Coloring line art for comics - Quickstart tutorial

I've worked as a colorist for many years for the main comic book publishers in France, U.S.A. and Italy.

Having done literally thousands of pages, I've developed a workflow that I follow every time I have to color black line art.

In this tutorial I share my typical workflow for coloring comics. I start from an hi-res scan and I go through every step to a final PSD. I focus and finish just one panel of the page, but the steps on other panels are the same.

This is a technical quickstart: many topics are covered, but only briefly, and artistic aspects are left to you and will be subjects of other videos. The workflow explained is easy, robust, replicable and non-destructive, and helps me every day in delivery quality colors with strict deadlines.

You should have a basic knowledge of Photoshop or your preferred painting app that has layer functionality. The tutorial uses Photoshop CS5, but the same information can be applied on any other version or software that can handle layers and the basic blending modes (normal, multiply, screen, dodge). Only the basic tools, brushes and functionalities are used in this tutorial.

The steps covered are the following:

• converting a black and white 1200dpi scan to a PSD file suitable for coloring;
• preparing the basic layers for masking balloons and white areas;
• creating an "helper" layer to avoid black ink issues on prints
• flat colors
• ambient, shadows and lights
• final color correction and effects

Here I work in RGB, but the steps are the same for a CMYK workflow.
There will be another tutorial for CMYK conversion and color management for printed comic books.

Includes:

• 90 minutes of english narrated videos
• Layered PSD file with the tutorial result

Software:

• Photoshop CS5 (you can follow with any version from CS2 up)

About me:

I'm a comic book artist that works in France and Italy for the main publishers in the industry (Glènat, Bonelli, Delcourt, Marvel, Panini...). I've been a colorist for 10 years, working on thousand of pages and many different artists and styles.