Hell’s Kitchen – Page 1, Color Test
This is a color test I did in Photoshop of page 1 from the comic pitch I’m working on, the same page I posted in black and white a while back. I wanted to take a shot at coloring this even if I, assuming this thing pans out, would never be able to realistically pencil, ink, letter AND color 22 pages in one month.
I’m probably still going to be tweaking this piece here and there (the blood on the ground could pop out more and I’m not too thrilled about the color I chose for the gaps in the Overlord’s horns) but this is very near final.
A version without lettering, some more words and a version with no linework (which is always fun to look at) after the break.
I kept Patricia Mulvihill’s work very present when I tackled this. Her coloring in 100 Bullets is a perfect example of how coloring in comics can add to the story without being intrusive. To that end, I tried to be very conscious about two things:
1) Using a unified palette. I went with oranges, yellows and browns in this page because the girls are basically in Hell in this particular part of the story and those colors made the most sense to me. I also added a layer of red over the whole thing just to make sure the color is consistent. Similarly, when I decided to color the demons, I colored them using a single palette and later threw another layer with individual colors on top of them to, again, add consistency to the piece.
2) Not over-rendering. I tend to over-render with any medium and that’s something I’m finally starting to be self-conscious about. I made it a point to not use more than two colors for characters (not counting highlights). I also made the fire one big gradient and the Demon Overlord’s horns, where I found opportunity to go crazy with rendering, were left relatively simple. There are also small bits here and there where I could’ve added extra detail that were left in single flat colors with nothing but a subtle gradient in some cases, i.e. smoke, lesser demon’s horns, Overlord’s teeth, etc.
Here is a version without linework, which I find very interesting to look at. I like how the fire looks once in starts to bleed into the black. I actually tried to copy those “particles” into the drawing but couldn’t do it in a way that satisfied me.
I’m going to try to color a couple more pages at least. Crazy as it sounds in my head, I’m starting to want to color the whole thing myself. Then again, who wouldn’t want to be responsible for every single element in their artwork?
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Posted in Illustration |
Wow…. there is a lot of love here Sebastian. me like it.