Per Ian's suggestion, I'm posting my most recent effort to color my latest Iron Man piece. I'm pleased enough with the drawing and inking, but I think the colors destroy the metallic effect I get from the inks alone. Any suggestions from you coloring types?

Shoot. I don't think it's all that bad - the coloring. I kinda like it. You've rendered into the inks a real metallic look, so the coloring does just what I think it should - enhances the image.

Nice job.

But a colorist I am not.

Agreed. Looks pretty fantastic to me!

(Where's the nose?)

Overall, you've done a very nice job, specifically with keeping the light source consistant with the inking (that can be a huge problem with some colouring). I'll show you a few examples of where you could try punching it up a bit, trying something a bit different...

Okay, just to break things down into steps, I've created a version of this image with some basic flat colours to colour.

I always start with the darkest possible colours that I want to work with on the figure. You'll notice that even the teeth and eyes are a grey, rather than white.

(I'd been asked by Stephen to give him some pointers, so that's why I'm doing this by the by - I don't want people to think I'm just jumping in to tell people what to do without being asked I can't abide that kind of rudeness, actually)

The first thing I want to paint will be all the reds. Choosing where the most prominent light source should be coming from (to the left and above), I use the Gradient tool to put in a lighter colour (in this case, in CMYK, 100% Magenta and 100% Yellow - oh, to make things even more clear, the base red I've already put in is 24% Black, 88% Yellow, 90% Magenta, and 24% Blue. Your mileage may vary ).

I'm also painting this in CMYK, then converting it to RGB to make all of the display files.

This is just to start putting in some mass to the colouring.

Now, I put in some modeling. Using the Lasso tool, I create areas that I want to have even brighter, reflecting the light being cast from above and the left.

So, on the chest, I select an area that shows that the 'fin' or shoulder epaulet is blocking some of the light, casting a small shadow (this is what is referred to as 'cast shadow' modeling). I then use the Gradient tool, starting at the shoulder and dragging it to the centre of the chest, creating that lighter area. I carry that through on all the major individual pieces of the armour, including separating out the abdominal muscles, the forearm and thigh armour pieces, and the centre circle.

Now I add in some white highlights (armoured characters should almost always go all the way to white in normal lighting).

Using the inked lines as a guide, I place white highlights on each form (the head, chest, armour pods, etc) the closest to the light source, as well as adding in white reflections wherever they are drawn in (like the small circular light reflections under the forearm piece).

So far, my colouring looks a lot darker than the original - don't worry, that will change. However, one particular thing is being done rather deliberately:

- the character's right hand will be darker than the rest of the figure. This is because, in general colour theory, objects that are closest to the viewer are darker than those that are further away. So, more of the dark colour will remain in the shadowed area on the gauntlet than, say, the boots (which will be the lightest area).

Here's where things really start coming alive.

I now add in a secondary light source. The inks clearly show light coming from the right side off the page (probably directly to the side, with very little of that light spilling on to the front of the character). So, I start painting these slivers of grey/white light on the right side of the character, which really gives a sense of mass and weight to the picture. This is where things start to really take on a sense of three dimensions.

This also brightens up the armour considerably - while there is a core darker colour all the way through the armour, that is really just there to establish form and dimension, while not coming off as being 'too dark' (as can easily happen with this method of colouring).

And then follow through all these steps on the yellow parts.

One major difference in the colouring becomes obvious here, and that is on the faceplate. I decided with mine to keep the main light source predominately from the left, and thus made the centre part of the face plate much darker, left in the shadows, than in the original colouring job.

Neither is 'right' in this situation - the light very easily could be hitting the faceplate strongly. Side-lighting on character faces generally comes off as being slightly more dramatic, and I like to play with that whenever possible (see almost every face that Alex Ross paints for that sorta thing )

Also, I've painted in white on the teeth and eyes, just coming from the left. Those elements are too small to worry about two different light sources.

And, finally, adding the special effects.

I really like how there were really only a couple of small glows on the original colouring job - doing too much of that (or enhancing characters in general) can be extremely detrimental to a picture, turning it into a bit of a jumbled mess.

I prefer using only a few simple glows, rarely even using 'lens flares' or similar effects.

Also, I then tweaked the entire figure a bit - I was concerned it was becoming a bit too 'grey' or 'muddy' so, selecting everything, I used the 'Hue/Saturation' menu and increased the Saturation a little bit. This results in purer, more comic-booky colours.

I hope this has been some help - obviously, some of my colours are a bit different from the originals (I prefer using more of a gold colour than yellow/orange for the yellow bits, for example), but the general principles still apply.

I hope I'm not coming off all self-important or know-it-all-ish or anything, either

Please feel free to ask any questions, clarifiacations, yadda yadda yadda

Excellent tutorial, Ian! I think both are coloured great (far better than anything I could do, anyways), but Ian's definitely has a more polished (no pun intended), professional look to it. Good work by both of you!

That is EXACTLY what I needed Ian. Thanks so much!! I wasn't sure precisely how you were using the gredient tool and the lasso. Do you feather the selections at all or leave them hard? Do you ever use masks instead of the lasso tool and selections? I feel pretty confident with my coloring under most circumstances, but I was just at a loss as to how to get that super-shiney, nonorganic look that you do that is just perfect for Iron Man. I'll do some fiddling around and post the results. (By the way, I'm a semi-professional artist. I was pleased that you commented on the underlying drawing not getting in the way of the coloring. It is so important that each step of the process be done right so as to excentuate each other.)

Excellent tutorial, Ian!!! Great information.

Thanks guys - I want to address a couple of things that Stephen asked in particular:



I normally paint at 300dpi or higher - because of this, I never feather my selections. In fact, I always paint with 'anti-aliased' unchecked, to make the selections even crisper. Feathered, soft selections can get a little odd looking in print at some of the higher resolutions.



In Photoshop, those are just two different ways to say the same thing, more or less I use just the lasso tool and selections because it is the simplest thing to do.

Another quick hint for modeling - when I want to work on a piece (like say a red glove on Iron Man), I select that area with the Magic Wand tool (presuming that I've laid down a flat colour first), then copy and paste it. This puts it on another layer.

Then, I set this layer to 'preserve transparency'. What this means is, I can now use any painting tool of any size, spray it all over the place, and it will only affect that particular glove. It won't affect anything on the layer underneath.

Once done, I collapse the glove back onto the 'Background' layer.



The single biggest mistake that I see with colouring are colourists who ignore what the lineart is telling them. It is generally pretty clear (in good, professional lineart, anyway) where the primary and any additional light sources are coming from. So many times, however, I've seen colourists just light the picture from wherever they feel like it, completely ignoring how the original artist intended it. This sort of 'fighting the artwork' leads to horrible colouring jobs. Really, I'd much rather see simple flat colors with no modeling used rather than this sort of work.

So, yeah, you have to play with the lineart with the intentions of the original artist in mind. There are sometimes story reasons to break some of these rules, but those times are rare.

Really, colourist are just as much artists as the penciller and inker, and can wreck a page just as easily

Oh, by the by, I'm looking at your current avatar, with Captain America's head and the yellow light being cast on it. If you like, I could even give you some pointers on how to make that flow a bit better as well.

(you could set that up as a separate thread if you like)

....not that I'm wanting to tell anybody their business - just offering some suggestions

Mr. Teacher sir. I've finished my homework! I LOVED the method you showed me. I finally felt like I knew what I was doing. I tried to not look at your demonstration so that I wasn't simply copying what you'd done. I agreed with your comments about the dark mask, but I did the reverse just to make the pictures look more distinctive. I also went with the light flashes with the rays in honor of the way they looked in the J.R.jr and Layton days. Whadaya think? (Cap will be up in a new thread shortly.)

Yep, you've definitely got the shinyness down

The 'star pattern' style glows do always work, especially when limited to only a couple or three instances - I suppose part of the reason that I stay away from too many effects like that is how often they get abused to the point of making the character pretty silly looking. You've got it working quite nicely, though!

My only concern in your colouring job is how closely the darker yellow/orange parts are to the dark red parts - if this was going to print, the editor would probably suggest you take down some of the red/magenta in the yellows, to separate the yellow and red more.

Good job overall!!

Wow. Your first one was great, but you've topped yourself with this one. Well done Stephen!!!

An excellent source for studying someone painting metal effects is looking at the work of Sorayama - http://www.sorayama.net/

Some of the images there are adult in nature (mostly just nudity, although he has this obsession with women peeing themselves - fortunately, the one book I own Sorayama Hyper Illustrations 2 has that part edited out), but he does a lot of robot and armour-style illustrations. Just incredible metal work. It really shows how sometimes the simpler you can make the modeling, the better it looks.