How to Color a Comic Strip

Video Transcript

"Next, we're going to move onto coloring. It's very easy to overdo your coloring, so a couple of tips here. First off, don't make your strips just about the color that you pick for you characters. Your characters should look good in black and white. Never rely on color to add the life to your strip. It should be there to begin with. Also, don't consider having tons and tons of colors, everything that's going in contrast, purples, yellows, oranges all in the same panel. If you do too much color, it'll basically distract the eye. You'll put the eye into sensory overload. Definitely watch out for that as well. The other thing is to make sure that you're consistent from stands at a stanza. If you have a situation where you're putting in blue pants, like I'm doing, in the next stanza they best still be blue pants, unless the character is changing clothes. Make sure that you keep the same markers around. Also, notice that right now I'm using a very, very thick end of felt marker. For areas where there's a lot of detail work, make sure you have the smaller felt tips available as well. The last thing you want to do after you've spent all this nice time coloring everything in is to very sloppily go over your comic strips with various different shades on top of the black and white."