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 Post subject: Colouring Work-In-Progress - Doctor Strange and Baron Mordo
PostPosted: Thu Mar 15, 2007 1:45 am 
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King of Goth

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Hey everyone.

Gerry Turnbull commissioned me to colour a couple of Paul Smith pieces, and asked if I could break down how I colour one of them.
So, I'll create this thread as I paint the image.

First off, here is the lineart, featuring a beat-up Doctor Strange and a rather unhappy-looking Baron Mordo.

Click for full size

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 Post subject: Colouring Work-In-Progress - Doctor Strange and Baron Mordo
PostPosted: Thu Mar 15, 2007 1:49 am 
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King of Goth

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First thing, I lay down some flat colours.

Now, for the most part, the colours I'm using are not the ones
that I'll be using for the final image - these are just put in place so
I can easily select areas (like, for instance, Doc's groovy white streaks)
for later painting.

I will use this time to run through some ideas as to what my
foreground and background colour scheme should be.
Here, I'm using cool colours for the background, and warm for the
foreground (including green for the crystal ball that Mordo is trapped
in).

...I'm actually not entirely sold on the green crystal ball, however...

Click for full size

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 Post subject: Colouring Work-In-Progress - Doctor Strange and Baron Mordo
PostPosted: Thu Mar 15, 2007 2:13 am 
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King of Goth

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Here, I'll start in on modeling the background.

I always work back-to-front when modeling - I like establishing the
environment that the characters are inhabiting, and taking my cues
from that and the obvious lighting to decide on how best to model
the main figures.

Now, the background contains a huge light source - the big window
behind Stephen. This light source seems to be lighting all the
background elements.

So, I start by painting that. I keep it to a very light, very desaturated
blue, with a bit of a hand-painted texture.

I'll paint each background element separately, tweaking the dark
'shadow' (the darkest colour of the piece that I'm colouring) to being
very 'cool' (this basically means that it will be a colour with a lot of
blue in it).

I use a variety of techniques to paint these elements - I'll generally
start by putting in a basic gradient over the whole figure, starting from
where the light should be brightest. Then, I'll do more grads, using the
lasso tool to select smaller areas to paint into. I'll also use the
paintbrush tool (with a variety of my customized brushes) and the
pencil tool to put in the highlights and textured 'feel' of the objects.

The whole background scene appears to be dimly-lit, so I'm not going
to worry about making the individual colours too prominent. For
instance, let's look at the stacks of books on the table to the right.
In a brightly-lit room, all of the book covers would probably be seen to
have different colours from each other, and even the paper inside them
might vary slightly from book to book. In a dimly-lit room, however,
things like that tend to blur together colour-wise. So, I basically
paint them all to look similar to each other, letting only the inking and
the painted highlights separate them from each other.

Click for full size

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 Post subject: Colouring Work-In-Progress - Doctor Strange and Baron Mordo
PostPosted: Thu Mar 15, 2007 2:15 am 
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King of Goth

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Also notice on that previous image that different materials are reflecting light
differently. The crystal balls go to white, and have larger highlights on them,
while the statue of the dragon on the pillar has much more of the mid-tone colour
in it, and it doesn't quite go to white in the highlights.

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 Post subject: Colouring Work-In-Progress - Doctor Strange and Baron Mordo
PostPosted: Thu Mar 15, 2007 2:40 am 
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King of Goth

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On to the foreground elements.

There are three basic foreground pieces - Doc Strange, Baron
Mordo (in his crystal ball), and the oddball table/display case
that is above and below the crystal ball. So, being a setting
element, I'll start with the table-thingie.

I tweak the colour that I previously chose, making it warmer
and more saturated - 'warmer' just refers to making it closer
to a red/orange colour.

I've also determined that I'm not going to go with the
crystal ball (which is the main light source for the page) being
green, but will instead go for a yellow-orange. So,
I light the table accordingly.

The artist has indicated four light sources (more or less) that are
affecting the table:
1) the crystal ball; so both the bottom of the part of the
table/case over the crystal ball and the top of the table are lit with
the yellow/orange colour, as are the tops of the eyes ringing the table,
2) light falling on the 'front', or from where the viewer is; this is basically
both the blue light from behind Stephen and the yellow/orange light
from the crystal ball being reflected off of a wall or other surface from
where the viewer is - thus, on the part of the overhang that faces the
viewer, I'm putting in a 'neutral' light, neither warm nor cool,
3) the blue light from the background; that falls on the left side of the
table, most prominently on the overhang - thus, that side is a bit bluer
than the rest of the object,
4) light falling on surfaces to the right of the viewer; this is probably again
a combination of the two lights being reflected back on the object
from the wall and other surfaces to the right of the viewer - there is
probably more warm light there than cool light, so I light that very
slightly warmer than on the front of the table.

The eyeballs ringing the table are also being lit slightly from below -
again, I use that 'neutral' lighting colour on them.

Like the background, I'm using a fair bit of hand-rendered
painting textures on this object. One great thing about
doing a scene like this is that there are so many 'organic'
shapes - everything is made from wood, stone, fabrics, things
like that. These items can easily stand a
bit of texturing, to bring them more 'alive'. I do so many pieces involving
Iron Man in hi-tech environments (where I don't use any textures,
keeping all the surfaces super smooth and shiny), that this is a fun change.

Image

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 Post subject: Colouring Work-In-Progress - Doctor Strange and Baron Mordo
PostPosted: Thu Mar 15, 2007 2:54 am 
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King of Goth

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The crystal ball.

Like I said, I decided to switch this to a yellow/orange colour.

Not much to say, except that I painted the 'highlight' portion of the
crystal (the line that surrounds the circle) separate and lighter than
the interior.

I will, however, have to watch that Doctor Strange's yellows don't
match the colour of the smoke too closely. Separation of elements is
vitally important (and was something that earlier old-fashioned colouring
was notoriously bad about).

Image

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 Post subject: Colouring Work-In-Progress - Doctor Strange and Baron Mordo
PostPosted: Thu Mar 15, 2007 3:35 am 
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King of Goth

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Doctor Strange.

Well, the best way to have his yellows separate from the yellow of the
crystal ball is to make them slightly skewed toward gold, and
have the parts that actually intersect with the smoke around the
crystal ball, go to white.

I could have bathed the entire character in yellow, to really show that
it is a yellow light facing him. However, that can have the effect of
flattening out the image. Sometimes that is what you want (and it
can work really well in a comic book page, as long as you vary it
a lot from panel to panel), but not here.

Instead, I 'greyed-out' the blues on his shirt a bit, making it a less
pure colour than I've done on other pieces, using more of a white
or neutral light on the character.

There are no textures on him - the modeling is done entirely using
selections and the grad tool, with a little bit of the airbrush tool as
well. Very little use of that tool, actually. If it's used too much,
you get a strange blobby effect on the figure, kinda like cheap
airbrushed t-shirts you can buy on the beach in Van Nuys.

There is a slight amount of blue modeling on the side of the
Doctor's face and cape, from the blue light behind him.

Click for full size

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 Post subject: Colouring Work-In-Progress - Doctor Strange and Baron Mordo
PostPosted: Thu Mar 15, 2007 3:51 am 
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King of Goth

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Baron Mordo.

If this was reality, then Mordo should be pretty much just shades of
light yellow.

...but, then, if this was reality, he wouldn't be shrunk and stuffed
inside a crystal ball, either....................

So, I just painted him very bright. Quite a bit brighter than his normally-
muted greens.

Click for full size

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 Post subject: Colouring Work-In-Progress - Doctor Strange and Baron Mordo
PostPosted: Thu Mar 15, 2007 4:19 am 
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King of Goth

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Finishing up the piece.

At this point, I add in the colour holds (where I change the colour of
some lines - in this case, the smoke around the crystal ball), add any
glows, and go over the piece to see if anything needs to be tweaked.

I decided to make the underside of Doc's cape darker - it was seeming
too flat to me, and adding the shadow gives it more depth.

Click for full size

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 Post subject: Colouring Work-In-Progress - Doctor Strange and Baron Mordo
PostPosted: Thu Mar 15, 2007 4:22 am 
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And that's pretty much it. Hopefully Gerry will like this - if not, I guess I'll just
have to fix it :)

If anybody has any questions or comments, please post away! I hope some
of you have found this to be some help :D

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 Post subject: Colouring Work-In-Progress - Doctor Strange and Baron Mordo
PostPosted: Thu Mar 15, 2007 5:37 am 
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Ian, could you burn a CD of this tutorial including a final high-res for Paul, so I could show him what you did with his illustration?


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 Post subject: Colouring Work-In-Progress - Doctor Strange and Baron Mordo
PostPosted: Thu Mar 15, 2007 6:02 am 
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Scratch that suggestion; if you could upload a high-res scan to my YouSendIt account, he could see it that way...


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 Post subject: Colouring Work-In-Progress - Doctor Strange and Baron Mordo
PostPosted: Thu Mar 15, 2007 7:58 am 
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Click for full size

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 Post subject: Colouring Work-In-Progress - Doctor Strange and Baron Mordo
PostPosted: Thu Mar 15, 2007 10:54 am 
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Ian Sokoliwski wrote:
The crystal balls go to white, and have larger highlights on them...

Heh heh heh......... :twisted:

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 Post subject: Colouring Work-In-Progress - Doctor Strange and Baron Mordo
PostPosted: Thu Mar 15, 2007 11:04 am 
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Fantastic tutorial Ian. Great job as well.

Question - when using the gradient tool, what colors do you use and what setting? (does that make sense?)

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 Post subject: Colouring Work-In-Progress - Doctor Strange and Baron Mordo
PostPosted: Thu Mar 15, 2007 1:17 pm 
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King of Goth

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Thanks folks :D

Gerry, that animation is teh awesome :thumbsup:

Matthew - My settings for the Gradient tool are:

Opacity 100%
Gradient: Foreground to Transparent
Transparency is checked
Dither is checked


This way, whatever colour you choose as your main colour will be the
one that gets gradded in - the 'secondary colour' that you can choose in
Photoshop won't have any effect.

I also tend to paint with the gradient tool set to screen, but I don't
recommend that to most people - it can have unpredictable results if you
aren't used to it. You are better off painting on normal - you have
more control on what the final colours will end up being.

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 Post subject: Colouring Work-In-Progress - Doctor Strange and Baron Mordo
PostPosted: Thu Mar 15, 2007 1:21 pm 
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That SO explained one of the problems I've been having. I didn't have it set from Foreground to TRANSPARENT!!!

Thank you very much!

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 Post subject: Colouring Work-In-Progress - Doctor Strange and Baron Mordo
PostPosted: Thu Mar 15, 2007 1:23 pm 
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Thanks, Ian! I learned a lot and you did a great job!

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 Post subject: Colouring Work-In-Progress - Doctor Strange and Baron Mordo
PostPosted: Thu Mar 15, 2007 1:37 pm 
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King of Goth

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Judge WAN wrote:
That SO explained one of the problems I've been having. I didn't have it set from Foreground to TRANSPARENT!!!

:lol: You have no idea how many times I've heard that - it seems to be a
common problem, and is probably why the airbrush tool is so over-
used :thumbsup:

And thanks, Marcus :D

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 Post subject: Colouring Work-In-Progress - Doctor Strange and Baron Mordo
PostPosted: Thu Mar 15, 2007 1:42 pm 
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Ian, how about a quick tip on colour holds?

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 Post subject: Colouring Work-In-Progress - Doctor Strange and Baron Mordo
PostPosted: Thu Mar 15, 2007 3:42 pm 
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Colour holds...

Well, probably the easiest way to do them is ...

Okay - you've got your lines on a separate layer.
Using the lasso tool, select the lineart you want to turn into a different colour.
Copy.
Paste these lines onto a new layer.
Delete the old lines from the 'lines' layer (hitting the backspace button
while the selection is still visible will do it just fine, rather than using the
eraser tool).
On the new layer, check the box marked preserve transparency.
Select the new colour you want those lines to be.
Use the fill command with that colour - because that layer has preserve
transparency
checked, you will only fill those lines, not anything else
on the page.

As I said, that's probably the easiest way to do it. I use a different method, one
involving using Channels, but then I'd have to explain how channels work...
;)

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 Post subject: Colouring Work-In-Progress - Doctor Strange and Baron Mordo
PostPosted: Thu Mar 15, 2007 4:03 pm 
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Soooo......

How do channels work?

<<<Hides under desk>>>

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