What Part Takes the Longest to Finish?

[TedGravesArt]

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.

[vothnthorvaldson]

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
Makes sense, they did improve but still not to perfection.

[rosenw_ltz]

Sketching for me 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.

close and fill tool without gaps - CLIP STUDIO ASSETS

[gmaximin]

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...

[rajillustration]

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.

[spadedigsbutts]

Inking for sure, I'm ungodly slow if its not a cartoony style

[allenT]

So scanning and editing contrast & light to get something at least close to the physical page just take ages...

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.

[Kaydreamer]

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!

[pilot-obvious]

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!

[gmaximin]

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.

[Eiranyx]

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
But the rest, I'm pretty fast at it ^^

[DualDragons]

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

[iHateFridays]

Inking for sure.... colouring also takes forever tho haha

[onyisart]

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.

[Grhe]

Thumbnail to clean sketch takes the longest for me.

[PaulDevers]

Definitely coloring. Lineart and skeletons usually go easy for me, only a few hours, but coloring takes me a good while longer.

[BarBarKetrab]

Probably a tie between inking and colouring for me, though leaning more towards colouring. Colouring because it's simply the most time consuming step and inking because I really like my lines to be clean and probably spend more time than necessary being a perfectionist.

Inking can take me from 30-45 minutes while with colouring I sometimes reach past the one hour mark (my comic is made in a simple style).

[CursedBeasts]

Sketching and lineart + inking.

[samiluu]

4 and 5, I spend a lot of time with it, but it's also the part I mostly enjoy

[rmdooley]

Inking. That takes me forever