With or without color?

[Scila]

I mean, what's the best? To do a color comic or a black and white one? I was hopping to find out both authors' and readers' point of views

[Chascraw4d]

It really depends on what sort of effect you're aiming for. I chose to do my comic in black and white for compositional reasons and to help capture the feel of a paper 'manga'. (Yes I know everything I have posted is in color, it hasn't started yet ). Given that I'm doing all the inking / shading on my computer, it would have been just as easy to do it in color, though.

[Agi_wataru]

I personaly think both is really good. but I do fine just coloring your comic in black and white with photo shop is a little well...... odd. I can understand an afect but usualy I want it to look better than just the b & w virstion of a collor pic. I personaly am doing a few collor pages int he beginign of evory chapter then all b & w. but I'm shadign with pencil and hopefully one day I'll have tones. but as for reading. I don't much care if its good art and easy to follow. if you have all b & w and its hard to tell whats what because of it and gives you a headach isn't good. but tastefull is fine and it doesn't hurt to have a few collore images thrown in here and there.

<a href="http://himikochyan.keenspace.com/index.htm"><img src="http://himikochyan.keenspace.com/images/watarubanner2.jpg"></a>

[ZOMBIE USER 8124]

I am trying to draw in a "manga style" format too, however every fourth comic is color, just so people can get an idea of the comics characters and their world in color, then sub-impose it as they read the black and white comics. I can't stand people who are used to reading full color comics, and when they see a black and white comic or manga, they go, "I can't tell the characters apart!" (I've gotten this often -_-') I personally prefer black and white, only and only because it's crisper. Being a *sort of* manga artist, I feel that color is best left to artbook pics and extra pics. But that's just me! ^^;

[Rion]

Hmm, I just started really looking at the keenspace forums, so it may seem like I've randomly come out of the blue, but that's only because I have ^^;; Anywho my opinion on the matter is this: I prefer mostly black and white because then it gives me the chance to use color to highlight important details in my comic, and also makes color digital effects look more impressive. Occasionally I'll do an art day in color (very rarely), but I'd rather save color for when it's really needed. This way the audience gets a little treat every once in a while, but doesn't gorge itself on color and come to expect it. Then again that's just my opinion, I could be wrong. (stranger things have happened ^^;; )

[John D Moore]

I do all my strips in colour. It's a pain in the butt because I'm a perfectionist, so each strip takes me at least an hour to colour alone. However, if I leave it as a two-tone line drawing, it brings out all the weaknesses in my drawing and trying to get the right shades of gray would be as difficult as doing the stuff in the right colours.
So, I do colour. It also kind of fits with the innocent wonderment them of my strip.

[Kaz]

i personally like black n white, unless colour is seen to be absolotely necessary to highlight details or portray an image or feeling. black n white looks good, and wif the differnt shades of grey it has an excellent effect, in my opinion

[Taiwanimation]

Black and white, because pen ink is available in any color so long as it's black.

I draw my comic really low-tech, using an ink pen for all the drawing and a fine tip marker for lettering.

On Sundays color is added with colored pencil. It looks blah. But it's cheerful.

Stupid Melon Dumb Egg- http://sunshine.taiwanimation.net

[Halflight]

Either way works if you do it right. In color it is definitely easier for the reader to keep the characters straight-- face it, unless and until you really hook a reader, they _will_ think of your characters as 'short guy', 'elf guy', 'brown-haired girl', or what have you. particularly if your art skills are wobbly and/or you do a comic where people have more-or-less similar faces and few extremely distinguishing characteristics (horns, wings, one eye, beard, walrus teeth, etc), color can help determine who's who. if your art skills are good AND all your characters have very different faces and very consistent faces, it doesn't matter What color its in, people will know who's who. If you have an engaging storyline and characters that the reader cares about, it'll help as well, because people will make an extra effort to know whats going on. if they don't like the story etc, they'll speed through it (if they read it at all) and miss things.

no matter which you do, make sure the art is clean--sharp black lines, no grey except where you intend it to be, etc. Some sort of tone is recommendable too-- even if just solid black in places. a comic of thin outlines and no other tone is both boring and much easier to be confused about. it can work, but it will have to be that much better to outweigh the prejudice against the art.

[Halflight]

postscript:

just read the undine comic... in your case, if at all feasible, i'd continue with color.... you cgi beautifully, your colors are great, and your patience for backgrounds is amazing (most of us, i think, are exceptionally lazy about backgrounds.) your figures need some practice (first frame on first narrative page-- nobody lies that stiffly. the rest of them are somewhat better.) and the coloring makes that much less noticible. watch the angle of your backgrounds tho-- no matter what angle he's at, we seem to be looking at the water from above, which is strange. last frame on fist page-- weak composition with just a figure and a hand, both is profil... small hands sticking onto large panels (hand closeups would be different, being comparable to full figures) seem to me to be something of a compositional nono. straight on would be better than profile, too-- things are more effective and immediate coming towards you. plus, if you made him looking towards us or towards off the the side (3/4), you could have a mysterious figure in the background. from a story telling perspective, it feels like that blue person is just too close behind him to merit jumping into a flashback-- if that person so much as breathed you would have to break the flashback and have him whirl around really fast... and how you would make a noise outside of a flashback during a flashback without being confusing i don't know. if the person was a little distance away, you could end the flashback, focus on his face as he ties it up, then surprise in a way that would be much more clear, since we're already in present time.

I'm rambling, aren't i. i hope you understood what i was trying to say. cool start.