Colouring: Learning or Training, Kano's changed the title ... again ...

umm is there anyway that i get a colourer test *if any*?

Err... I don't think there's any coloring test. The applicant just needs to show their colored sample(s) to me or kano. But if the Coloring Deputy Chief, kano, wants a test, then our fellow AQS colorists need to make one.

Well, it's easy to make a test - I just need to choose a picture and say: Colour it.

Of course it would be better of me, if I had some helpful info for people who want to join - but I don't use PhotoShock like everyone else
However, most people have their own style of how they draw anyway ... if they get to join, then they'll find out about things like khell's secret "Dynamic Lines" and lots of examples of how to draw an "athos eye" so it looks really good!

But really, how we choose people is based on seeing a good picture they have done and asking them ... or someone asking us and providing a picture they have done.

Sooooo ... simplest solution, post a picture here and ask athos or me.

Edit: <mystery> - he he - you already have bonus points for how you spelt the name of the thread ... like me ... colour

Edit2: Oh yeah - I've said this elsewhere before also: A little dedication is a good attribute to have ... like being able to create a picture each week ...

Dynamic Lines aren't exactly the biggest secret in the world, now are they?

Athos Eyes, though... Intriguing.

khell's Dynamic Line is different, Senshi. I'd like to call it "Sexy Dynamite Line."

the picture is here
The Link Does Not Work

You went the easy way, huh? Although I admit that's a kawaii pic, you need to clean the scan better than that. The best way to color magazine scan is to trace it, which consumes more time and effort. I'm sure the colorists can teach you how.

ok thank you

Actually, I like it a lot (except the cleaning) coz it's a different, but good look (but you need to keep the coloured areas within the lines and fill the full area - coz you've missed some small bits e.g. bottom back of Asuna's shirt, and over-run some lines e.g. bottom front of Asuna's shirt)
If you are going to go with colouring the manga image (not tracing) then yeah, it's REALLY important to clean it well
Take a look at volume 11 that was released recently ... full of pictures by AgentMarth - he's the only one in the colourist team who doesn't do traces.
BUT - his pictures look good and have the added advantage of including the background - which, in pictures with good background details, is too much effort to trace.

If you want to try tracing ... here's a VERY short description that by no means covers everything ... and is also from someone who doesn't use PhotoShock (me)

OK - basically what you do is get the black and white image up in PS and create another empty layer above it and trace over the picture to create all the outlines.
The picture should be about 2000x2000 or bigger (and scale it up if it is smaller)
You can trace in 2 ways: 1) draw the lines 2) create vectors for each line
You should get best results using 2)
However, in PS (I've never done this) you can actually trace vectors around the lines - i.e. each line has 2 vectors for each 'side' of the line SEE POST BELOW BY Senshi FOR AN EXAMPLE
Now once you have the lines drawn or vectorized, you can use the lines/vectors to colour in the picture and also to create the outlines around the colours.
I'm not going to go in to any more detail - coz if I was going to do that, I'd probably create a proper tutorial - about The Gimp (not PhotoShock)

thank you

Here's a drop-dead easy explanation with an illustration!

...In fact, it is an illustration. Rad.



#1: Original Line. Boring. Also bad quality.
#2: Stroked Line. Line has been traced with the pen tool, path is Stroked (hahaha sexual innuendo).
#3: Dynamic Line, AKA "Khell's Sexy Dynamite Line". Outline of the line is traced, path is Filled.

Clearly #3 wins.

I have one question...are you talking about Photoshop or is there really a program called PhotoShock?

http://www.bradley.edu/exhibit96/photoshock/

im sorry but i still dont get it

You know what tracing a scan is, right? You re-draw the outline of the picture. With Photoshop and similar programs, you draw path(s), then either stroke or fill to make visible. With Stroked Line (#2), you choose the option stroke after you made a path. With Dynamic Line (#3), you make two paths and fill the inside of them.

ok so i use the pen tool right?

mmm... it takes quite some time to learn how to use the pen tool. Lotsa patience and practise. A good source of stuff to trace are anime screen caps because they're quite simple and such (well depends on the screen cap anyway). I'll advise you to do dynamic lines right away, well do two to three pieces of the "stoke" method but after that do "dynamic lines". It's just much better.

Aw, Athos made references to my picture <3

Anyway, a very good tutorial exists here, it'll get you familiarized with the Pen tool so that you can later move on to Dynamic Lines.

:EDIT: I did two stroked traces, and then moved straight to dynamic. The improvement was prodigious.

OK - I use The GIMP - but in that tutorial there were 2 things that really seemed crappy - but I haven't used PS so I'm not sure if that is how it's normally done?

Firstly, I keep all the vectors and use them to select areas for colouring - none of the "Now erase all the colour that's out of place" crap ... and the way I do this is to create a layer will all vectors stroked 1 pixel width - then select areas in that layer, then switch layers to the one you want to work on.

Secondly, if you don't use dynamic lines, then when you create the outline layer, draw it with anti-aliasing on if you are not going to scale the final image down (and if you are going to scale the final down then don't use anti-aliasing) but either way, skip the Gaussian-blur ... but of course dynamic lines will give a much better result in PS

Lastly, if someone needs lessons in using PS - then they probably should get a good understanding of that well before requesting to join.

I wouldn't know ('cause I'm not a colorist- note the lack of a "u" in "color"), but basic knowledge of Photoshop is probably a prerequisite of a colorist, unless you have a good printer and lots of lovely crayons.

Also, that tutorial serves best as an introduction to the pen tool, and of course individual styles of tracing differ from person to person. You still can't prove opinions wrong.

Additionally, antialiasing is obvious if you do anything besides pixel or sprite art, and even in the latter case, antialiasing can still be a very useful feature.

Don't worry - I wasn't saying that the link was no good - just that there were two things in the tutorial that definitely needed changing - just in case someone decided that you have to do traces exactly as the tutorial said.

But - regarding anti-aliasing - when you draw the picture over size and scale it down, (e.g. around 4 times) then you don't need anti-aliasing on before you scale it down - the tutorial was using the guassian-blur to get the anti-aliasing effect on the lines - but scaling it down also gives that effect and in general works better on non-anti-aliased lines

The lines are antialiased by default, the brush is smooth throught the entire stroke. The blur is just there for added effect, I honesly don't know why.

Yeah, it's silly, but I guess some people like their lines... Blurry. And homosexual.

Homosexual? WTH are you talking about? Blurry line is useful for tracing the blush.

So if i want to be a colorist i just have to post a a sample here then?
Maybe ill try it but im pretty much suck at colouring but ill let u be the judge if its acceptable.

In another note though one thing thats really nice about your extras is the variety of styles of colouring. And all of them looks great and unique. Bleach/Narutos scanlations's edge was that they feature some coloured pic now Negima has one well and its awesomely COOL.

Really nice job! Oh question will we see a full coloured chapetr version in the future? just wondering .

I don't think so, Ray. Most the times there are 18 pages in each chapter, plus each page has very detailed background and scenery. Unless AQS has 18-20 colorists, coloring a whole chapter would take over two weeks.

ah, now thats the cool part! Every Volume release could have 1 colo(u)red chapter! O.o

Well hows this.. is it too simple? just did it pretty basic.

Rayomally: well firstly it needs more effort on the cleaning - too many spots everywhere (in the white)
Um ... I dont get one thing ... how do you accidently get red on the left end of the sword handle?
There's also some thick or misshapen lines that need more work - like the hands for starters

OK - maybe I need to add another comment (for both you and <mystery>) - if you want to be part of the team - then give us something that is your best effort for us to judge you by
I really don't want to hear ... "I can do better, but how's this?"
I want to see how good you are!
Spend a lot of time on the picture coz it's what we will judge you by.
Please do another picture (a different one) and when you say "OK I'm finished" look at it and see what you can do to make it even better
Sorry - I'm just looking for a bit of enthusiasm - coz we have a lot of that in the team and that's what we want more of! It's just as important as skill
... he he - but of course you can get by on raw skill and you have to have skill

I'm gonna try my hand at this....I'll post when it's done.

when you say cleaning the picture what do you mean by that?

Here - spot the difference - quick clean (of the background):

Is there a difference? I can't tell...

Yes - LOL - I removed all the background spots - that's cleaning. There's about 14 obvious ones - easy to see, so needed to be removed.
I didn't fix the lines though - I'll leave that to Rayomally.
It's just an issue of details. If you colour the manga rather than trace it then you need to clean it.

Thank you, i can see the differenced. Ill try again

alright, here's my try at a trace!

@AsunaNegi - hmm - not bad. However:

1) When you stroke the outline, you need to check that the ends don't run past the lines they join onto (or curve past them) - there's little bumps here and there that show that e.g. where her face and ear joins her hair on the right - and where his wrist joins his sleeve at the bottom

2) make sure all the areas are fully coloured ... if you scale the image down it will fix the missing spots though ... e.g. the outline of the blue in the eyes, plus a few others that no one will probably notice

3) When you stuff something up and then go back and fix it - leaving a mess behind is just as bad as having the original mistake - looks like you had her left ear in the wrong spot them removed it - but the mess left behind needs to be fixed
Here's 3 more: the top of the hand, the pink ribbon on her sleeve and the front of her shirt (light/dark purple boundary)

4) Most pictures need shades or shadows - the manga has them - your final pic has none - if the original had none then it's not much use for a test here, unfortunately

Now, the above items, 1 to 3, are really just hints to tell you what to look out for - or to expect others to point out and suggest you to fix them - which you can easily fix (though "1" can take a bit of time to fix if there are a lot)

BUT, what you do still need a lot of practice with, is the pen tool.
khell always says that it takes a lot of practice to get used to so I'd say the same for you here ... needs a lot of work in this picture.
(I use The GIMP and I think it works a little bit differently, but the basic idea is the same)
You shouldn't be able to tell where the joins are - and this leads into the next bit:
The lines need to look smooth most of the time - obviously not where the original picture isn't 'smooth' - but even then it is good to make the lines look better if the original isn't very good or has bad lines due to a bad scan or whatever else.
Unless there's a point on a 'corner', the corner should also be a smooth curve (even if the angle is quite small)
It takes a lot of effort to redo the tracing - with this picture there is quite a bit that needs it.
I can mark on your picture lots of these if you want me to - just as a help so you can see what you need to work on - but PM me if you want that and I'll do it later when I have more spare time.

Edit: Oh yeah - one last thing - use a separate layer for the outline and save it as a PSD before flattening it and outputting the picture - then if you need to go back and fix anything in the outline, you can much more easily.

I think part of the reason why there aren't any shades is because there were about 3 of them in the original:



I noticed my mistakes and all that....after I posted and stopped staring. Do you realize just how different your work looks after you stop staring at it for 30 minutes? Wierd. Still, its ok for a start, right?

(and dang, her face seems so....wierd.)

ah CRAP! I forgot the shades. they ARE there >.<

This post has been edited by AsunaNegi on Jun 23 2006, 09:23 PM

Kano, can u recommend a pict for me to colour that way you can also give me feed back foor improvement.

Thank u!

same here. I want to try my l447 skillz

lawl. Good practise material comes from anime screen caps. Because they'll have colours and simple outlines.