just flats and maybe some cast shadows. The last thing you want is the coloring taking over and make all the inked details less visible.
Another super useful thing is of course to color the lineart to match the flats and the overal color palette. This is useful for pages with lots of detailed backgrounds, adding a more faint color over the far away objects helps create distance and "air-perspective".
(here's a good example of this)

I looked up some stuff from my dA favorites as examples, This One has a pretty manga-esque linework but is in full color. But since the black inked shading is so dominant in the page, the artist use a very gradient-ish coloring.

I'm personally not bothered by a comic occasionally having colored pages, since that's a common feature in manga. But as long as it's maybe the first two-three pages or a splash-page. If it randomly switch between BW and color for no reason then it's just kinda weird or confusing for me as a reader.

[puppetbomb]

Hmmm, maybe you can do color for introductory/cool/important pages? I would agree that alternating between color and b/w would feel odd unless there was some rule of thumb.

Maybe limit color to pages with important plot points, like twists, new characters, victories/defeats of major characters, etc?

[AnnaLandin]

Colour is not inherently better or worse than black and white. It all depends on how you do it. If you feel you are more confident in black and white, and that doing everything in colour would simply take too much time, then go with black and white.

Colour does take more time, because it involves more steps. I do my comic in full colour, but I have the time to do so - and I fully intend to spend as many years as I have to working on it. If you don't have the same kind of time, then perhaps black and white is the way to go. Black and white comics can be gorgeous, and if you've got the skills to pull it off, do so.

I mean, yes. A lot of people like coloured pages, because they look really nice and people just like colour - but if you're good at what you do, you can pull in just as many readers with black and white as you can with colour. Colour is an attention-grabber - but so is awesome black and white artwork.

The writer's reasoning for colour is that it leads to a lot of misinterpretations of characters, backgrounds and pretty much everything.

Well, that's a bit not right. If you draw something well, the readers will be able to interpret characters/backgrounds/everything else correctly. A badly drawn page isn't something a bit of colour can save - but a well-drawn page will be just as easily readable regardless of colour-choice.

What sort of misinterpretation is the writer worried about? Is it a matter of details making the page look busy? Is it a matter of readers misinterpreting the skintones on characters? Perspective, depth, angles? Because if you plan your page and really consider your choices, you should be able to sort all of that out with a minimum of confusion, even in black and white. Manga artists have been able to pull that off for decades - why should you be any less able?

[joannekwan]

Good advice above ^

If you still can't get away with doing b&w, perhaps you could do monochrome flats with a couple accent colors and/or save full color for chapter covers with characters on them so as to get a sense of how they look?

[Pandastrophic]

I personaly would read a webcomic regardless of whether it colored or not as long as I like the story and characters, I think many people on Tapastic think the same too.

You should go with what you're most comfortable with, especially since it's going to be a long form comic you wouldn't want to spend a lot of your time working on something you might not be happy doing, one of the most important things as you're creating a comic is enjoying the comic making process.
I highly recommend doing A LOT of experimenting, try different shading styles and linearting styles, try something that you thought would never match your drawing, maybe it will and you might find a style that suits you best.

I actually made the switch from B/W to color, because coloring in b/w bored me and I loved colors. So befor I started my current comic I drew some sample pages to test out different coloring styles and compair them.

[Terraset]

Hi there I'm the writer.

First off I admit that if Spudz wants to do black and white there's nothing I can do to stop her because she's the artist and I'm not. Ultimately she should do whatever works best for her as an artist because that's what will be best for the project.

That being said I have several issues with not doing colour.

1. EVERYONE does black and white for long series'. One thing that so far made Bumbleberry Pie, our current one shot, different is that it has lots of colour depth. we've gotten one comment about how "[her] style makes it look like still shots from an animated film." If we switch to black and white we lose that appeal and become just another standard black and white comic. I understand it's a LOT more work to do full colour the way she's been doing it but I figure people would appreciate the extra quality even though that means it would take longer to get a page/chapter out. Quality over quantity.

2. Colour psychology is a thing. Colour perception is also different across cultures. I think it was Italy where Viagra had to change it's whole marketing ploy because "blue" was not a remotely masculine colour there. I think it was green or something. So they had to make it "the little green pill" or whatnot. If you draw everything in grayscale people's own colour psychology takes over. Every light tone get's mentally filled in with whatever colour fits best in the light spectrum in their mind. Ditto with the darks. For example imagine a very stereotypically sultry burlesque female character in a magic based story. How much does a persons perception of that entire character change if they have a pink aura versus let's say a green one? The change is very subtle and often actually unnoticeable unless you put the two side by side or suddenly change from one to the other one day. Only then do you realize just how much of an impact that little detail had on your perception of their entire character.

Their dialogue "sounds" different. Their facial expressions and body language "looks" different. You make like or hate them more based just on a minor detail like that. And this can be even smaller than a full body aura, it could be one piece of jewelry on their body having a different coloured (or shaped) gem than normal. Or even just them standing in front of a wall during a certain scene that was tan coloured compared to a deep reddish brown. The whole scene can be different just from that. All theses little tiny details matter.

Story writing, like politics, is fundamentally about psychologically manipulating your audience to see what you want them to see, feel how you want them to feel, and want and agree with what you want them to want and agree with. For comics colour is a major tool that I think people both underestimate the importance of and also do not often utilize effectively. I did not want our projects to be just another one of those if I could help it.

I do this for my writing too. Sure I could just slap on some generic cultures and just say they do certain things because that's just what they do because I said so. But that's lazy, so I've been spending most of my time doing things like designing said cultures histories based upon geographic location, geological and ecological conditions, researching geology to make sure I know what I'm talking about as far as, let's say, cement goes and the history of that. Then how all these things probably affect their day to day lives and thus how their perceptions of the world probably developed.... all of them. If something doesn't work then guess what? I can't use it. Doesn't matter if "I'm the writer" I don't get to do anything to the story that wouldn't actually happen "in the story."

I'm not exactly the best writer in the world but I won't deny that I've learned a few things about it. I would say that rule #1 is that you don't have control. Not unless you don't mind your audience having no sense of immersion or emotional connection to your story. Or even just plain liking it on a superficial level depending how much you try forcing your fail logic and lack of understanding of reality down their throats.

Because that actually makes for a decent reading story.

[pottedlilgoree]

I'll be honest, I kind of hate painting

black and white then
if you don't like doing it - then doing it won't help much
imo, your feelings convey better in b&w tones - which will make readers get what you try to show better

[foervraengd]

Alright I have a suggestion for you two, it's based on how I and my writer cooperated to finish the graphic novel in time.
Basically, if my writer and editor said they want me to spend extra time coloring my pages. Then my writer will do the flats, speech bubbles and sound effects.
The thing that takes most time in coloring pages are the flat colors. If you want the artist to stick to a style they find time consuming then help them out by adding the flats for them.
That's the solution me and my writer made and it sped up the process a lot and we managed to finish the book before deadline.

[Terraset]

Unfortunately that doesn't work for us because I'm kinda sorta legally blind. Yeah I've got some tunnel vision left for the moment but my general colour vision really started to go awhile ago so... yeah. Not happening. Thanks for the suggestion though.

[Luminosophy]

It's a good suggestion but aside from his creeping blindness it wouldn't work 'cause what is blue to him is often purple in reality. xD

[Terraset]

Fuck you too Spudz, fuck you too.

[foervraengd]

Sorry to hear that. I hope you can find a solution though.

[Luminosophy]

I think you're right, I think I should experiment more. After I saw this page I was inspired and disappointed that maybe I should've gone with B&W:

But I guess I can't know for sure until I try for some things out.

[Luminosophy]

Hm, well my example is there's a comic I read where I keep getting weirded out every time I see the character being coloured in chapter art with blue hair. From the toning and the fact that she has animal ears and a tail and is in a forest, I keep assuming she has natural colours like sandy blonde or a light brown. It's things like that which we are concerned about, because it breaks immersion.

[AnnaLandin]

It's things like that which we are concerned about, because it breaks immersion.

Does it? If I see a character coloured with blue hair on the chapter-cover art - which is reasonably the first piece of art I see when I start reading a chapter - I am going to go into the chapter with that piece of information already slotted into my head. The immersion won't be broken. And if she shows up partway through a chapter, and is only appearing coloured on the cover of the next chapter, I will just re-adjust my perception of the character and move on; I'm going to go out on a limb and say that most of your readers will do the same.

Also, no matter what you do, you won't ever be able to fully control the readers' expectations and reactions. Even choosing colour won't fully fix this. Like it or not, creating the story is really only half the work; your audience does the rest. You can do your best to present the story in such a way that they will most likely react in a certain way - but storytelling has always been at least partly a participatory medium. You can't fully control what happens inside the heads of your readers - nor, do I think, should you want to - because a lot of why people enjoy stories are because of what they read between the lines. And what they read between the lines depends as much on them and their personal experiences as it does on you as creators.

Yes, colour is a powerful tool - but so is black and white. It depends on how you work with it. And if you really hate painting, then you shouldn't be forced to paint. You can be just as expressive in black and white as you can be in colour, just in a different way.

As for @Terraset's point 1.) - I'm doing a long series. Grassblades will hopefully clock in at under 1000 pages. And I'm doing it in full colour. Most of the longer-format webcomics I read are in colour - Blindsprings, Evan Dahm's Vattu, , Zack Morrison's ParaNatural, Wilde Life, Monsterkind, No Need for Bushido, Cucumber Quest etc., etc. Doing a comic in full colour will not make you stand out any more, or any less, than lots of other comics.

And yes, full colour is a lot more work. If your artist feels uncomfortable working in colour, it's even more hard work than it is for someone who is comfortable - and the project you're talking about supposedly runs to about 500 pages. We're talking years of time to complete that - do you really want to put your artist through doing something they claim to hate for that long?

If you absolutely, seriously have to have colour, I suggest finding a second artist to colour your comics - this will lighten the workload on @spudfuzz, and will likely result in the comic being produced faster, without anyone having to do something they despise doing.

[Luie]

This very much depends on how good the toning is vs the same comic in color, but generally colors are more popular because firstly they're more eye-catching, second colors incite more emotion from the reader, so yes they make more of an impact. Of course, this also depends on the reader and what colors they can see, and that doesn't mean the comic needs color at all for it to make an impact. It's really just a combination of thing, so do whatever is easiest for you. c:

[ifluke1]

My take is that colour is just ornament.

[apocryphagraphics]

Every thing every one has said about color's impact on art and story is true-- the mood, the psychology, the depth etc... but that doesn't mean all those things cannot be achieved with black and white. One just has to develop the skills. Remember, great movies, great TV shows and great art have been made in black and white since the inception of the forms. Great comics are no different. As for the characters, making them easy to differentiate is a matter of design. There's no reason why a black and white comic shouldn't have characters that are easy to tell apart.

[justieno]

I like both and my comic has both http://tapastic.com/series/Nukageddon although I'm leaning more and more toward color now that I've got a friend doing it for me