Jonny Crossbones: Down Hanover Wash is an ongoing adventure comic for all ages. Follow Jonny, a young auto mechanic in a skeleton suit, as he and Gretchen Fiveash, the niece of a wealthy adventurer, navigate an eventful lakeside vacation while learning more about themselves and their unknown, shared past!
First time readers might be best served by starting at the beginning of Jonny's First adventure, Dead Man at Devil's Cove.
Yeah, kinda figured. Jonny and Gretchen’s “Interesting times” just got more interesting…Love the color work in these recent pages – gotta figure this out with Clip Studio.
I’m still doing the colors in Photoshop– I like the ability to work with CMYK channels rather than be locked into RGB the way CSP does. But the basic method works fine in CSP, too!
Here’s a screenshot of my layer setup:
I have the base colors at the bottom, and then I layer effects on top of them, setting the shadows layer to multiply. On this page the shadows layer is set to 86% opacity because I thought the colors came out too dark after I saw them posted. I use some textured brushes at low opacity on other layers, also set to multiply, to give some texture to the whole thing.
I also run the entire image through a filter I made that lays a rough paper texture over all the colors before I post. In the French print edition I didn’t do that step, since the paper itself lends the texture to the art.
I colored last year’s Christmas card in CSP, and the method was very similar. I have my flats on multiple layers (which I didn’t bother labeling since I was the only one working on this piece!) to make selection easier but it’s very much the same technique:
I have a base palette I use– it’s CMYK in 25% increments. For the last chapter or so I’ve been using slight variations of those colors, but they’re the ones I always start out with. Certain things always use those base colors, like Jonny’s pants are always 25C25M50Y, for instance. I have a Photoshop .aco file here with my base palette, if you’d like to play with it.
Yeah, kinda figured. Jonny and Gretchen’s “Interesting times” just got more interesting…Love the color work in these recent pages – gotta figure this out with Clip Studio.
I’m still doing the colors in Photoshop– I like the ability to work with CMYK channels rather than be locked into RGB the way CSP does. But the basic method works fine in CSP, too!
Here’s a screenshot of my layer setup:
I have the base colors at the bottom, and then I layer effects on top of them, setting the shadows layer to multiply. On this page the shadows layer is set to 86% opacity because I thought the colors came out too dark after I saw them posted. I use some textured brushes at low opacity on other layers, also set to multiply, to give some texture to the whole thing.
I also run the entire image through a filter I made that lays a rough paper texture over all the colors before I post. In the French print edition I didn’t do that step, since the paper itself lends the texture to the art.
I colored last year’s Christmas card in CSP, and the method was very similar. I have my flats on multiple layers (which I didn’t bother labeling since I was the only one working on this piece!) to make selection easier but it’s very much the same technique:
Nice! thanks for the Clip Studio input! I like Photoshop too, but the ready-made brushes in CS just kick ass.
I like CSP so much more than Photoshop! If they’d only allow me to work in CMYK channels instead of RGB, I’d switch completely and never look back.
Dun dun dun!
What do use for color reference? Do you have a collection of swatches of colors you’ve used before, helping to maintain color consistency throughout?
I have a base palette I use– it’s CMYK in 25% increments. For the last chapter or so I’ve been using slight variations of those colors, but they’re the ones I always start out with. Certain things always use those base colors, like Jonny’s pants are always 25C25M50Y, for instance. I have a Photoshop .aco file here with my base palette, if you’d like to play with it.