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 Art tips and techniques, reviews and interviews from my studio. Archived here and at World Famous Comics. Comics 101 for 02/06/2003 Star Wars Gamer #9 - Wraith Squadron: The Art of Infiltration -- Week Three: The Color Final Part One Once I find out the final line art is approved by Lucasfilm I'm ready to begin the digital color process for this artwork after taking time to ink over my own pencils. Over the next five examples you can see how I first establish my flat base color and simple gradients in Photoshop before I begin any actual rendering of values. In fact, the majority of the artwork will be completed in Photoshop with only the main characters, Wedge and Tyria, to actually be more fully rendered in Painter later on. 
In the first example, after masking off my inked line art on a separate layer, I start off blocking in the main characters since they are the dominant focus of the piece and most of my subsequent color choices for the rest of the illustration should be complementary to their primary tones. 
With Wedge's flight outfit, it was decided between my art director and myself that the bright orange version wouldn't lend itself to stealth or infiltration missions so I decided to put Wedge in something more commando-like for the action scene. I thought camouflage might be too obvious and black or grey were too neutral for the color scheme I had in mind for the overall art so I went for something more simple like a hunter green color for his outfit. 
I planned on this being a nighttime scene with slightly subdued, warmer tones in the foreground figures to contrast off the cool and neutral blue and grey tones of the troopers and background. So after blocking in Wedge and Tyria I move on to the middleground Stormtroopers and background vehicles. Most often when I paint digitally I find it easier for me to make my artwork more cohesive by working from foreground to background in terms of the fields of depth in my compositions. It's efficient for me to work this way digitally because it's more mechanical and easier to keep edges clean using layers in Photoshop and I'm able to keep focused on the dominant foreground imagery. But when I do paint traditionally it's easier and more accomodating for me to work from the background up since I can layer colors more subtly and keep refining my edges of my figures and forms as I work towards the foreground. 
Once the Stormtroopers' neutral tones are laid in and the blue cool lighting tones on the vehicles along with a simple gradient for the nighttime sky are established I can start to easily see how my foreground warm colors representing the heroes allow my fields of depth to separate. Using warm colors adjacent to and contrasting against the cools tones is a very effective method to establish visual separation, mood and drama in a scene. Just check out any James Cameron film to see how effective this simple color theory can be. Especially in films like Aliens (a masterpiece of cinema and Cameron's best film) or Terminator 2 (another genius stroke of celluloid artwork). 
After I'm done blocking in the the background with gradients and it's cool, flat tones I make multiple selections of the black inked lines representing the background forms. With this selected linework I begin coloring it with darker gradients, keeping the inked lines from being flat black, which allows the artwork to fall back further into the atmoshphere or horizon and fade from focus somewhat. This also makes the middleground and foreground 'pop' forward and read even more clearly. I further enhance this effect by then making careful selections around the Stormtroopers and the edge of the bunker so that everything behind the troopers which is considered background is selected and can be blurred using my Guassian Blur effect in my Photoshop filter menu. Next week we'll look at more color steps for this art. -Joe Recent Columns:
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