This series would not be complete without giving some basic techniques for coloring comics inside Clip Studio Paint. Full disclosure though: coloring is a broad topic, one that goes way beyond the scope of a tutorial for a particular software. There are many aspects involved in making color work for comics that are completely independent of the software you use. Now that's out of the way, let's get started.

 

Color for comics is a matter a choice and taste. Some comics use flat colors, and in that case, there is not much to learn: just create a color layer and color between the lines. Some use simple but elegant approaches: Instead of coloring use grayscale, and then overlay a single color for mood on top of the entire page of sequence, like I did in this page:

In other cases, you can go full painted style and just use whatever technique works best for you: Oil paint, Watercolor, etc. This gives a more painterly aspect to your pages, so in case this is what you want, all the tricks explained in other tutorials about painting techniques apply.

 

But this tutorial won't cover any of those techniques. It will explain how to get a simple yet effective coloring, with the added bonus of allowing for a lot of iteration without having to redo a lot of work. I've been using it for more than two years with almost no variations (just adding a few layers for extra effects) so I hope it helps you get started with coloring your own comics (or other artist's) and find your own way from there.

Flats

You can skip this step if you've done flats before, because there is no way around it. Coloring comics always starts with this step, which is basically what its name says: separate all different colors in your page, without any lighting or texture to it. It's a process so tedious and boring that most professional colorists outsource this or have an assistant taking care of it.

Two important rules to this step:

 

• don't use the fill tool (aka Bucket tool) using the lineart as a reference. Ensure that all contiguous areas of the same color are connected. This will be important when using flats to make selections:

Don't do this:

Do this instead:

• make sure that the cut between different color regions is pixel-perfect. Make sure to use to separate your colors using a lasso tool or a Pen with no antialiasing.

 

Don't do this:

Do this:

Most important at the end of this step: set this flats layer as a Reference Layer.

Shading

Create a new Layer where you'll be setting your shadows. Go to Layer > New Correction Layer > Hue/Saturation/Luminosity. The settings depend on what you're trying to achieve, what I commonly use is:

Saturation: +15

Luminosity: -30

Once you are happy with these, you should go the layer mask and clear it (NOT Delete Mask, but Select All and Clear, or just hit the Clear key with the mask selected). Rename your layer to shadow for quick reference.

Now find the Autoselect Tool (aka Magic Wand, default key is W) and select "Selection for referred layer". Try this to select contiguous areas of the Flats layer. You may need to check "Follow adjacent pixel" most of the time, otherwise all areas of the same color of the page will be selected when you use this, which is not what you usually want.

 

To select multiple areas together, you can press the Shift key while selecting the next area, or use the "Select additionally" option of the Autoselect tool. The point is to select what you want, be it one area or several.

 

Now it's time to shade. Using your preferred pen, brush, or even pencil, "paint" your shadows in the layer mask. Apply all you know about lights and shadows to create volume, mood and depth. This part is purely artistic so I'll just leave it to you to play with it.

 

Before Shading:

With shading:

Ambient

Of all the techniques I'm presenting here, this is the probably the one that gives the biggest return on investment. Even if your base (flat) colors are not particularly inspired (check my flats above, look how dull they seem) you can bring them together by using a color layer. For this, you can use a normal (raster) layer, or as I do, a Fill Layer. I recommend the latter because it is so much easier to adjust later.

 

Do this:

 

Select Layer > New Layer > Fill. Select an ambient color you want to use for your page, individual panels or scene.

Using again the Magic Wand (Autoselect) use the layer mask to show the parts of the fill layer you'll want to use.

you should get something like this:

And now you want to set the Layer Mode to Color, and adjust the opacity to something like 25% or 30%. Usually you don't want to go above that unless you're creating a very specific ambient. For example this may be an underwater scene where you want to use a blue Color layer with as much as 50-60% opacity. Or a scene happening in a submarine with alarm lights, and it's a red Layer with 90% opacity. You need to play with it for your particular effect, but for the purpose of this tutorial, we'll set the layer to 30% opacity:

Now if your page has different locations, or you want to highlight place transitions, you can use different ambient colors specific to each location, like I did with this page. Just create more of those Fill layers and find the color that best suits the mood. These are my three color layers in Normal mode and 100% opacity:

And this is with Color layer mode, and 30% opacity.

Other layer modes you may want to try for added value are the "Light" modes (Soft Light, Hard Light, Linear Light, Pin Light and Vivid Light), most of which are better suited for actual lighting, bust Soft light works well for this case.

 

This "ambient" color you're creating here is uses to create the general mood of the scene, so it doesn't need to be tied to specific light sources.

 

Now you may see why I created these "ambient" colors using a Fill layer instead of painting them directly: you now adjust them easily. Play with both color and opacity to find the effect you want.

 

And as an added bonus, if you need to replicate the exact same effect, for example in the next page of the same sequence, you just need to copy the layer with its setting, re-paint the mask and you're there.

Lighting

Finally, if you want an actual light source to be very present in your scene or individual panels, you do this. Create yet another of those Fill layers, using the actual color of the light for the Fill Color. Clear again the mask, and use the wand to select the area you want to light, and your pen or brush of preference to actually "paint" the light:

Now this layer can have any layer mode that works for you, including Normal. Popular layer modes that work pretty well and integrate well with the underlying color are Screen (in the image) and Add (for very bright lights) but the different "light" modes, each having its own particularities. Play with them until you find one that gets you the results you're looking for.

Color Holds and Overlays

Finally, depending on specifics, I may use two other types of extra color layers:

 

• color holds, which are color layers you set on top of the linear, with the "Clip at Layer Below" setting enabled. This is what's usually called "line coloring"

 

• color overlays, which are also above the lineart, but are not clipped to it, so you are effectively coloring over your lineart, which must be done with good criteria and knowledge. I use it almost exclusively for bright light sources, such as the bulbs in this panel:

There is a lot more to comic book coloring than these basic techniques, but these should get you up and running, and most importantly, give you a good looking result for a relatively low cost. For better results, you still need to understand better how light and shadow works, learn color theory and most importantly, learn how to use color as a storytelling tool. But now at least you can confidently start creating Fill color layers and trying different layer modes to experiment with the results.

Process video

Now if you want to see all these techniques put together, here's a process video from one of the last few pages I've colored using the techniques described here. Total work time was around 2 hours, starting from the flats stage. Enjoy, and please leave your questions in the comments below! Happy coloring!