TWCL

[afterthedream]

I'm not sure if I would actually go ahead with this, but I've been contemplating what would happen if I switched from producing full-color pages to black and white ones. Right now I manage to post two new pages per week; the main advantage of going B&W is that I could probably post five new pages per week. I feel like I might lose some readers but gain others. Sometimes the color adds a lot to a page, other times it only adds a little. Examples below. Thoughts?

Here's one where I think the color enhances the image a lot:





Here's one where I think the color only somewhat enhances the image:

[NaarieKermie]

Looking at your comparison pages I really like the black and white much more than the color. It feels really clean and crisp. The details jump out a lot more and I just love seeing those kind of lines in comics. I would even go as far as to say that in some cases the coloring is distracting from the main subject of the picture. It appears quite saturated in parts and it wasn't until you took it away that I saw how gorgeous your line art is. In this case black and white makes a much more attractive page.

If you were just starting your webcomic now and were wondering which direction your should take I wouldn't hesitate to say black and white.

The fact that you've been doing this for quite a while and already have an established audience adds a whole other level of complications into the decision making process. For me as a reader I would LOVE to have more pages a week at the sacrifice of color but I know there are readers out there who exclusively read color webcomics. You may end up upsetting some readers but with a long form comic many readers get so attached to a story or characters that they'll stick around no matter what you do. You still may end up losing some readers but with the new update schedule you have the potential to attract a whole lot more.

If you're really worried about it you could poll your audience on your site to get their direct opinions on the matter (wasn't there just a topic discussing this?).

If I were you I'd go for the black and white. IMO a more frequent updating schedule is a bigger pull for a new reader than color.

Besides, if you ever put your comic in book form you'll save a shit ton on printing costs.
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[Gual-kun]

Yep, I think you could do fine in B/W but, as Naarie says, you must check if that's a critical point for your main audience. Anyway, as said, you can lost things but gain other ones.

[uncaringmachine]

Honestly, some of the coloring(the green and orange wall in the second page, the church windows) seem to detract from the page, in my opinion. I prefer the black and white look. Although, they could use some grey in there to add a little depth. You should have no problems switching! Do what's best for you!
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[rylearron]

Yeah I'm with Mr. UncaringMachine on this one. The orange and green walls really clash and after a while could become visually painful to look at.

The windows in the church scene, and this may seem odd to say, they are way to detailed. Compared to the rest of the background, which is relatively flat. Then when you see the characters and the windows in the same panel the brightly colored and shaded windows distract from the characters, who should be the focus.

Reminds me of a painting by Claude Monet. It's a good example of how putting to much work into a smaller detail can take focus away from the real subject, in that so much detail was put into the pattern of the kimono that the man seems to be coming out of it, while the actual woman appears pushed into the background by comparison.

So yeah, I'd be leaning more towards the black and white side, especially if your end goal is to produce comics more frequently. You could try to split the difference and say make three black and white comics on the weekdays, and possibly one fully colored page for the weekend. Either way good luck with what ever you decide to do.

[smbhax.com]

Unless you're currently relying on your readership for a living, you should do what you want to do with your comic.

I don't find the use of color in those two examples very attractive, so I would be inclined toward the black and white, only you would need to find ways to expand the use of black to reduce the feeling of vacant white spaces. And I suppose that in turn might increase the time it takes to make them somewhat.
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[Novil]

You obviously spent a lot of time coloring these pages, but the result is not convincing. I think you should do the comic in b&w and at the same time spent some time on improving your coloring skills.
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[cjjoughin]

Agreeing with what everyone has been saying. I think spending some time practicing your colors might help. Your lineart is very crisp and you're really losing a lot of detail when you color your work. I find it hard to focus on where I'm supposed to be looking when everything is so highly saturated. Spend some time seeing how to use color to enhance your work and then if you want to switch to color later on you can be confident that it's serving your work.

On the first panel of the second page you put up, my eye is being drawn all around the room in a way that I find more distracting than helpful. Spots of bright red with bright orange and bright green are visually jarring. Maybe a more simplified palette would help as well? Someone linked this to me and it might be useful to you:

http://colorschemedesigner.com/#

I don't do a lot of color work myself, but I appreciate people that put the work into it. Again, your inks are really solid so if you feel like I think people will respond well to your black and white work.

[Casual Notice]

Novil wrote:

You obviously spent a lot of time coloring these pages, but the result is not convincing. I think you should do the comic in b&w and at the same time spent some time on improving your coloring skills.

This. Especially your backgrounds and shading. Too much color interest in a background tends to make it distrating (as has been noted, but I'll add that my eyes were drawn to the three colored books on the bookshelf in panel 3 of the second comic before they were drawn to the monster-attack news report on the tv).

Your shading is just inconsistent throughout. The crasshatching is effective, but the color-shading on your characters, when not carried over to the background, makes the whole work appear flat.

As an aside, if this comic is set after 2010, that console tv wouldn't function without a DTV-Analog converter box.
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What I lack in sincerity, I make up for in sarcasm.
S*P*Q*R

[afterthedream]

So I see the jury has reached a unanimous verdict then. I appreciate the feedback, even if it stings the ego a bit.

[Metruis]

Well, I prefer color in many cases. And to be the voice of dissent, I do prefer your pages colored. But your color lacks depth. I think your comic would look better in color, if you pushed your coloring skills in the right direction... right now the shortcuts like gradients in the background are too distracting when just flat ol' colors might be best.

I actually like the detailed stained glass though it seems out of place with the rest of the lack of detail.

But yeah, I do think the color looks better. Unlike everyone else. Here's a little bit of color advice:

If you desaturated your backgrounds a bit so they were less sharp than your characters, and did your shading with something other than dodge/burn it would improve your colors a lot. Instead, use colors based on the light source (a warm yellow for the sun, a cool blue for moonlight, for example) and for your shadows, pick something that falls in the opposite of the warm/cold spectrum (say, a blue shadow for the yellow light). Shadows are very frequently blue, so if you want to avoid color theory to pick shading colors, use a dark blue for your shadows (not burn!), and you'll be set.

For your walls, gradient shade them so that they're not just flat blocks of color. Make objects like the shelves and TV cast darker shadows. You already have some places where you've applied textures and this is a good start... apply the textures as an overlay/multiple/screen/whatever adjustment layer looks best over top of a gradient instead of a flat color. If you check out the comic ReMind, there's a lot of great advice on the blog section of the site about using textures to color a comic.

For objects that cast light, adding a layer above the lineart to add a glow will bring in more color depth.

So yeah, I like your coloring. I think if you keep working on it it'll look better. But the people you need to ask this question to are your regular readers: do they want more updates or color!
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[Dutch]

I'm going with the colour here. The black and white panels lose me, particularly with the ones just showing mainly architecture. I get confused and lost between all the straight lines and have little to draw my eye to. Looks good, and drawn well, but the colour brings it alive.

As a side suggestion... maybe instead of having such thick, black borders between panels, have thin black borders on the edge of each, but leave white space between them. I think the heavy black borders can get lost and merge in with the panels and make a few of them hard to see where each ends.

But for me, colour. Brings your world alive, particularly in what you've shown us here.
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[plughead]

I always prefer colour over black and white, so here's a few ideas if you'd like to continue colouring your work.

1) Consider desaturating your colours a bit, particularly for backgrounds. For example, colour a page as you normally would, then desaturate A COPY of your finished page to help you get familiar and comfortable with a more realistic palette. You can also create custom swatch sets for colours you use often, particularly flesh tones, etc.

2) Help create additional depth in your work by separating foreground objects from background objects. For example, adding subtle coloured "screened" layers overtop background black lineart and colours will soften backgrounds and help make foreground characters "pop". Experiment with different opacities, colours and blend modes to discover new ways of creating depth.

3) Unify your colour palettes. This one is tough to explain, but this short video is sick awesome. http://vimeo.com/29779029

Good luck with colour!
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Take care

Stef

http://sarahzero.com

[smbhax.com]

A number of people now have been saying "saturation" is the issue in the color examples shown, but to me it's value, *not* saturation: the different object in the scenes all have about the same, surprisingly dark value, even between what I guess are supposed to be light and dark areas in the same surface, such as skin.

Lots of comics have highly saturated colors--I mean, when I just *think* of comics, I think of pages with vibrant areas of color inside black lines, like Sunday funnies. The difference is that those colors are uniformly much lighter, and at the same time not muddled to grayishness.

It is true that a lot of "serious" comics feature less saturated palettes, but not necessarily so. What they do tend to do, though, is have much more value contrast--light colored areas vs dark colored areas--and *that* is what tells the eye where to look. His pages would still have the same "I don't know where to look" problem if he converted the color image to black and white, because it would look like a big gray field.

Also, when some of those desaturated "serious" comics *do* use color that they really want to draw attention to, it's almost always a pure color, rather than a muddied one.
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[Metruis]

smbhax.com wrote:

A number of people now have been saying "saturation" is the issue in the color examples shown, but to me it's value, *not* saturation: the different object in the scenes all have about the same, surprisingly dark value, even between what I guess are supposed to be light and dark areas in the same surface, such as skin. Lots of comics have highly saturated colors--I mean, when I just *think* of comics, I think of pages with vibrant areas of color inside black lines, like Sunday funnies. The difference is that those colors are uniformly much lighter, and at the same time not muddled to grayishness.

It's true, a comic can be done with highly saturated colors... but with a much more serious tone of comic, those bright colors rarely give off the right feel. You compare them to Sunday funnies. That's exactly the tone that's not wanted. Pulling down the saturation, not to a gray, but just a slightly less saturated color, especially in the backgrounds will allow the more deeply colored characters to pop out and give a more "serious" feel to the world as well as provide a color version of using lineart weight to pop things out.

But I do agree with you that value is a problem here as well and that using much more different in light and dark between the background and characters would provide a similar effect, just so long as it's not done via dodge and burn.

Lineart weight also would help.



A unified color palette was mentioned. Good thought! I found the easiest way to unify a color scheme involved putting a transparent layer over top of my palette, or painting on a colored background instead of white with an opaque brush. After you get used to this you'll learn to eyeball it but using transparent color blocks overtop is a good cheater way to get a start. There's more to the color theory than that but it really does help to unify an atmosphere in color.
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