Coloring Tutorial

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sekadar iseng

Gawaaat!! Ganesa 10 diduduki Aparat!!

Photoshop Tutorial: Simple Way for Coloring Manga

April 5, 2007 oleh sora9n

Pre-post Note:

I actually planned to post a photoshop (PS) tutorial entry at least once per month, with this entry become the third for this year (it has been so since last January).

Though, businesses have been ruthless (including academics and else); rendering me unable to post this on time. This was meant for Marchs entry, though.

Ill probably post another tutorial for April around the end of this month. My apologies to thosewho have waited hey, is there any?. ^^;;

***

First off: The Concepts

A little different from US comics (DCorMarvel Comics being prime example), Japanese

mangakas finished their works uncolored leaving their works to rely only on inking, tone, and

artline to impress viewers. As you may have grown familiar to, there is *usually* no fancycomputer-aided coloring to look at when youre reading manga.

Examples:
http://sora9n.wordpress.com/2007/04/03/sekadar-iseng/http://sora9n.wordpress.com/2007/04/07/gawaaat-ganesa-10-diduduki-aparat/http://sora9n.wordpress.com/author/sora9n/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DC_Comicshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DC_Comicshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvel_comicshttp://sora9n.wordpress.com/2007/04/07/gawaaat-ganesa-10-diduduki-aparat/http://sora9n.wordpress.com/author/sora9n/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DC_Comicshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvel_comicshttp://sora9n.wordpress.com/2007/04/03/sekadar-iseng/


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top: picture taken from promotional poster for Heroes TV series, colored with the same style as its comic adaptation

bottom: picture taken from Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle by CLAMP, chapter 6

From the image above, its clear that while the US style emphasizes on the atmospheric coloring,

Japanese mangaka (in this subject, CLAMP) show their strength in doing high-detail artlines. Itis also apparent that the upper picture has less-detailed artline.

Apart from that style-difference, however, one is inclined to ask. Can manga pages be colored,

so much that it shows both exquisite artlines and colors?

Well, in fact, all you need is a modern photo-manipulation program. Either it is GIMP, or

Photoshop, or else as long as they have multiply blending mode, then everything will bejust fine.

What is multiply? It is basically a mathematical operator which multiplies a layers color in

hexadecimal value with another layers color. A simple example goes like this:

Black is #000000; its binary is #000000000000000000000000


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Anything multiplied with zero will always result in zero. So, the multiply wont affect theblack color. (you can try it yourself =) )

Now, lets go with white. Its hexa is #FFFFFF, which is #111111111111111111111111

Any color number multiplied with that will result in that same color. Why? It is on the binarymultiplication. I wont explain it here since it belongs to Digital System lectures however the

essence is quite simple. If you multiply white with a color, you will get that same color.

So, if you multiply black with any color, you get black;If you multiply white with any color, you get that other color.

So, whats the bang?

Manga is colored in black and white, right? Black always wins on multiplication, and white

always gets lost. So, with multiply, you can splash any color on manga pages and they will be

there along with the BLACK lines!!

Hmm, splashing all the colors without obliterating the outline? Is it possible?

Well, lets get going

***

==================================================================

Notes:

1) These steps were done on Adobe Photoshop CS. Techniques can be applied on other software

by doing adjustment on the layers blending modes.

2) As this posts title suggests, the coloring method here has been simplified, only to cover its

basics. Please keep in mind that there is no absolute way in coloring sketches and/or artlines its all up to the artists style, techniques, and preferred tools.

==================================================================


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Alright, now I have an image from School Rumble by Jin Kobayashi. The image is taken from

chapter b25, in which Tsukamoto Yakumo was depicted wearing a witch outfit. The scan is

quite clean already we can directly go to the coloring steps.

Step 1: Do The Basic Coloring

As explained above, blending mode Multiply only affects white areas, while the black outlinesstay intact. Now well create a new layer and do the coloring on it.

The first step can be summarized like this. Below, we have the raw material aforementioned.

Then, lets start to pour these colors (see figure below). All are on Multiply blending mode, with

opacity at 100%.

[please click on the image to see larger picture and additional details]


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Step 2: Adding Shadows

Now, we need to apply shadows. In this project, I intended the lightsource to be on the right, and

a little to the front. So well have to draw shadows on the left part (also remember the bodys 3D

contour).

The color we choose here is black, with blending mode Soft Light. The opacity is set to 71%,

respectively.

http://pics.livejournal.com/kitamurazv/pic/0004r7c6


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Step 3: Adding Lights

The shades are done. Now, we need to apply lights.

Because the light source is (supposedly) on the right part, we need to emphasize the lighting

there. Dont forget to consider the bodys 3D contour when doing this step.

The color is set to white, blending mode at Soft Light, and opacity at 59%.

Note: Black background is applied below only to distinguish with the white color to be applied.

Dont go with that BG in actual coloring. (~_^)

http://pics.livejournal.com/kitamurazv/pic/0004sxht


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Step 4: Adding More Shades

Well try to apply additional shades. This is done to give more feeling-of-depth to the image.

The color is blackagain; blending mode at Soft Light. The opacity is at 25%. This value is set

on purpose we dont want it to overly influence the primary shades, which were done at step

(2).

http://pics.livejournal.com/kitamurazv/pic/0004t78e


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Step 5: Adding a Skin Tone

As in photography, human skin becomes more lively when it has a brown-to-reddish tone on it.

So, in this step, well add some brownish tone to the characters skin.

NB: I chose brown here because I imagined a somewhat-dim lightsource. If you like to imagine

bright, white lightsource (e.g. 12 PM sunlight), you may want to use pale red or low-opacity

pink.

The color used here is brown, with hexa #61380E. Blending mode set to Soft Light, and opacity

at 64%.


And so

Now our coloring project is done. The final result is as shown above, as the step (5) has been

accomplished.
http://pics.livejournal.com/kitamurazv/pic/0004xwpdhttp://pics.livejournal.com/kitamurazv/pic/0004wfh6


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For the sake of comparison, below I have created an image which shows the before and after

picture. The before is on the left while the after is on the right side, respectively.


Hmm, is it a far difference or not? Quite a feat in five steps, I guess.

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And, well thats it for this PS tutorial session in this weblog; it also concludes our tutorialsession this time. Hope you like it.

See you again, and good-bye until the end of April, perhaps. It should be time for this

months session, though.
http://pics.livejournal.com/kitamurazv/pic/0004ppay

Coloring Tutorial

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