Black and White vs Colour

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.

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?

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.

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.

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

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.

Fuck you too Spudz, fuck you too.

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.

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:

My take is that colour is just ornament.

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.

I like both and my comic has both http://tapastic.com/series/Nukageddon1 although I'm leaning more and more toward color now that I've got a friend doing it for me

This is tough, because if it were just @spudfuzz it'd be a simple question: is the colour worth it to you? But in a team situation where the writer says, "I won't stop you, but I really think it's important," the question becomes: what are you willing to do? Is this something you can do for 500 pages? A page a week is about 50 pages a year. Can you paint it for 10 literal years of your life? Will that be a cool chance to get better at something you struggle with (possibly finding a different outlet for experimenting with black and white work), or is that thought horrifying?

I mean, this is true, but you could say the same for comics in general. Imagine going from directing movies to drawing comics, and bemoaning how impossible it is to get the mood you want without a soundtrack that gives you that instant first impression, that strong sense of atmosphere! Of course, this doesn't mean you CAN'T get atmosphere in a comic.... it just means you don't get atmosphere in a comic that way -- you get it through colour choice, or through black placement, where the shadows fall and how you frame the page. You use the things comics are GOOD at.

Even though it doesn't seem like colour vs. black&white is a shift of medium, I think there has to be a similar shift in thinking. I could make a great case for how important the music is in a movie, but that isn't a comic's strength, and that's not what a comic uses. Everything you've said about colour is true, but that's not what a black & white comic uses.
I'll continue to assert til my dying breath that Jeff Smith's Bone looked better in black and white than it ever did when colour was added, because the b&w work was so strong that the colour was unnecessary. Knowing what colour the forest was didn't matter, because everything I needed to know about every scene of that comic came across in other ways.

THAT SAID:

• if you move from colour to black and white, even if it's the most beautiful black and white possible, there may be readers who will be disappointed, just because it would be a big style change from what they expected. But honestly? Seven pages in is a GREAT time to stop and make that decision. I can imagine drawing a comic I didn't enjoy for 100 pages. I cannot imagine doing so for 500 pages.
• if your primary concern is reader retention, I assure you, as long as the art's still nice, updating more frequently is WAY more effective for acquiring readers than pretty colours!
• if there are colours that are PARTICULARLY important to your story, you could also consider experimenting with spot colours -- example: this magical girl one-shot by Nichole Chartrand5 -- especially if you're dealing in magical-related things where colours are important, or anything where a particular colour is important to the feel of a character.

As many of the others have said, B&W is not any better or worse than colour, it's just a matter of how everything is used, maybe you could have a few special colour pages probably at the beginning of the chapter and have a few colour elements within the chapter and the rest can be B&W, but ink and screentones really tests what you can do with your art because of the lack of colour, you have to try and make up for it in some other ways. That being said here are few examples of how to use colour and B&W within one comic.

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Well, if we're going to talk about reader appeal, I've found that the average, non-artist reader prefers colour. It simply gives them the idea that you're putting more work into it.
Most readers are not artists themselves and they tend to appreciate well polished surfaces. When I make comics in colour, my readership is always higher than black and white.