For Aurorae, I wanted to use a coloring style that is unlike “standard” comic book coloring. I wanted an emotive, loose, oil-based look that strays away from the typical cel-shading you see in these types of graphic novels. I also wanted to avoid the gradient-heavy look in most modern mainstream (ie. Marvel/DC) books, as it doesn’t fit the look and feel I want for Aurorae. My goal is to make this book feel different than most comics in as many ways as I can while keeping production time within reason (there are plenty of cool ideas I have that could push each page to 30+ hour endeavors).

Instead of relying heavily on Photoshop for all my coloring needs, I’ve turned to Corel Painter to handle the task of giving my pages more of a traditional media feel. I want the pages to look like I’ve gone mad with an oil brush, mixing and slopping on color with a thick, heavy brush. Initially, I toyed with the idea of going for a watercolor look but after a couple of passes on the page, watercolor wasn’t giving me the desired results and the page ended up looking quite similar to several comics already on the market.

After I’ve scanned each page, I put the document into Photoshop and lay out the flat colors. At this point, I’d typically keep hammering away in Photoshop and finish the entire piece before moving into Illustrator for lettering. In Aurorae, I stop using Photoshop at the flats stage and move to Painter, where I gob on piles of oil and create a quite sloppy-looking effect. I try to add a little highlighting and shadows at this point but given the nature of Painter and the brushes I’m using, my ability to add real detail is limited and the piece remains very emotive and loose. Here’s an example of the finished product using this methodology:

As you can see, the piece is very loose and has the feeling that I slung wet oil paint at the canvas. Good, but lacking in real detail. To add another step to this process, I took this image and put it back into Photoshop, where I used a very low opacity brush to add highlights and shadows to the image. While this page looks slightly more refined, it loses some of its expressiveness and I’m not sold on locking down the comic’s colors quite this firmly.

Thoughts? I’m incredibly torn on these coloring styles and am unsure what style I want to use for Aurorae. In coming days, I’m going to try to reach some kind of middle ground between these images where I keep some of the expressionistic qualities of the first image while adding just a smidge more highlights and shadows from the second image. I like the loose look of the oils but feel as if just a tad more detail can be added without losing too much of the oil paint below.

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