A common question: How many pages per day do you color?

Hey people, 

One of the questions that I get often in YouTube comments, emails, or from students in my coloring tutorial course is: 

How long does it take you to color a page?

I probably average between 1.5 - 2 hours per page. There are always a few outliers that go faster or even way slower, but that's probably pretty close to my average. 

Many people usually respond to this and get discouraged at how they don't think they'll ever get that fast. The speed comes with time. It's not something that you can rush. I've been coloring comics with Photoshop for over ten years now, and I'm still finding shortcuts all the time. 

Many beginner colorists also feel the need to render everything on a page with an equal amount of detail. This will slow you down dramatically and is rarely necessary. Focus your rendering where it's important! Faces, hands, focal points. Keep everything else relatively simple. That's not saying to not render at all, but if you think I'm going to spend as much time rendering the flower pot in the window in the background as I do on the face of a character, you'd be wrong. :) 

I might do a video on this soon, but I hope this helps someone! 


Post-Pensacon 2016 photo dump

Pensacon 2016 was great! Met a ton of great people. Did many sketches! Rocket and Groot were very popular this year. I saw tons of VIP t-shirts! Lots of top-notch cosplay. 

Here's a bunch of pictures: 

Hopefully, Pensacola figures out the local politics in involved, so we can do it again next year! Here's Pensacon's post on the situation. 

A list of educational resources, Photoshop tutorials, and color theory stuff

After posting about Xia's YouTube channel, I thought it would be a good idea to provide some other useful resources for people interested in coloring or painting in general. Of course, I'm partial to my coloring course, but there's so many great resources out there. So here's a few that I've enjoyed over the years (and in most cases, still enjoy!)--things that have helped me on my journey or things I believe would help you.

In no particular order...

Lummage's YouTube Channel - Nathan Lumm is a fellow colorist with a ton of great videos. He'll provide a slightly different angle on coloring techniques than you'll see in my channel, since there's about a million ways to do everything in Photoshop! His Comic Book Coloring Tips & Tricks series is a  great resource. He hasn't posted in a while, but he's probably busy coloring! :) 

Sycra's Foundations of Light and Shadow - I love this series! It's a fantastic set of lessons for those of you that might have trouble with rendering. If you need help figuring out where the light and shadow should go, this is for you! I still go back and watch some of these videos every few months. This won't be the only appearance of Sycra on this list. 

Also from Sycra... How To Choose Colors That Work  This video was very eye openings for me, and I can't recommend it enough for those of you that might wonder why your colors "don't seem to fit" or clash or that sort of thing. Check it out!

For those of you that still remember what books are, James Gurney's book Color and Light: A Guide for the Realist Painter is incredibly good. Even though the book is focused on painting, all of the color theory stuff applies regardless. I keep this book very close to my desk all the time! 

His gamut masking tool was recreated as a PSD file here, by the way:  (You may don't know what that is yet, so read the book!)

There are also some resources in that link that explain more. I used this tool when generating palette ideas for a new Image project coming later this year. It's a great way to come up with interesting palettes. 

This is a book you'll probably have to soak up for a while. There's a ton of content, and I still don't understand the majority of it well enough, but I'm working at it! 

Comics Experience's Introduction to Comic Book Coloring. Coloring veteran Chris Sotomayor (AVENGERS, BATMAN, X-MEN, about a billion other books) teaches this course. Soto's been coloring since 1996. This is a paid option, and it's not cheap, but the difference here is that each class is live with the instructor online. I took this course is 2014--even after I was getting pro work, and I found it to be extremely helpful. Soto is pretty active on Twitter too, and he's good about answering questions about his course there.

This YouTube video is another excellent lesson in storytelling with color: 

I recently discovered ArtStation. It's primarily digital painters and concept artists, but lots of great time-lapse process videos. This link sorts the trending posts that are 2D with video. Tons of good artists on there.  

Hi-Fi Color for Comics
$24.99
By Brian Miller, Kristy Miller
Buy on Amazon

One more for you! Hi-Fi Color for Comics. 

The original version was one of the first books I picked up on coloring, and I found out that figuring things out on my own had me doing some weird stuff before I read this.

They recently updated it, so be sure to check it out. It's a great book for beginners. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So that's it! I hope you enjoyed this list. Let me know what you guys think! I'm sure I'll add to this to keep it updated in the future. Send me your ideas as well!

Best,
K. Michael Russell
 

 

Coloring Critiques Video #2

The first video was so popular; I'm gonna make a series! Here's the 2nd.

In this video, I use a few sample pages to show some tips and tricks for coloring comics with Photoshop. If you are interested in getting a critique on YouTube, email me here: info@comiccolor.com I usually just do this for my coloring course students, but I'll pick a handful of good examples for future coloring tutorial videos on the YouTube channel.

I'm actually a bit ahead on videos for the first time in ages... subscribe to the channel to get them all. There are three more scheduled over the next few weeks. Stay tuned! 

I also found out today both my new Image and IDW projects will likely be announced in March 2016. Fingers crossed. Big news coming soon! :) 

Pensacon 2016 promo image

I really got out of my comfort zone here! I wanted to do a painterly style, and it's not something I do often, but I like how it turned out! Video coming soon!

Lines by Jason Craig. Colored by K Michael Russell. 

Re: credits (originally posted by Tamra Bonvillain)

This was originally tweeted by @tbonvillain : 

"What's up with the lack of credit for colorists/letterers/what have you in solicitations/previews/reviews?

Look, lots of people do it. I'm not trying to blame anyone in particular, but if you're using someone's work to promote a book, credit them.

If you have the credits page, what's your excuse, reviewers and comic book sellers? All creators' names should be there.

On previews or solicits, I can't put too much blame on people that run them, as they're not always given complete information.

Why weren't these sites given this information, though. If you know who's on the team, why withhold their names?

I see previews run all the time using fully colored and lettered artwork, but the only ones credited are the writer(s) and whoever drew it.

Salt in the wound: the person drawing a book gets credited as the "artist." Unless they did it all, they're AN artist, not THE artist.

Considering how confusing credit listings can be at times, it implies that whoever drew it is responsible for every step of its creation.

(CA) is used for cover art, but did you know color also begins with a c? It's true! Lots of people think this person did the color art.

Now, maybe you think all this sounds bitter or angry, and uh... sure? People knowing your name is pretty important as a freelancer.

Conversely, the creative/editorial team on Rat Queens has been great, making me feel more like a part of a team than a cog in a machine.

Not only that, but I was prominently featured in press material when Tess and I took over, and it gave me a nice bump in profile.

So, what? This is an ego thing? As a creator, sure, I want to be recognized for the work I put in, but it's more than that.

Name recognition translate into job opportunities, and the quality of the jobs offered. If no one knows who you are, you don't get work.

And don't try to make me feel bad for wanting people to know I worked on a thing I'm proud of, person-who-wants-the-same-thing.

I try my best to credit people when I promote, and tag people when they're forgotten in as non-abrasive a way as I can.

It's not meant as an attack. We all make mistakes, myself included. Let's all try to show our collaborators some more respect. smile emoticon"

Well put!

New video and new (vague) project news!

Hey people! I uploaded a new video tonight. This is a time-lapse recording of a page from TRANSFERENCE #4 for Black Mask Studios. I'm filling in for my friend and fellow colorist, Tamra Bonvillain! 

The artist in this issue is Toni Fejzula (VEIL). The writer is my former HACK/SLASH collaborator, Michael Moreci (HOAX HUNTERS, CURSE, ROCHE LIMIT). 

If you are wondering what I'm doing with Photoshop in the video around 1:15, I'm using a gradient map. I made a video about them once here. I use them to shift the colors around in interesting ways on an adjustment layer, then set the layer mode to COLOR, then adjust the opacity. I then use that as a base to start adjusting my base colors. 

Anyway, this project sort of fell in my lap suddenly, but I do have three new projects coming in 2016 that I can't say anything about yet, but one will be at Image, and the other two, IDW. All are creator-owned projects, and I'm very excited about them! I expect they'll start getting announced sometime in January 2016. UGH. :) 

Talk soon!