How do you color a comic without a tablet?

[Chroma]

I've been practicing trying to draw for a casual, slice of life type deal cause ever since I've moved I have some craaaaaazy stories. But I don't own a drawing tablet for digital art or anything of that sort, so how would I colorize my comic? I've been mostly just sketching and then scanning the art, coloring it with Adobe Illustrator, but the pen tool on there leaves some sharp edges most of the time and is also fairly time consuming. Is there an alternative, or should I just wait until I finish saving up for a drawing tablet?

[AnnaLandin]

It IS possible to colour without a tablet, but as you've discovered - it's timecosuming and difficult.

If you want to keep working digitally, I do recommend you save up for a tablet - even a cheap one is better than working solely with a mouse!

Otherwise, there's always the option of inking and colouring it by hand, and then scanning in finished pages!

[Chroma]

Thanks for the advice! I should be able to buy a decent one fairly soon. In the meantime, I'll just continue to work on the comic.

[spadesart]

adobe illustrator is a vector program so you may want to look for a raster based one? gimp is free and has it's own line tool that made using a mouse a little easier before i got my tablet.

[blinkingkills]

i used a mouse for 2 years in middle school to color digitally and i would just say i think thats how a 12 year old managed to get carpal tunnel.
monoprice and i think huion sell good graphics tablets that don't require you sell your firstborn like wacom does.

[DeadAccount]

If you're ok with flat and simple colours, then it is possible - If you make sure your scans are clean you can use a paintbucket tool in photoshop. It does take up a lot of time though. Clip Studio has a more convenient paint bucket tool that actually closes gaps for you so I recommend trying that But yes, eventually you'll probably want to save for a tablet. Even an older used version of wacom tablets should be suffient when you start out and I think its competitors are catching up in terms of quality too.

[indagold]

It's easy actually. Had my tablet break on me a lot thanks wacom and used the mouse. I use photoshop and all I do is select scanned lines, expand and fill on a separate layer. Very annoying and time consuming but it works. (illustrator sucks, it takes years just to do anything. Use raster based)

[Menbung]

Maybe you could try using free digital painting softwares, there are a bunch out there, like: Krita, Gimp, Medibang, Fire Alpaca, that way you can get the hang of how they work in the meantime.

I don't have a tablet or any digital drawing thangs. So if I want to color something digitally I use my mouse. Honestly I never had a problem coloring with it. Of course there are limits to what you can achieve with a mouse and I suppose it's time consuming, but it can get the job done.

If you're able to buy a tablet, give it a shot. But if you cant have one, don't let that stop ya from making comics.

Cheers

[Jbcryptic]

I draw my comic Harmony Monsters by hand and scan it into my computer using high brightness and contrast to get it completely black and white. then I block out colors in Photoshop on a multiply layer with the pen tool on the track pad of my laptop (you can use a mouse to and probably be easier).

[ToxicRamen]

Since I usually use Photoshop to color heres how I do it:

1) Since I would already inked the lineart, I would just do Auto Contrast to make the lineart darker. And I would leave the lineart in its own layer.
2) I would create layers above the lineart and fill them with the colors for certain parts of the lineart.
3) Then I would the Magic Wand and I would have set in "Affect All Layers" and select the parts on the lineart to pic which parts I would delete for certain colors. Then I delete the parts the were selected so that certain has their parts with that certain colored and I would repeat the process until the picture is done.

(I guess it be easier to explain it with pictures...)