Jon Dewitt Blog dot com

So You Want to Color Manga..

Hey there. Today I was sitting in class not wanting to pay attention so I decided to make a little tutorial. I wasn’t sure what to make it for, so I started thinking of things I do semi-often, and I came up with “coloring.” This is going to be a beginner/intermediate tutorial for anyone that wants to, or already likes to color manga (comics). I do not claim to be the best person in the world at this, but I have some techniques that I think could help out some people, so here we go.

Note: For this tutorial I will be using Adobe Photoshop CS2. That said, everything I do will be possible in versions of Photoshop as early as 7. I have never used anything prior to that, so I can’t vouch for earlier programs.

Setup

The base of a good coloring always comes from a good setup. Mom always told me, “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail” and those words are pretty true I think. Granted, coloring isn’t rocket science, but you will be thanking yourself in the long run if you have good structure in the beginning. Keep that in mind.

Outlines

Okay, so you have this awesome picture that you want to color, but you are afraid of going “over” the lines and messing up the original artwork. What do you do? Seperate the outlines from the white background, of course! A lot of tutorials will tell you to use a brush with a multiply blend mode, but I don’t like that method, so here’s mine:

First, you need to make sure your original art layer is not locked. Double click on the layer in the layers palette and it will bring up a box with “layer 0″ in a name field. Rename that to “outlines” and push ok.

Open up your channels palette (tab next to layers) and you should see 4 parts. RGB, Red, Green and Blue. If your image does not show this, or shows something like “Index,” you need to change the color mode to RGB. Go to Image -> Mode -> RGB. Once you see these 4 options, hold down CTRL and click on the “RGB” layer. This will make a selection all around your picture. Once you have it selected, press your delete key, and then Ctrl+D to deselect. This should remove all of the white from your picture. However, it will also make your blacks a little lighter.

So to offset this, ctrl-click your outline layer again to select the black, and then get a nice big brush, and go over the entire thing once or twice with black. This will give it that nice bold black again. Create a new layer, drag it under the outlines layer, and fill it with white. Your layers should now look something like the ones to the right.

Your image should now look like it did when you started, but your outlines will be seperate from the background. Make sure, now, to lock the transparency on your outlines by clicking the little icon in the layers pallet that looks like a checkerboard.

Base Colors

Putting down all of the “initial” colors. This is probably the easiest step of the whole thing. I always start by making a new layer for every “main” part of the picture. For this one, I had six layers: Outline, Metal, Shirt, Skin, Vest and Background.

Make whatever layers you need, have them all under the “outline” layer, and then block out the colors you need, in the areas you need them. It should look something like the picture to the right. Yes, I realize my background is a gradient, but the background isnt important here =P

Note: My selection tool of choice is the polygonal lasso tool. It makes following the lines of the comic book drawing very simple and quick.

Adding Detail

This is the hardest part for a lot of people. Highlights and shadows. They don’t need to jump out at you, but a little highlight on one edge and some shadows on another can really add depth to a picture. You know what will help? layer order.

In the picture to the left, I have put all of my original layers into folders with the same name. You can create a folder by clicking the little folder icon at the bottom of the layers pallet, and then dragging a layer on top of it will put it “into” the folder. This is a great way to stay organized. So now I have folders labelled Metal, Vest, Shirt and Skin. Each folder has those original layers in them, plus two empty layers named “highlight” and “shadow” over it. So, 3 layers per folder x 3 folders = 9 layers, plus two outside layers (outline and background). Not too bad.

Now, get a nice, feathered (smooth) brush. Set your opacity to 15-20% and make your color white. Select the highlight layer for whatever item it is you want to color first, and start brushing white over areas that light should be shining on it. Setting a low opacity lets you easily achieve the level of highlight you want, without looking too fake or overbearing. Play around with it until you get what you like. Repeat this with black on the shadows layer to add more depth.

This is where I kind of stop teaching and you, as the artist, have to take over. Everyone has a different style with which they color, or shade, or whatever. This may be enough for you, or it may not. Get as close as you want, and add those details. I personally got rid of the original rain and added a scatter brush + motion blur filter to create my own rain. I also made sure to color the water on my character. It’s little things like this, that will make people say “wow, cool pic” when you post your work on a forum. You can click this last picture to see the larger version if you’d like.

Done!

I hope that this tutorial will be helpful to someone. I know that when I was trying to learn how to color, a lot of tutorials weren’t very descriptive or were in a style I didn’t like, so I tried to be as verbose as I could when writing this. Let me know what you think!

// Jon Dewitt