Colouring process test for Comic pages...

I've been toying with some different colouring techniques that may aid me greatly this year if I choose to run with the graphic novel approach. Not quite finished yet as I've been busy on the holidays trying to semi-cement my ideas, working, reggie strips, folio stuff and trying t get over a small bout of sickness, but I've picked up a great deal of knowledge thanks to a great book "The DC comic gudie to Colouring and Lettering Comics".

Basically the book has some great photoshop techniques in order to prep artwork to colour and administer colouring via channels (something I've always wanted to learn.) Also it has made me very consious in regards to what Colours I pick for what (flats) and their temperature (warm or cool) and aiding the artwork in creating the main focus points for the viewer.

So I've been practicing on a splash/cover page I penciled for CFCA involving a fight scene (See above); problem is the page wasn't inked so I really had the play with the pencils for a while in order to get them sutibly dark enough to begin applying colours. I basically faked the inks by running over the areas that needed to be black with digital blacks.

I'm finding CMYK to be handy to work in as the concept of mixing the colours to get something similar to what I need makes more sense that mixing RGB which is based on light and not ink. Anyways, here's some of my progress. I havent touched the picture in a few weeks, I have started modelling shapes with shadows and have applied mild gradients to the larger block areas and am almost up to the highlights stage.

I realise that I'm lucky to pull off decent pencilling let alone colouring, but it's fun to dabble in something else. There are so many concepts and rules to consider with just pencilling alone, let alone inking considerations and colouring, but it's a challenge and I love the storytelling and depth/focus theories being it. My other main problem is that I don't have a wacom tablet so all the "inking" and colouring has been done with a mouse so it's a little slow.

This is a greyscale look of the finished colour flats. The book says it's good to have a variety of contrast. If your colouring looks like a bunch of greys with no lighter areas then it looks bland (hope that's right anyway...)

Colour flats. Tried to make the main colour of the page seem like a sunny day, and have warmer colours for the foreground characters such as the guy bottom left with the bloodied face, and then the main focus of the work ie: the heroes have warmer tones for their main colours- ie warmer greens for Sea Dragon. Problem is with Blue Flyer is that he's blue, which tends to be cooler but Im hoping the eye at least travels around where Seadragon is, sees the red of blue Flyer's goggles, and is also drawn to the guy in front, who in hindsight could have been made darker/ cooler so not to draw so much attention and maybe even enchance the middle more...I don't know, it's my first real attempt at this sort of thing :P