Coloring Technique Sharing

Bluebug · Post by **Bluebug** » Sun Apr 10, 2005 10:20 pm

faub wrote:Not as cool as bluebug's but I tried. 8)

Yeah, right

For starters, your background is magnificent. What are those letters supposed to say? Plus your shading had to be whole lot more precise than mine. I was smudging black on extremely dark grey for a lot of it

I wasn't quite sure what to do with the shadow of the sword, but you managed to deal with it quite nicely.

Here's my take on Humbug's cool shaman(?) dude.

I tried to do the painterly style, which took me a less time than my usual style (two hours). It's wierd, since I thought it would take me a whole lot longer. I really like how well the robe turned out ... only it's so painterly and chock full of contrast it makes the rest of the pic look rather dull by comparison -_-; I found it a lot easier to do the painterly style with robe since it was such a huge expanse I could scribble over it with enthusiastic abandon. That was much harder to do with his skin. So it turned out to be a bit of a hodge podge of styles, in the end. I really have to stop using the gradient tool so much - but it's so addictive!

CapitanG · Post by **CapitanG** » Sun Apr 10, 2005 10:31 pm

Looks really good. You also have neverending kudos for not using lens flares on those bright spots.

Humbug · Post by **Humbug** » Mon Apr 11, 2005 4:28 am

Sweet work there bluebug, and love the background Faub.

Phalanx · Post by **Phalanx** » Mon Apr 11, 2005 6:51 am

faub wrote:Not as cool as bluebug's but I tried. 8)

Faub, that absolutely rocks!

Dogandpony · Post by **Dogandpony** » Mon Apr 11, 2005 1:00 pm

Hehe. Any excuse to waste time and play around with stuff . . . ^^

I was mostly just playing around with the Photoshop stuffs. In any case, hope you like it.

KathleenJ · Post by **KathleenJ** » Mon Apr 11, 2005 4:00 pm

dogandpony wrote:Hehe. Any excuse to waste time and play around with stuff . . . ^^

I was mostly just playing around with the Photoshop stuffs. In any case, hope you like it.

Awesome!

I love the textures. And I'm not sure whether it was luck or intention, but you gave both characters their canonically right hair colors.

Dogandpony · Post by **Dogandpony** » Mon Apr 11, 2005 4:22 pm

It was my intention.

Cast pages are handy like that. ^^

(. . . also handy for determining that I really needed to read the strip--which I did--but that's neither here nor there. *cough*)

Faub · Post by **Faub** » Mon Apr 11, 2005 6:38 pm

bluebug wrote:
faub wrote:Not as cool as bluebug's but I tried. 8)
Yeah, right For starters, your background is magnificent. What are those letters supposed to say? Plus your shading had to be whole lot more precise than mine. I was smudging black on extremely dark grey for a lot of it I wasn't quite sure what to do with the shadow of the sword, but you managed to deal with it quite nicely.

What you're looking at is 8 flat colors: 3 for the sword, hair, hair band, shirt, pants, skin and the white for the towel thingy doesn't really count because I didn't actually color it. That's the white background showing through.

I painted everything basically with select, flood fill. When I shaded, I selected the flat color and then shaded on a higher layer so I didn't have to erase. Most of that was just scribble a shadow and erase the bits that didn't look like wrinkles. There was one shadow layer and 2 highlight layers over the flat color.

The background. 8)
I smudged and stretched it a bit so it didn't look like a photo, blacked out the inside of the archway and the path then kinda scribbled in the bricks and something that looked rune-like. The grass was scribbled on, the layer duplicated and edge detected.

I did the ground by selecting colors from the archway and scribbling with a big brush. Then I went in with a tiny brush and scribbled some rocks.

The part I'm most happy about is that I got the shadows fairly consistent.

Eunice_P · Post by **Eunice_P** » Wed Apr 13, 2005 10:18 am

Alright, sorry to keep you waiting Bluebug. Here's the return fanart. hope you like it.

And happy coloring. Oooh, that's really good faub! I love the background! *saves image* X3

DancingChaos · Post by **DancingChaos** » Thu Apr 14, 2005 3:28 pm

This is my pic, Eunice_P! I hope you like the coloring! I did it in flash without garnients (SP?) Aaaaaaanyway, please tell me what you think ^^

If any of you guys used flash, you would know I had to trace the whole thing ALL OVER AGAIN!!!!!!! Overall, it took me 7 hours to do! (Nooooooo!!!)

I'm only 13!!!

It looks funny, but I tried...

Isukiyomi · Post by **Isukiyomi** » Thu Apr 14, 2005 4:59 pm

DancingChaos · Post by **DancingChaos** » Fri Apr 15, 2005 11:17 am

Hey, Isukiyomi, that's reeaaally good

It's sooo cool!!! (Mine's a disgrace...

)

Aaanyway, I think it would be a little better if you added shading to the face.

That's it. I hope I helped.

Well, it's excellent!

~DC

Isukiyomi · Post by **Isukiyomi** » Fri Apr 15, 2005 11:44 am

DancingChaos wrote:Hey, Isukiyomi, that's reeaaally good It's sooo cool!!! (Mine's a disgrace... )

Aaanyway, I think it would be a little better if you added shading to the face.

That's it. I hope I helped.

Well, it's excellent!

~DC

Thanks DC ^^ I like yours too ^_^V (envies your flash skills) I *should* probably add more shade to the face ^_^

DancingChaos · Post by **DancingChaos** » Fri Apr 15, 2005 11:57 am

Thank you ^^ Please don't envy my flash skills ^^ It took a LOOOOOOONG time for me to do that! Thanks for taking my advice!

Eunice_P · Post by **Eunice_P** » Fri Apr 15, 2005 5:45 pm

Woot! Great coloring job girls. It's kind of fun to see KM colored in different style.

I didn't expect DChaos would take the effort of tracing the whole thing. Kudos for the patience~! X3 Maybe you should try using http://www.gimp.org free software. I think it's easier to color on existing linearts compare to flash.

Isukiyomi: Great job on the color! I really like the shading you put on the clothings. Totally cool indeed! ^____^

Bluebug · Post by **Bluebug** » Fri Apr 15, 2005 8:52 pm

Whee! Finally finished!

Took me four hours this time. I don't like how his hair turned out, I may go back and change it later ... but I'm really proud with the rest of it. I must admit, this coloring thread is really helping me alot; I usually don't get this much practice coloring back to back, so this thread lets me tweak my coloring in each successive pic while the previous pic is still fresh in my mind. I got the comment that my coloring for Eunice's previous pic was too "bold", so I toned it down the highlights this time around. I hope it's a little easier on the eyes ^^;

If anyone's interested, I plan on putting up a tutorial of how I colored this pic in my forum later tonight. Not that I'm an expert or anything, but I've got a few tips from what I've learned about coloring. I'll put the link up later.

[edit] Coloring Tutorial link!

DancingChaos: Wow, I admire you for re-outlining the pic. I did that with a couple of pics of mine that I was putting on t-shirts. I had to spread it over a few days because it was so tedious

And that was with Photoshop, which is easier to use than Flash, methinks. On a random note, the colors you used makes me think of Inuyasha. Very neat, especially the way you highlighted the hair.

Isukiyomi : I love that background. It gives the feel of fast moving searchlights. And you gave him his classic red hair and blue outfit (I'm guessing that wasn't just a fluke ^_^)

Eunice : Thanks so much for the great fanart! Sorry for taking so long to reply ^^;; Exams are evil.

DancingChaos · Post by **DancingChaos** » Sat Apr 16, 2005 7:23 am

WOA!!! THAT'S SOO COOL!!! Judging by Bluebug's and Isukiyomi's pictures, my colors are wayyyyy off ^^'''

I REALLY need to get photopaint... *DC puts it on her birthday list*

Isukiyomi · Post by **Isukiyomi** » Sat Apr 16, 2005 9:13 am

Thanks for the comments Eunice P & Bluebug! ^_^V Your lineart rocks Eunice P and your colouring skills Bluebug are fantastic!

Bluebug · Post by **Bluebug** » Sat Apr 16, 2005 1:24 pm

CapitanG wrote:Looks really good. You also have neverending kudos for not using lens flares on those bright spots.

I meant to reply to this a while back, but I forgot. ^^;

I used to use lens flare ad nauseum, here's an example:

Ah, the joys of random glowy thingies. It took me a while to grow out of using the lens flare - almost the same amount of time it took to grow out of creating super stylized people ^^.

DancingChaos · Post by **DancingChaos** » Sat Apr 16, 2005 2:40 pm

Awwww! SOOOO CUTE!!! (Hugs person in picture)