As the title says. I'm drawing now and thinking, 'Christ, I have to colour this afterwards.' I don't know about you lot but I kinda hate it. I feel that it's very repetitive and arduous. As much as I love the colours in a comic I just hate doing it. In fact, it's my least favourite part. Anyone else feel the same?
Jun '16
Jun '16
There are 65 replies with an estimated read time of 11 minutes.
raises hand
I don't like coloring comics either. So all of them are in black and white, or grayscale. Or monochrome, which is as close to color as I'll ever get in a comic XD
It can be really time consuming, but I think the webcomic I'm doing right now kind of needs it. It looks so much better colored so that makes the time and effort feel worth it to me.
I have another comic I'm working on that I'm not going to color because I don't feel like it needs it. But I am making an extra effort with it to make sure the line work is a bit more complex and interesting. Also, I'm doing it for print and not as a web comic. Also Also, the tone is less fun than my webcomic.
So I guess it's all relative? It depends on the art style and content of the comic I think.
I have a grayscale comic! My comic takes place in the eighties and I wanted it to have a look reminiscent of zines, club flyers and old photographs, so it's highly textured and a bit messy. I can't imagine this particular story in color at all, plus I designed it for print, not web. I think if it comes down to "I can't be bothered" people will notice.
Also my covers and extra art are always in color which I don't think is misleading. If you go to a book store you'll see colored covers and very few full color interiors.
I thought a lot about this before I launched my comic. I am very aware of the western bias against B&W comics. I felt that I wanted to remove as many excuses for people not to like my comic as I could if I wanted to get what I wanted out of my comic. It depends on what audience you want for your comic and what you want your comic to do. I would heavily consider using at least a limited color pallet and use a line art style that makes it easy to color. That's my take anyway. 
Coloring (or in my case 'grayscaling') CAN be plenty tedious, but man, I personally like doing it more than inking, which takes me longer and longer each time, I swear. >.<
I think coloring is worth it but certainly isn't a must for everyone, and some people can make plenty impressive art that's only black and white.
I'm actually the opposite! : P Coloring is really fun for me. It's after I've finished a page that I find myself thinking "Ugh, time to do line art for the next one." I haaate line art.
Coloring can be tedious indeed, but I chose to do color for my comic just because it's in webcomic format, not print form, and the plus side of a webcomic is that you can do all the colors you want without worrying about the printing prize like B/W manga/comics do.Personally I don't hate it. What I hate the most is probably the layout/sketching part of my comic... half of the time I don't know how to angle a character good in a panel so that it won't look repetitive TT_TT I still have a long way to go when it comes to angling...
Ugh, I can't be bothered to colour my works, I can't even finish them if I do. Especially if it's digital colouring. When it comes to traditonal, it's not a problem.
It's a shame really, however I've noticed that I enjoy working with greyscale so there's that at least ;D
(but working in B/W is so much easier for me<3<3)
What I don't see enough of, and what I personally like to do is grayscale, then select all of that "color" to a color that fits the scene.
For example:
1
This was done in grayscale, then I switched the layer color from black and gray to a theme color (in this case, dark pink).
I find this as a proper middle ground for people who want color, but prefer to do it through grayscale.
Of course, I also go full color from time to time, so I now only go through with this method when I don't have the patience or time to go full color.
I hate colouring a lot.
I started a full colour comic under the impression 'maybe I don't like colouring because I don't do it enough and also need to get better'
Worst decision of my life, as now I hate colouring more than I ever did before.
Even worse yet, the colouring process fucked with my joints and arthritis, slowly making it so I was unable to draw anymore, at one point I thought I was actually done, that there was no way that I could continue working on comics under this amount of pain.
Then I decided to remove the most painful part of the process and started a black and white comic with very simple tones/colour fill, because I wanted to still draw / train my arm to keep drawing for as long as I could. The difference in pain is amazing, the pace I can release is much faster so I'm much more happy and satisfied as a story teller (it gets VERY frustrating releasing pages/chapters at such a slow pace)
My black and white comic is not as popular as my colour (I didn't quit the colour comic, I still update it when I can, which is not very often because of the pain), it's very likely it never will be, I also get a lot of harassment to 'stop being lazy and colour' (this comment more common on LINE than tapastic) but I don't care, because I'm still able to make comics by NOT colouring.
When actually doing it, no I'm not so thrilled...but once I start seeing the page take shape(especially if the colors are on par with the vision of how I wanted the page to look in color) then I'm good.
I used to do comics when I DIDNT have the luxury of digi color(nor digital halftones), so you had to render the hell out of a black & white page...THAT, was a bitch forreal. So I welcome the whole bit of coloring- plus its always been a dream of mine to see how my stuff looked in color. Now I wanna 1) see how my stuff would look with someone else coloring it, and 2) see how my stuff would look with different style of brushes(like perhaps with watercolor brushes).
I'm pretty awful at coloring and it takes me forever compared to grey scale. for Los Esmeraldas4 I only color the covers. the rest is screentone. but I have one that I'm in the making of that is a mix of both screentone and color so thats gonna be time consuming. and one more that i'm undecided....but leaning towards screentones. coloring isn't my least favortie part but I do wish there was a button that said "make this pretty" in clip studio or photoshop
its takes a life time, but dear GOD is it rewarding. I spend 50% of the time colouring Silversong6
Scripting is good,
Thumbnailing is a headache.
Sketches is ok
ink work either inspires me or I loathe it
Colouring .... I look forward to. Time to pull out the big guns and blow everyone away
While I'm sure Time Gate would be a lot more eye-catching with color, Time Gate is also very, very long. It takes me long enough to screentone the damn things, coloring the pages would mean I wouldn't get Reaper done well into my late 20's (and it's only the first book).
Some day I'd like to do a full color comic, but that's when I find the time. For now, I just do a color page every now and then in Time Gate (along with colored chapter covers if I like them enough to color them lol)
However, while screentoning bugs the hell out of me and I hate doing it, it definitely makes my pages look a lot better. Comparison below:
Yes, it takes a lot of time and effort, but it's time and effort that pays off. And if color works for your comic and it allows you to produce the best pages to your readers, then - unless your health is at risk because of it or you need to beat a tough deadline like I am, literally my deadline is death lol - it should be worth the extra time to color. That being said, color can be done in a variety of ways, some that can shorten the process, some that can lengthen it - full on shading and lighting, cell-shading, flat colors only, etc.
well, i hate lineart so much that i gave up doing it, but as a consequence I have to color. lineless is sometimes a pain and it takes forever but wouldn't go back for anything. I really really hate doing lineart.
A while ago on Tumblr I posted how I feel on every part of making a comic page. XP
http://vermillionworks.tumblr.com/post/140666170352/how-i-look-going-through-an-entire-process-of7
