What's more effective, black and white comics or colored comics?

[apocryphagraphics]

With the invention of computerized coloring anyone can do color now--my three-year old does it--so I would agree that it's not fair to suggest that Black&White implies a beginner and color implies a more advanced artist. It used to require a lot of materials and technique to use color at all on a comic that saw print, but now anyone can do it who has a decent program. Obviously it still takes a lot of hard work and talent to be GREAT or even good at coloring, digital or otherwise, but these days color in and of itself is certainly no sign of advanced artistry--and Black and White is no sign of low skill.

[XanderYoung]

I've been told that color comics are more readable. I generally find that to be the case.

[Dorian_Grey]

@apocryphagraphics I agree with you 100%.

Coloring doesn't really mean a high level of skill.
Black and white could actually be more challenging in terms of line work; since you are only relying on that line work to be clear and concise and nothing else. Your line work must be top notch to read without confusion and that takes a ton of practice.
Color comics can bring life to a comic naturally since real life is in color.
I prefer black and white comics without manga screen tones.
If the screen tones are used abusively and there is too much texture, then yes i agree with @epiale it would make it look sloppy and cause headaches.
But the same could be said for some color comics I have seen, no color balances or basic conception of complimentary colors, etc. can make a color comic difficult to read and can kill information to the reader.

I enjoy both and both require a certain level of skill to do successfully, but I think it is unfair to say it is a "baby's first comic" just because it lacks color.

[allenthomas]

I guess everyone is different. Depending on the day, my mind will change as to whether or not color is better than B&W. For the most part I enjoy doing my comic in color. I will say however, that I feel as though I can see a lot more of the flaws in my artwork now in color than I was seeing in B&W. Having to color has made me slowly improve my artwork and recognize my coloring flaws, where before I only had to pick between shades of gray. This is just my experience. I know some others actually prefer there comics in B&W over color and it works so I guess its effectiveness depends on the artist and what they are going for.

[Voodin]

This is a grey area(get it?) Black/White and color both have their place and purpose, In my opinion black and white is for creating bold focal points and focusing on details, color can also be used to achieve this but takes a little more effort. Color can be used to add to the mood of a scene, or character as well separate distinctive objects.

Here's a good example, the Jojo's Bizarre Adventure manga/anime series, large amounts of the manga are in black and white but portions in color, like certain cover arts and battle have inconsistent schemes, adapting to the mood of the room, the anime took this to the extreme. One scene Jotaro would be normal blue scheme but another stand user arrives and Jotaru is purple all of the sudden!

It's really up to the story to decide whether it should be in color.

[GlanceReviver]

I think both can be great, but I actually prefer black and white comics, and I'm kind of sad that color is so much overwhelmingly more popular. I feel like black and white lets the artist simplify shape and motion more, letting the reader progress through the story at a faster clip, where as in color comics, artists tend to get bogged down into more details and background elements. While resulting in some beautiful artwork, it has a way of killing the momentum.

Plus, it's a lot of additional work that I don't feel I really need to enjoy the stories that I like. When I'm waiting for my fav artists to update, I'd much rather get 5 inked pages than a single colored one if that's the rate they work at. For comics I buy off the shelf, it doesn't matter as much.

But, yeah, definitely color is going to be better for your site stats.

[alakotila]

I don't know if this is a question of effective or not. Both can be.

When I think of my favourite comics, half or more are grayscale, the other half colour. I love the stark contrast and tonality of grayscale pages, but some authors have such cool colour palettes and moods with their pages I can't help but be drawn to them as well. Seeing comics in black and white is relaxing, even though I grew up reading both. Coloured comic pages can distract me and are too busy, oftentimes, especially in super hero comics. Someone who reads them a lot though probably wouldn't have that problem and wouldn't have the headache! Think about your audience.

Question: Do you ENJOY working in colour? Is it natural?

Some thoughts:

In essence, you can do pretty much the same thing with either B/W (or grayscale) or colour, but the approaches are different. There are many people on this thread who like one over the other, and who think one is harder than the other. This is very subjective! So in short, do what you like to do and what suits you.

Longer version? Here.

Whether or not you do colour or black and white does not have to effect the amount of detail in your comic. Mine is highly detailed, grayscale, and has a lot of tone variation. (I also do not use screen-tones.) I chose grayscale because I like the look. Doing pages in colour adds about an hour or more for me, but were I to be used to it I bet that would go down.

You can do mood and atmosphere with either; you just have to learn its tricks. For grayscale, you will need a solid grasp of value, balance, and contrast to get there. Keep in mind that there are a lot of tools in comics such as panel flow, readability, etc that add to mood, atmosphere, storytelling, etc. Colour or B/W is simply another layer to that.

If you do strictly black and white, test out some shading methods like hatching and cross-hatching. A lot of B/W comics have no screen-tone. You could play with line variation, deep shadows, etc. I feel this look is pretty crisp when you have a proper balance.

High contrast and balance will help your grayscale pages from becoming muddy blurs.

You could use screen-tone if that suits the story. Look up how to do it correctly so that you don't get weird things happening when you resize your finished page. (The tones can become jarring.)

You could do both…. Does it fit your story to experiment with both or use both, as in @Voodin's example of Jojo's Bizarre Adventure? My first comic was wildly experimental in terms of medium, and I tried everything from pencils, pastels, digital paint, etc. I would suggest to not do that … experiment first. Then pick an approach.

However! I do know people who have gone back to redo their comic. Say they started in black/white and went back with colour. That is a lot of work, but if you find whatever you are doing is not suiting your work, then you are not totally locked-in.

Or, you could use the first two or three pages as colour pages in each chapter, and the rest grayscale.

Or what about colour accents? I read comics that are in greys but for a single colour, for example, red. In that instance the colour red is symbolic, so if you do this there should be a reason.

Ah, all the options! When I teach comics I am really open about medium and approach. There are so many ways to show and tell a story. Make it yours.

(I agree with @Dorian_Grey: colouring doesn't have anything to do with skill. It may mean a skill with colour, but it does not mean a skill in comics or even drawing. I've seen amazing comics in colour, but I have seen ones that could've had much better lines and were hiding the foundation (linework) with amazing digital colour skills, or were coloured and drawn well but had poor flow and confusing action. Whether a comic is black and white or colour has nothing to do with skill or level and isn't really a make-or-break deal.)

Honestly, I have seen such successful comics in everything from colour, black-and-white, to everything in between. Do what you love to do. You will have to love making those pages!

Do what feels right for your story and artwork.

[kaelwithme]

holy scheiße these are brilliant comics. thanks for sharing!

[kaelwithme]

My first full comic here on tapastic is full colour, mainly because it's laid out to show a lot of sceneries and landscapes. I'm not too happy about it since it's extremely time consuming, but I'm not half bad with digital painting so made good use of it. Sometimes i think maybe i shouldve just done b&w so i can update quickly. But the die has been cast already so i'll just have to roll with it.

Generally, i read both b&w and coloured comics. doesn't matter which just as long as the story is good.

[indagold]

we now have the technology to make colored comics easily but it all comes down to how good you are. I would take a beautifully inked black and white piece any day over a terribly Photoshoped blurry muddy colored piece.

[Michelle]

I'd love to do my comic in full colour! Buuut I'd also like to get my comic out in a timely fashion, so for the time being it's in greyscale. I'd love to hire a colourist someday because I do not enjoy the process of colouring at all. I know how to do it, it's just... so boring... urgh...

I think colour comics are great if done well-- it's not an instant bonus if there's colour slapped onto poorly-drawn work. But an intentional and purposeful colour palette can go a long way toward enhancing the mood of a comic.

[GoldenPlume]

If you are after raw digital subs and Tapastic views numbers then the winner is color. Color comics hands down always get subs faster and easier. They also get more staff picks. They are much easier to promote socially. For example, when you tweet an image which is more eye grabbing, color or B&W? The down side with color is it takes a lot more time to produce. We don't know about other creators experiences but we have received a lot of comments asking for more pages faster. What is your scheduling going to be like? You may find the demands of a color schedule hard to keep up with.

Will you be printing? From a publisher's stance color costs way more. Since we have to pay for all of our art, B&W is less cost prohibitive than color which increases production costs dramatically, though if you are doing your own art then its a moot point. B&W printing is far easier as well. B&W can handle a wide range of house stock and many US offset printers can do the job. Once you get into color, you need quality paper with high opacity that won't bleed and specialty presses that can handle CMYK. Most four color comics use glossy stock which drives up cost significantly. You may also find yourself running into colorization issues when your digital files don't quite match what the printer gives you back. Your options will be more limited here in the US. Consequently, many full color comics are done overseas because of the high costs of localized printing. However international printing can be a challenge in of itself with language barriers and increased shipping costs. To give you some kind of idea, a B&W graphic novel that costs $1.25/unit will run about $4.25/unit in color, though printing costs can vary widely from house to house.

Will you be selling your book? Despite being more attractive, to have the same margins, color comics have to sell for significantly higher cover prices than B&W because of the costs of production and printing. Comic consumers tend to be a demographic that is more financially limited and many will chose to purchase a 180 page B&W manga than a 60 page full color graphic novel because they get 3x more story for the same amount of money. Mass market B&W outsells color in terms of total units sold because its cheaper to produce and easier to sell.

When selling online, keep in mind that Amazon will take about 50% of your cover price. So if your graphic novel is $15, expect to only get $7.50. Now subtract your printing, at $4.25/unit. So your net is $3.25/unit. Your B&W sells also for $15, but at $1.25/unit, your net is $6.25. So your B&W is making twice as much money. Most publishers actually drop the price to $12-13 for B&W because they only "lose" $1.00 to $1.50 in net, but many more books sell because of the lower price point. Cheaper books sell easier and draw more attention because of their higher sales, which results in even more sales. Suddenly you make the NYT Bestsellers list and you are having to run multiple reprints. After all many people tend to read what everyone else is reading.

So if you are wanting to get a huge print fandom go B&W. If you are wanting a huge digital fandom, go color.

But that's just our thoughts.

[carloswebcomic]

From experience, readers react better to colour. I assume because it gives the final picture more polish.
Personally, I'd read B&W over colour any day, but from observations, colour seems to be more popular.

[ranka]

I'm actually struggling with this decision right now for a new series. I started with the assumption of doing full color, but after doing character designs I decided they look better simple in B&W:

Something I've tried with a past attempt at a comic was to start off in B&W, and if I had time, see if I could color over/behind it, much like how redrawers turn some manga into full color

I do agree that people generally tend to gravitate towards color from an arm's length, but I don't think that should pressure anyone from developing their own personal style removed from the usage of color - in the end it's just another tool for storytelling

[Mint_Tee]

In my opinion, personally, I love it when the comic is colored. It just brings my attention to it, usually i would want to enjoy the art as I read and when ever an artist just doesn't give me any appeal of the characters it kind of subtracts my interest to it unless it's a really good story line...I would say colored is better but it will take more work for some people.

[eslameldeeb]

i will have to say "colored" and here is why
i used to draw all in b&w, i didn't really think about coloring at all
until 4 years ago i drew a short comic and gave coloring it a try, then i compared between the b&w and the colored version.. my mind was blown because of the difference
colors reveal so much about the characters and their world without really saying anything..
colored comics are amazing, can't imagine Enkido in b&w