Hi - okay, not satisfied with my blasting his Avengers piece, Gerry Turnbull wanted me to look over and offer advice on another of his coloured pieces. So, this time, I'm going to examine another of his 'team' pics, this X-men piece.

One tricky part about working with hi-tech backgrounds like this is the tendancy to use a lot of blues in that background. Now, this is appropriate normally, as the artwork usually looks like some sort of polished steel (particularily as it is done here). The main problem with this approach, however, is the fact that so many other characters in similar types of backgrounds can also be done as blue (we see this all the time in older sci-fi movies).

Now, I like how Gerry has deviated from this, going with green tones in the background elements. And, being one of the few colours that doesn't appear on any of the characters, it makes those characters really stand out from their environment. Also, while green, the particular colour doesn't look particularily 'natural', like a forest or grass-green colour.

However, there is a slight problem with the three main background colours (labelled 1, 2, and 3). With the Avengers piece, I was talking about the use of cooler colours in the furthest backgrounds, and warmer colours the closer to the viewer. In this case, Gerry has his warmest colour (the green with the highest ratio of yellow to blue) in the very back of this environment, with the greens in backgrounds 2 and 3 being lighter and darker versions of the same colour, both skewing toward blue. Reversing this, having the more yellow-green in the foreground, and the blue-greens further back, would go a long way to making the environment more convincing.

Now, another note I had made about the use of backgrounds in that Avengers piece was having background elements that are the furthest away being the least saturated (and generally lighter) and getting darker and more saturated the further forward they come. In this case, element 3 works very well, being lighter than elements 2 and 3. Unfortunately, however, element 2 is darker than element 3, creating a somewhat odd telescoping effect, where the platform that the Shi-ar are standing looking somewhat closer to the viewer than the platform that the X-men are standing on.

So, I would have gone with element 3 being the darkest overall.

However, there is one way to modify this. Gerry has created a shadow underneath the X-men - this coloured shadow has pretty much the same colour as element 2. One really effective tactic would be to make that shadow even darker and maybe even muddier (less pure), but making the surrounding area of the platform (the light that isn't being blocked by the X-men) even brighter, perhaps even going close to white. This would add additional drama to the scene, making the only prominent lighting being on the X-men themselves. While it is obvious that there is this lighting going on currently, heightening this contrast will create a more effective overall illustration.

Let's just go over the shadow under the X-men again (1) versus the shadow that has been drawn under Lilandra and Gladiator (2).

Because the (2) shadow has been drawn in so tightly, it looks much darker and dramatic than the coloured shadow (1). By upping the contrast on (1), you can better separate it and bring it forward from the similar effect going on at (2).

Now, let's discuss some of the background characters.

The audience members (element 1) are a fairly saturated purple colour, while the Shi'ar guards (element 2) are a moderately saturated blue colour.

Because the audience members (who are further away than the guards) are more saturated/darker than the guards, they can look like they are sitting closer to the viewer, creating that odd telescoping effect discussed earlier.

Probably a more effective way to approach this is to leave the Shi'ar guards as they are (being lighter than the foreground characters, so they are placed well in the picture), but lighten the audience members by about 50%. If this makes them seem a bit lighter than the background, than the background should probably be made a bit lighter to create additional depth.

Finally, we come to the two main groups of characters. Now, the X-Men themselves are looking just fine (well, the Beast needs to be finished - actually he could be shifted just slightly to green, as in the Avengers piece, as that will make him separate from Wolverine's blues very nicely), but it is Gladiator, Lilandra, and the third guy whom I want to talk about.

Quite often, colourists can get very picky about wanting to use precisely the same colours for the same characters all the time. That is, every time Gladiator appears, you want to use the same rich red colour.

However, in some circumstances, that can actually work to the detriment of the particular picture. In this case, Gladiator's reds are the same colour as the reds on those X-Men with red parts. This has that same odd telescoping effect, putting Gladiator on the same plane as the X-men, instead of beside Lilandra.

In this case, you would be much better off making his reds and blues lighter - in fact, lowering the saturation of the yellow staff and blue cape of Lilandra and the purple robes of the third guy would all work to push them back in space. Just make sure that they don't become as light as the guards or the audience members.

I hope this has again been of some help - I really do like Gerry's colouring job here, and just feel it could use some tweaking. I also like talking about these 'flat' coloured pieces, because colour theory is much more easily discussed without talking about 'light sources' and other modeling tips which can complicate the situation. It's really important to nail down these sorts of ideas before trying to tackle the more complex colouring styles out there.

Any questions or comments, please feel free to fire away

thanks Ian, you should write a book for people like me!
ive changed some of what you said.what do you think?
nightcrawlers eyes are terrible and need abit of work..
Feel free to pick another if you get any time.

Awesome.

I don't even draw or color, and I'm really enjoying these crits. Ian and Gerry, please, more!

Eric, im loving it!
hope Ian does some more.

What does "saturated" mean in this context? And Ian, if it involves any garment that you are wearing, then I withdraw the question.

'Saturated' generally refers to how intense a colour is.

In the corrected version, notice how Gladiator's reds are lighter than Colossus's reds. In this case, Colossus has the more saturated reds.

Gerry, I'm very impressed with those changes - excellent job!

And, when I can spare some more time, I'll go over another piece - perhaps something with fewer characters this time I'm quite pleased that you and others enjoy these critical analysis' of these pieces

Nightcrawler's reds are more saturated than Colossus's reds.

<<begins to picture self as colorist>>

This thread is inspirational. It's great that Ian takes the time to give this kind of advice. Gerry's colouring - and his choice of subjects - are excellent also. I can't even imagine the time and effort it takes to do this stuff. It musta have taken hours to do that X-Men piece, Gerry. It looks great.

The redo is really done well!! Like it.

thanks guys !
looking forward to the next tutorial!