Hey folks.

A few months ago, Judge WAN had posted a picture that he had recreated and coloured, and I had asked if I could do a crit thread on it (well, on the colouring part).

I'm a little late on it, but here we go.

First off, here is the image he did, based on a John Byrne FF panel:

Right off the bat, I'd like to say how much I like the colour hold colours (where the original black lineart was changed to other colours). The red (1) that is being used gives the fire a lot of life.

In particular, I like how there are also different, lighter colour holds being used (2) closer to the bodies, to give it some depth.

I'm not entirely sold on the white flame lines around Frankie's head - a better choice would probably have been to make the flame whiter around there, as flame is usually brighter and less saturated the closer you get to the centre of it (glows work the same way), and reversing it like this has an odd effect. However, being a comic-book thing, it does work to make the flame look animated. So, we'll mark it down to a good choice, but not the one I would have made myself

Now, because the flames surrounding the characters were colour-held, it does look a bit off that the flames that define Frankie's boots and gloves (1) aren't treated the same way. Probably using a darker red hold there would have worked, and still kept them separate from the other flames.

A similar situation happens with the black lines on Johnny (2). Traditionally, yes, those internal black lines are left black, and they still do work. However, given that there are already colour holds being used here, I would have also gone with a dark red hold. But that is more of a personal preference. Heck, I would have just colour held all of Johnny, if it came to that, but this is something to think about anyway

Okay, now we come to the part that I really had wanted to talk about.

Matthew has the two characters being their own light sources, which is totally appropriate. However, he has the strongest source of their light facing each other (1), creating a white lighting effect between them.

There are tons of cool story reasons for doing this...however, it doesn't really follow the lineart.

Okay, the primary light sources on the characters are the flames behind them (2) - that is, each of them is spitting of flame behind their backs. However, the way they are lit, those parts of the figures closest to that flame are actually in shadow.

So, there are two ways to approach this - the realistic, and the story-based.

The realistic approach would have the backs of the two character be brightly lit, with the shadowed areas on the front of the characters, merging them both into shadow. Which would be a pretty cool effect, but probably isn't what Matthew is looking for here.

So, the story-based approach would be to have their backs be lit and their fronts (where the two characters touch) also be lit. So, you would get that cool 'kissing fire' be all bright, while the flame behind them still looking like a real light source.

This would probably add another level of interest to the image.

I'd like to go back to that white modelling between the figures again, however (1). Because white was apparently used to lighten things up, where the two characters are red, they are skewing towards magenta/pink. However, since both of them are flame-based (and aren't currently going quite Nova-hot), it would be more effective if they skewed toward yellow/orange instead.

It's a tricky balance - you don't want Johnny to actually turn orange, because then he doesn't look like the Human Torch anymore. However, here, he is starting to resemble the Human Popsicle

So, I'd be much more inclined to have the pink tones on him (and Frankie's reds) shift to a more orange colour. You can still have it being very bright, going to a very light yellow at the brightest spots, but leave plenty of the darker red in the character, so he's still identifiable as Johnny.

Having the flames closest to the character (2) get lighter would work a bit better (as, I was saying, the closer a fire is to it's centre, the brighter and lighter it is). If you want to see some of my interpretation of flaming characters, I've got both the original Human Torch and Toro in this image:

http://www.comicartfans.com/GalleryPiec ... t=0&UCat=0

It probably illustrates what I've been talking about regarding the internal black lines, flame, stuff like that.

The choices for the background colours work great - the characters all really move forward out of the frame, and the room that Ben came out of really looks like it is further back in space - very cool!

Matthew has also done a great job on Ben - perhaps a bit more of the lighter modeling along the arms would work great, but overall he really stands out from the rest of the image, but draws your attention up to the kissing heroes.

So, yeah. A really cool piece, I really like what Matthew has done with it! I just wanted to point out a few things that he might want to look at on later colouring jobs

If anyone has any questions, or thinks I've been too harsh here, please feel free to speak up!

Good crit Ian. Thanks for taking the time to look at this. It's actually really cool to have a pro look at your work and give tips like this. It's hard to remember this stuff sometimes, but I think the more you use it and do it, the more you get a working method and a way to approach the artwork having a better understanding of what you're going to do.

Again, thanks!!

Matthew, how did you ink the force lines around them?

Well Vlad, when you've been doing digital inking as long as I have....



Seriously, in PS-CS you can stroke the vector tools (I thought you taught me this, but maybe I read it on Bolland's website when it was up) and use specific tools to do it with, i.e. brush, eraser, etc. So I draw a vector line, set my brush to the thickness I want, go into the paths menu, select stroke path (or subpath if there are more than one - make sure the one you want is selected - you can select multiple), select simulate pen pressure, and Vola! There it is. You have to cheat it a bit in that you're control is limited, so you have to be creative how you position the lines to get the effect you want, etc.

Hope that makes sense.

I'm glad I could be of some help

Huh.

I always just use the pencil tool, with 'pressure' clicked.

Well I'll be.... I assume you just bleed off the other thin end off the page? It's creative solution. The method is a bit static for most of force lines, but there are times when It would be a perfect solution. Great work!

Thanks.

You can do that, but you have to have a dead steady hand, which I don't. Sometimes I want ruled lines to look ruled and not freehand.

I do. To get that look only about 1/2 of the guideline was on the live area of the page.

I'll have to do some screen captures sometime and post them.