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Mar 2021

Yah, except for the closing of open lines this would be perfect! Lol also sometimes I have multiple layers so I have to save the document as a tiff rather than a png,

Colouring always takes the longest for me so the only pages I usually colour are chapter covers or really important scenes that come either at the beginning or the end of a chapter and bonus art.

Definitely highlight/shadow! Krita has a colorize mask tool that I use for base color, which is SUPER fast. But the highlighting/shadowing by hand takes a while, especially because that is usually when I realize something might be off and need re-lined or re-colored. That is also the phase in which I add texture to backgrounds.

I'm a bit perplex since long about the antialiasing/ unproper colour filing problem.
I have antialiasing and use bucket tool and there is no ugly border. The grey part created by antialiasing seems to be considered as part white in a precise enough fashion that it gets coloured accurately.
I'm using Artrage. I sometimes want to switch to something else because it is not super comic friendly.
But if that antialiasing/ bucket filler issue is happening and makes my colouring longer, maybe not :thinking:
So, I want to understand: there is no way to fill colours properly without manually selecting? Or I misunderstand the problem? :thinking:

I'm not sure if it's the clean lineart and setting everything up so I can color it, or coloring itself :sweat_smile:
But I'd say, from filling in the base colors 'til finishing the last highlights takes the longest.

In terms of filling in and closing gaps, Clip Studio Paint closes them pretty well if they are not tooo big. But I always go over it with the lasso fill afterwards, because the thickness of my lineart varies. So here and there doesn't fill in everything or it pixels a bit beyond.

I just save out a flattened copy to upload, then use the output to give myself a head start on areas where my lines are closed, then do open areas by hand.

A lot of modern bucket tools have tolerance settings that will allow it to fill colors beyond the one it's currently filling, so increasing the tolerance for the tool will fill right up to the edge of your lines a lot of the time. However, many artists, including myself, like to use textured lines, which complicates things a bit. The fill tool also chokes on dense hatching, so for my stuff the fill tool is basically worthless.

Ok! Thank you! I was really wondering.
I'm kind of oldish and I remember these times when bucket fill was horrible but would have been surprised it did not improve, knowing that biology softwares I was using in the 2000' were already doing it well :sweat_smile:
Makes sense, they did improve but still not to perfection.

Sketching for me :sweat: between layout, spacing, characters, and bgs, it's the most time-consuming part.

Also, I'm going to drop this asset here in case anyone finds it useful! It's separate from the built-in tool and can be a little wonky sometimes, but when it works it helps a lot with flats.

In terms of actual time, probably:
3. Inking
In terms of perceived time & mental bore:
8. Scan & digital editing
I do traditional b&w pages, sometimes playing with light on very detailed background, and I just can’t translate the result on screen. So scanning and editing contrast & light to get something at least close to the physical page just take ages...

today I had a revelation while coloring that made it way faster--may add it to my photoshop action post--but it's still coloring. Going back into the library, making sure everything is consistent--it just is kind of a chore. I'm getting better at it though.

I so understand this. Fine details will be lost during this stage but we can minimize it by better ways of retouching. Also from my experience the cleaner the paper the easier this process will be.

It's absolutely colouring/painting! But I'm okay with that, since it's my favourite part of the process. It's also my greatest strength as an artist; if I were to skimp on the colours, there's no way my comic would look as good.

I changed my lineart brush recently so I can at least use the fill bucket for flats now, which is really helpful in speeding things up!

For me, it's shading/lighting. I save all the shading for the end and it just feels so tedious for me. I need to find better ways to cut corners!

I know people some people advise to change their scanner parameters, but I dare not. But I might try using a light box and a camera instead of a scanner...
There's a very good article here, but it's in french I'm afraid.

Hmmm... It's actually inking for me, I need to distribute the line weight and it's pretty tedious especially if there's a drawn background involved :cry_02:
But the rest, I'm pretty fast at it ^^

Shadows and highlights :sob:, I can do flats colours no sweat though. I like inking and sketching as well

For everyone who says coloring would you be interested in a tutorial? I don't think my coloring process takes too long. Maybe I could help.
It would be for Clip Studio Paint Only though.