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Step 2

(Click image to see larger version.)

The first thing I do is create a new Photoshop layer over the line art, with the transparency of Multiply. I then lay in a single color over the entire piece. This helps me visualize an overall color scheme, and it fills in flaws in the line art (such as a white pixel in the middle of the black area of Cloak's cape).

I then start filling in flat colors. Since the line art that Chris sends to me is normally not entirely anti-aliased (as in, it has gray pixels as well as true black), I can't just use the paint bucket to fill within the lines. Instead, I use the Magic Wand to select the open area, and then use the Expand feature to expand the selection by 2 pixels. I then use the Fill function to drop in color. Since I do this on the Multiply later, it doesn't effect the line art, and it achieves two things. First of all, it makes sure I color both the white bits and the gray bits. Secondly, it prevents a "halo" effect, if the color plates happen to shift during the printing process.

As you can see here, I simply started by just picking characters and filling them in at random. I figured I'd leave all the Connie faces for last, once I figured out how the costume colors would fall into place.

The most interesting coloring trick I did here is on Cannonball, in the lower right corner. The orange halo on the inside of the white area was achieved by selecting the white color, and then using the Pencil tool to lay in squiggles of orange at varying transparencies. It's simple, but it looked very true to the old-style coloring that was used on Cannonball in the years before Photoshop, when coloring was about using straight dyes and cutting layers of acetate for the plates.

On to Step 3.

All content copyright Melissa Kaercher and/or MISFITS, 2005. All rights reserved.