Color picking and atmosphere (+poll)

[DokiDokiTsuna]

When you're doing scenes in a comic with special lighting (nighttime, fires, etc.) do you pick new colors manually, or do you modify the usual colors with layers and whatnot?

• Manual
• Modify
• Somewhere in between

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...I think it's about time for me to admit that I'm a die-hard manual picker. I just...need everything to look * just * right, and 9 times outta 10 that doesn't happen unless I do it myself. Even when I use the most basic digital coloring techniques (like, a single semi-transparent layer to tint the colors underneath) I end up changing half the colors manually right afterward.

Recently I did a whole chapter of a comic using a "Blend Mode" technique to set the color scheme, and honestly halfway through the process I started to have my doubts. Now I can barely stand to look at it; I think I may have to re-color and re-upload it.
I probably should've just used it as a guide for manual picking in the first place; but no, I was like "if other artists let the computer handle it, you can too; stop being such a perfectionist". And I am such a perfectionist, but in this case I think it's actually bad. =/

WHICH IS WHY I'm very interested to hear from the people who are "somewhere in between". Maybe I'm too obsessive to trust my colors to an algorithm...but I'd love to learn about interesting ways to let the algorithms help as much as they can.

[lwflouisa]

Definitely manual. There is a certain aesthetic charcoal and ink brushing gives, that simply adjusting the lighting in photoshop / gimp doesn't do.

Plus texture is a consideration, for those who draw settings with a lot of wood grain. Not sure what I'll do for city background art though.

[joannekwan]

I'd say 99% of the time I pick colors manually when starting (the other 1% is when I'm working off a palette picked from some source that wasn't my own creation) and I end up with the same colors untouched in the final draft 70% of the time. I will more often than not tweak the colors to get the perfect look using the hue/saturation sliders. But if I'm feeling lazy, or I just want a quick fix to see how an entirely different palette will look, I will use a modifying layer.

[IndigoShirtProd]

I always keep my local colors and use blending layers.I usually use a hard light layer of one color so for a scene things stay consistent. It's faster for me and streamlines the comic making process. It's also easier for me to switch between possible light choices without having to go through and change colors individually. Besides, if I want one part of a panel to be tinted in a different color, I can also do that pretty easily.

[TAMAnnoying]

this 100% depends on the format and what Im doing, for comic pages id say i mostly work with manual colors and swatches ive made, but even then ill still play with layers and layer effects. When I'm doing open format drawing I pretty much freestyle it so i can have fun with it. Ill do anything from choosing from my swatches, playing with layers or using hue/saturation adjustments over and over again thought the prossess

[Pandastrophic]

Modify?? although I'm not sure if this is what you mean by it?
My base colours are consistent for the most part, like character skin/hair/clothes colours and I don't manipulate them but I change the shadow layer (set on multiply) and the lighting layer (set on overlay) with whichever colours that fits the scene.

Base colours.......................................................................Base colours + shadow and lighting layers

If I change the colour I used for the multiply layer to more blue-ish and the lighting to more orange it can look like it's night-time with indoor lighting coming through the window or something.

While I'd like to colour pick by myself I prefer a more streamlined way of colouring my comic since it's faster and i find it pretty fun to work on, it's fun to explore new/interesting colour combos and find which one fits the mood of the scene. Since this technique is also faster than picking the colour individually I feel like it allows me to be much more flexible if I feel like a different lighting colour would fit the mood better.

[nathanKmcwilliams]

Manually. Because doing it the hard way is worth the effort. It takes longer sure, but I prefer the outcome.

[lucika]

I'm somewhat between XD. Depending on the mood of the drawing, I may choose one method over another.

For me, modifying the color with either multiply or darken layer helps me work faster on the drawing. This way also helps me to focus more on the lighting and everything looks unified. Personally, I feel like this method makes the overall color seems dull? Or maybe I still need to do some experimenting.

Manually picking can give me some fun experimenting with colors. If it's done right, the result is a beautiful vibrant artwork because the colors are working together in harmony. But if don't, it will be a mess because the colors are fighting each other. Also, I found out that this method is taking more time for me since I will be spending time doing trials and errors with every shade of color on every element of the drawing.

My comic is in grayscale. I have a saved palette and labeled them (base and shade). Mostly, I choose to do the modifying method to save time and do manually picking for the special panels.

[NeonLightsShifter]

I normally modify with layers, but if I had a palette prepared, I would both manually color then modify with layers above

[rajillustration]

I do a mix of both. I started heavily in traditional painting so to me lighting is super important to be able to just do manually on one layer if I ever needed to. It helps me to understand what it is that the computer is doing digitally.

If it still feels like the blend modes are making really random colors, then I think spending the time to really learn what those modes do would be important. Like using blend modes is weird at first, but it should feel like a second nature thing, where you can predict exactly what a color will do in most blending modes (some of those modes are really heckin weird, but for the most part I can predict them) so even though it's digital, it still feels as comfortable as a traditional toolkit.

If I ever feel like color is getting away from me, it's usaully because I didn't do a color study before I started. Even for pieces that are colored within lines, I like to do a smaller version where I loosely block in color to make sure the contrast is where I want it and that the colors all run together. Especially if there's a strong lighting, it helps a lot to be able to zoom out and really cement down what is going to happen in a quick, rough study. It's an extra step but it saves a lot of time in the long run.

And overall, some lighting is just hard to draw, so I wouldn't be too hard on yourself about it.

[snackbagstudios]

The way we use it (I want to make a toturial)
We make every page with local colors (the color things are)
Then we make a level adjustment layer, first, we brigthen the whole pierce, and then dhange the color, this will be our light.
Afterwards we do the same but make the layer dark.

Then we put the level layer on each their own local color color layer.

Then we take a layer mask and put on the light level that is on top, and begin to draw out the shadow.

Here we can use a lot of textured brushes if we want to!

I uploaded a page here to show. So we made a level layerThat is a yellow light and then another for shadows that are dark green. Here we carved out the light from the shadow.

If there is something, like the sky we want in its own color, then we just remove the light and shadow from the sky.

• Heidi

[Kiweevil]

I do both. For example, if it's taking place in a dark scene at night, I'll manually select things like blues instead of whites, etc. But after everything is done, I go in and fine tune the color layers by adjusting hue, saturation, etc. Sometimes I add an entire solid-color layer above the main color layer and just tune down the opacity until it looks right.

That's how I did my current profile pic, too, if it gives a better idea of what I'm talking about. There were pinkish tones selected to paint with, then everything was adjusted, then I slapped a pink layer over it and erased places for the dappled light of the trees.