Colouring Process - Reprieve

Today's installment of How It's Made is about the colouring process! Here's a random panel from near the end of Reprieve to demonstrate the basic steps I tend to use when colouring. My process has changed a little bit since then, but the general idea is the same.

1: I start off by getting the inks back from Laurel after she's put in the characters' flat colours using a reference sheet that's SUPER old and features a weird janky-looking Jonah. I then add any fine details, usually just Jonah's eyepatch design, something I would never inflict on Laurel.

2: Starting with the background, I add the base colour that will inform the rest of the palette. This is usually a gradient these days, but on this one it was just a flat blue.

3: After that base colour, I add some complimentary fills for the scenery. Usually nowadays I just take the base colour and shift the hue/saturation/brightness to get a few different shades that look nice together.

4: Then comes background highlights! Usually on either an overlay or hard light layer. I'm kind of infamous for rimlighting everything, but I've been moving a little bit away from that in recent chapters you haven't seen yet.

5: Back to the characters! I take the base colour and use it to make a 'backing' for the characters, then change their flats to another blending mode depending on the situation. In this case it was overlay, which blends their neutral colours with that tasty blue.

6: Character highlights.

7: Then a layer to darken some parts and a layer to lighten others, to give extra depth. Nowadays I'm better at separating the characters and BG layers, so I do this twice, but this was from before I knew better.

8: Textures! This step varies panel-to-panel, but in this one there's a dark texture and then a misty light one where the rain's going to be hitting the ground.

9: Then a bunch of final touches. I added the rain back on and coloured it in, added Jonah's beard stubble and Mercy's blush, and then coloured in the lines themselves for both the characters and the BG to make sure everything looks natural together.

Hope you all liked this glimpse into me muddling through!! I'll probably do another one once the comic catches up to the work I'm doing now. Let me know if there's any more process-type things you want to see in the meantime!

- Jay