Today is a noteworthy day. I finished coloring the 72 page epic comic book known as Fairhaven. The coloring was the final part needed to complete all of the art chores for this project. I have worked on Fairhaven (off and on) over the last 13 years or so. In these last two months of 2011, I finished coloring the second half of the book (37 pages). I couldn’t let it go into another year. I plan to do a timeline of when things were completed, partly to observe changes in my art style through out the book, but more importantly, I love a good graph.
Yesterday, I named Wonder Woman the top DC book for 2011 for female characters. The art on the book has a lot to do with the book’s success. But while I’ve spent a lot of time discussing Cliff Chiang’s pencils, mention should be made of Matthew Wilson’s coloring which has given the book a edgy feel and perfectly complements Chiang’s style. If this Wonder Woman feels bold, Wilson deserves a lot of the credit.
Wilson has posted some of his thoughts about how he colored the latest issue specifically the bar scene and it is fascinating reading. Here he discusses the technique he used:
I want to talk about a scene in Wonder Woman #4 that was set in a night club/bar and that presented two challenges that could be addressed with color. The first is that we have our group of characters split up, and in different parts of the club, and I knew that I could use color help the reader understand which part of the bar each character occupied. There are also quite a few panels with a lot of people drawn in them, and if I were to do my job poorly the art could flatten out and become hard to read. I had to make sure that I did a good job of separating planes (foreground, middleground, background) to properly show the depth of space in the club. In this case coloring different areas of the club with different color schemes solved both problems. These different colored “pools” of light include the blue-green seating area, the yellow bar area, the red stage area, and the crowd being a transition between red (stage) and blue-green (seating area) ending up a pink-ish/purple.
Here’s how his technique was used on the first show of Diana.
Here’s the page with the original colors:
Wonder Woman is lit by red-ish light but I needed her (and the crowd) to separate visually from the guys on stage. So I took the red from the stage, and the blue-green from the rest of the club and met in the middle (sort of) with pinks and purples…
He also writes about Cliff Chiang’s direction for the pages including what the band should sound like.
tumblrbot asked: ROBOTS OR DINOSAURS?
I’m a fan of both, but ultimately Robots are the future. All hail the robot overlords!
More playing with Sketchbook Pro. Messed with colors, layers and brush types.
Playing around with Sketchbook Pro tonight. I’m liking it.
Trailer Mashup - ‘Friends With Benefits’ vs. ‘No Strings Attached” Trailers - Blind Film Critic (by BlindFilmCritic)
Headpool would have made the perfect counterweight for that gold idol Indy!
This is something I sketched out at the Baltimore Comicon in 2009. It was conceived out of a conversation I was having with my friend Colton. I brought the drawing home, inked it and threw some color on it in Photoshop.
