How to Digitally Color Your Manga, Anime or Comic Book Character

Intro: How to Digitally Color Your Manga, Anime or Comic Book Character

this tutorial is about giving people the basis tools to color a character for their manga's  or comics.
hey if your good enough you can make your own cartoon( alot of work but always fun ).
i will show you how to get special effects and how to make your drawing rock.

STEP 1: What Will You Need ?

to do this you will need :
a drawing ( duh)
a computer ( i did this on a 6 year laptop with 512 ram ,its old but got me out of a lot of  trouble .)
a scanner or camera  ( If your going to use a camera  make the foto in a place with good lighting )
a image editor ( i am using an older version of GIMP , because i was lazy to download the newer version )( the newer version  http://downloads.sourceforge.net/gimp-win/gimp-2.6.11-i686-setup-1.exe?use_mirror= ) 
 and time .

STEP 2: Coloring

Install gimp on your pc and get to know it a little bit especially the eraser ,selection ,layers and colorify tools
open gimp and open the foto ,my foto is named gunslinger .
 im going to show  it on the foto's.

In the window layers  click the duplicate button and duplicate it two times

Select the second( center ) layer and go to the window with the drawing .go to the menu "color " and select the colorify button .in the colorify window select the custom color button  and select the color you want. ( write down the color code this is handy if you have to draw the same character multiple times  )

Go to the layer window and select the first ( top ) layer right-click on it and go to the add mask layer button . ( this button will make the erased area's of the layer transparent )

Next go to the gimp window and select the selection tool. go to the window with the drawing and make a selection around the area you want to select.

Go back to the gimp window to the selection tool and click  on selection from path button ( this will close the selection )

Then take the eraser , increase its scale and  erase the area in the selection. the second layer should be visible .

Repeat the selection and erase part on all area's with the same color .

Next go to the layer window and select the bottom ( unedited ) layer and click on the little eye .( this will disable the visibilty of the layer )

Go to the window with the drawing and and click on the image  menu and then on merge visible  layers .( this will merge all the visible layer in to one layer. )

Repeat steps with the other colors and when your done its on to shadows .

ps  if  your going to do color's in colors , like the guitar , place the lighter colors at the bottom and the darker ones at the top and the erase trough the top layer till you reach the bottom one. ( the guitar is made out of four color layers  )

STEP 3: Shadows

now on to shadows .shadows are one of the most important aspects of a drawing a shadow gives a foto dept makes it look 3d and makes it look a live .

to create a shadow go to one of the ruffles in the clothing and create a selection around it .

then go to the selection from path button and close the selection

next o to the pencil or the brush tool check that the brushes color is black.

change the opacity of the brush to 10 %. ( this will make the color  transparent )

make the brush as big as it can be and the go to the selection and pace the brush over the whole selection this will make it easy to fill . click a few times till you get the best shade

repeat this on the other shadows your done

STEP 4: And Your Done!!!!

This is a basis tutorial that gives you the basis .
If you study the program and read a little more you will be able to stuff ten times cooler than this.
I hope this helps in you quest to become a cartoonist or a artist .
Who knows , i could be reading your comics in a few years. so read up on art styles , colors , light and shadows

Comments

[KeikoC]

Which layer mask should I add? I've try to add different layer mask and none of it can show the colour of the lower layer...

[locoblondie]

this is awesome im going to do it

[Theawesomecrafter]

Looks neat from the start.
I alway's have trouble with the shading.

[harrafamily]

wow. this is really cool. it looks like a shirt i saw in a shirt.woot contest. neat!

[wilgubeast]

And to think I have enough trouble staying inside the lines in my Disney Princess coloring book. Thanks for sharing!

[gremlin]

thanks Wilgubeast .It isn't that much work. You just need time and patience .