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#manga pannel
theelf-art · 7 months
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How I color manga panels: a tutorial
I'm no expert at doing recolors, I'm simply an artist who's occasionally too lazy to do my own lineart, and uses that of my favorite mangaka's so I can focus on other styles to simply have fun with my colors. I always try and choose panels or pages that are high quality, to avoid too much pixelization. Often I end up sourcing these from scanners or google images.
As far as programs, I use Krita (a free software). This all can be done with the standard brushes and tools that come with the software. But for some of the coloring, I have brushes from brush packs i like to use, as well as a few brushes I have customized myself. The main ones I use are from David Revoy, so if you want a recommendation for a great free brush pack, that's mine.
For this example I'll be using this panel from Chapter 58 of Moriarty the Patriot (I believe this would be Volume 15 of the manga) that I posted earlier here.
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I'm not including the step where I crop the image, but I personally chose to remove some of the white borders that are needed for a traditional volume's page borders. Since I'm doing digital art, I don't always include them.
My next step is always to outline and fill the individual base layers. This includes the speech bubbles, each character, any independent props, the panels themselves and the backgrounds. There's no correct way to do this, but personally I use a brush to outline the object, then fill tool to well. Fill it, as well as the rectangle tool for the panels or straight lines I need to do.
For layers, I usually put all of these color base layers in a single group that's set to multiply, and change the opacity of the base panel so that I can fill the blacked out areas with a solid color easily, here you can see I was working with the base panel at 50%, but honestly i just kind of turn it down to whatever I think looks good.
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The colors I use for this step are usually brightly saturated rainbow colors so it's easy to tell the different elements apart from each other. So you end up with something that ends up looking rather horrific like this:
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From here, I usually create a copy of the base panel to put over the top of the colors. This way I can have transparency for the colors on some of the blacked out parts, but don't loose some of the nuance of the shading entirely. Moriarty the Patriot is a very black heavy cell style, which is the style I find the "panel above, panel below" method works best on. However as I work on the colors, I tend to toggle between having it on or off.
It's about here where I start doing my coloring. Of course this will depend on your coloring style and art habits, however personally, I like to start with the characters. I use those colored layers as the base layer I can clip my coloring layers to.
I will often turn off the layers that I'm not currently using so I don't have to deal with eyestrain, and will change the base layer to something more suitable (often a grey or light tan) so my color theory doesn't get all messed up. The bright colors in previous steps are to make sure they're visually separate. Now they've been established, I don't have to worry about that.
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I don't usually label my layers, but for the sake of the tutorial I have to make it clearer which layer grouping is which.
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I find in this step because of the multiply layer the colors can be a bit washed out, so I tend to either use much more saturated colors than I usually do, or switch to another layer style like Linear Burn of the overall color group to make the colors pop more. Ultimately though this comes down to personal preference. If your coloring style is very de-saturated, you might not have any problems with it. (I do suggest making your base color white, so the coloring of the base panel isn't off, you'll see in the screenshots above I forgot to when working on Sherlock. Ignore my mistake)
For the parts of the image where it's primarily blacked out (such as Sherlock's hair or coat) I don't bother shading at all, and only do the highlighting, as the black takes care of the darkest tones anyways.
During my coloring, I also add a separate grouping above everything for adding rendering and details above the panels. This includes things like the eye highlights (which I always do in pure #000000 white) and making certain parts of the heavily blacked out areas pop more.
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(those refs and paint layer 13 are what I'm using to color pick off of, and keep the shading colors consistent throughout the piece. There's probably a better way to do it, but I just paste them directly into the image and then delete them at the end, paint layer 43 is a color dodge layer, and so has to be outside of the layer grouping to work)
Comparison of the art without:
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And with the top details and white highlights:
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It's a pretty subtle difference, but I find it's the little things that truly make the piece. Especially with the strands going over the face, they need just a bit more to make them really pop. I also just really like my fancy eyes which is hard to do without the top layer.
Insert several hours of coloring here, and about another hour just trying to figure out what gradient to use for the background, and you end up with the the base colors. From here I usually mess with overlay layers as well to get the colors to all look fancy and nice together without having to do color theory (pro tip /lh).
I forgot to grab screenshots while doing the background, but for the top panel I essentially just used the [deevad 5c screentones] brush and a transparency mask to add a screentone gradient, and totally didn't google "splatter overlay" or something like that and picked something off of google, and added some borders.
Because both the base manga panel and manga panel over the top are both not at full opacity, if there is text in the page or panel (such as this one) I like to copy the just the text part of the panel and add it as full opacity in the "colors" folder to make sure it's legible and matches up the rest of the colors.
And after all that, its basically done. I'll sometimes continue to mess around with certain aspects to make sure I like how it look, but that's essentially it. This is when I add my signature, and then it's queued to post!
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carncarn · 2 years
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mipmoth · 2 days
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Extracts from the Pokemon Adventures manga
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benetnvsch · 7 months
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Dazai's entrance exam
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ilovereadingandstuff · 2 months
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Sooo...ARE WE GETTING SHIGADEKU HANDHOLDING OR NOT?!?!
I've always dreamt about Izuku reaching for Tomura's hand in the middle of battle!!! as his way of expressing he would die for saving someone's life, and specifically for saving Tomura's...
And this chapter gave me SO much hope for that, y'know?!
It would be EPIC and so sentimental for Izuku to GRAB Tomura's hand (completely as a surprise and unexpectedly,) and reach close to Tomura saying he wants and will save him...While Tomura is in a 'restarting windows' process, completely taken aback for the fact that HIS hero is holding his hand when that certainly will kill him...
And yes, that would be true. But here I made up that Izuku actually can't die because he has access to AFO and...I don't make sense anymore.
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melissart-s · 3 months
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Meeting old faces!
<<Part 1 || Part 3 >>
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wan-dream · 5 months
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Zoro & Sanji | ゾロとサンジ
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EVERY SINGLE PANEL OF FREED JUSTINE (in the Gaiden)
Part 3/7
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1 2 3 4 5 6 7
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mahoushoujopeony · 6 months
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honestly a little surprised rn that no one has been talking about the magilumiere anime rumors yet. people on tumblr just more inclined to wait for official announcements or we just so small of a fanbase that the news can become self-contained on twitter?
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puppygirldanhowell · 1 year
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if this doesnt post for the THIRD time im actually gonna go joker
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theelf-art · 11 months
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I'm once again obsessed with these old men and want to know what their deal is.
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carncarn · 2 years
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mipmoth · 2 days
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From Pokemon Adventures manga Volume 48
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hurlumerlu · 4 months
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moonshell25 · 7 months
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I just think she's neat
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