Monday, June 23, 2014

Original Art Sundays (Monday) No. 185: Supergirl coloring tryouts!


Another week of too much work, but still plugging away at the Cowgirls fairy tale and the other long-promised Cowgirls project. I really am plugging away at these things, as my energy allows.
Soon, my pretties, soon....
Meanwhile.
As I was filing papers, I found some pieces I thought long lost.  The first of these was a tryout page from the early 2000s. I thought I'd posted this ages ago, but a search of the blog says otherwise. Friend and sister Venus de Mars approached me and a few other folks to join a team of Photoshop colorists. The project was recoloring pages for DC's Archives series. I was given pages of Supergirl to recolor, along with scans of the original page for reference and a shared swatch palette. I completed three pages, but only this one survived in print, and that computer is long gone!
The process is pretty straightforward.
First, isolate the black in a separate channel.
Also isolate in a separate layer.
Use as baseline for making coloring selections.

Then go layer by layer, adding basic color. Go from large areas to specific.
Keep effects to a minimum. You're duplicating an existing color scheme,
not making a new one! Flatten colors to one layer when complete, but save other layers
until the page is approved, to make changes easier. The process for flattening:
make a new layer and press Command-Option-Shift-E to merge visible.
Be sure the black layer is not visible when you do this step!
Turn the black layer (line art) back on, do another Merge Visible and a Save As... Final.
Send to the boss and receive your accolades!
While the whole team worked very hard on these tryout pages and did some great work, ultimately DC gave the job to a different team. Still, a great experience, and it honed my Photoshop coloring skills (not to mention my attention to detail) a great deal.
Next: who knows? I'd love to get back to the Cowgirls, if I can get enough time off work! If not, I have more of these newly discovered backup pieces for your reading pleasure...