Colors or Grays for My Comic Strip?

[ToxicRamen]

I've been working on my comics but I'm stuck at a certain point: Coloring. I've got the lineart and text already taken care of but I'm not sure if I should add color or do grays instead. So far the strips aren't colored or have any grays in them.

Also my comic is a Yonkoma or regular comic strip style which usually are in grays but since these are webcomics, so I could use colors instead.

[Heliox14]

I suggest you do colors. Give your customers the best that you can do.
Then after that, it's alright to use grayscale.
I suggest you color the panels during special parts of the comic, or fanart.

[Tes]

Colours is always the best way to go in my opinion, but if you don't have the time then greyscale is a good compromise for speed. Perhaps another possibility to consider could be a different coloured scale? Like greyscale but with a different colour like blue or red or purple perhaps? I don't know if it would work with your comic, but just a suggestion.

[Puppisama]

Grayscale can give a more dramatic development than colored, if worked well, plus it may take you less time to do, if you're short in time.

[joannekwan]

Do what works best for you! If you have time to tone everything, you might as well color. But if you're strapped for time, doing black and white or just 2 or 3 shades of grey will suffice.
And color isn't always the best choice. I've seen some pretty awful coloring before in some series, and they would look much better in black and white/grayscale!

[Rayenae]

As @joannekwan suggested, I've seen some comics where the coloring actually turned me off. The lineart was beautiful, but you could barely tell because it was drowned out in obnoxiously vibrant colors and terrible shading.

You should show us some samples of what your artwork looks like colored vs grayscale so we can give better opinions on what suits it better.

[zigmenthotep]

My thoughts: If you're going to do greyscale (and not restricted by printing), you might as well do color since it's more or less the same amount of work. Also, it does seem somewhat like savvy web content consumers more or less expect color. Just make sure the colors are good.

[TheThoughtfulBoxful]

Use color bro. This ain't the 1940s.

JK, lol. But really, if you use color first, you have the option to switch the image to grayscale format and back again if you don't like it. It's also is a good selling point if you plan on printing your comics: Print edition, now in FULL COLOR! So there is that.

IF you do decide to do that, be sure to save the grayscale images in a duplicate file so you always have those color bases.

[ahkwardkat]

I kinda slightly disagree that if you have time to tone everything you have time for color. My toning takes about 3 or 4 hours per page, my inking takes about 5 and pencils take about 3, so I'm looking easily at 10-12 hours per page.In order to update more than one page a week, (I do two or three) I have to work 20-30 hours a week. That doesn't count the layouts, roughs and such I do for future pages too, and the second tutorial based series I do.

Why would you color without toning? I mean toning is just like shading, so adding flats and shading will take more time than "just" toning/shading. Lots of us here work too, so combined with a full time job and a comic, say at least 2 or 3 a week, that's almost 2 full time jobs and killer on anyone physically.

Maybe I am different than others in that I consider toning to be a whole different process that coloring?

However you are spot on though @joannekwan that color can turn me off of comics. I have had a few like that.