Hi guys!

See you tomorrow~

#ag #agtutorial

We begin our day 2 with more practice than theory, even if theory is important, practice creates a master =).

So you are on the internet, browsing and then you find this panel from this manga that you are reading at the moment, and you feel inspired to color it, but you think "is too much" and you are barely a beginner, I get you. I haven't done a full panel either, as far as I remember, those require a lot of work and mostly be very detailed. But in that panel there is a part that you can actually work with, is simple, doesn't require much coloring, perfect to start!

For me it was this picture from the manga Haikyuu! Which  btw not reading it, I'm watching the anime at this moment, but for the purpose of this tutorial, let's pretend i'm reading it.


The part I decided to color is the last one in the corner, where our hero Hinata has an expression of excitement. The first thing I do is observe the panel, does it look clean enough? Does it need something to be done? Those are the questions I ask myself mainly because there are a LOT of manga scans that the quality is so bad that if you try to color it would simply look not nice, so even if you have a nice quality image, is good to pump it up!

A very good example of a bad manga scan is this one:


As you can notice, it looks as scan from the newspaper, is not difficult to clean it enough to make it look good, but it would require more time, unless you like the effect on manga coloring, you can perfectly work with this. For the purpose of this tutorial, you are lucky enough to find a very nice scan but still you want to clean it a bit.

So to clean the entire panel (to make things even) what you will need is:




Tune in tomorrow to start coloring!

This is great! I love that you made gifs of where to find things. That will be super helpful. But wouldn't it be easier to crop the image then erase...less area to erase xD

Welcome to!! *drumroll please* day 3!

Today is the day, the day to make magic~ yes guys, we are going to color now! Hurray!!!!!! actually we're not gonna color yet, sorry
BUT! Before that, there's some research to do.

The key to make a manga color look good is in the selection of colors, not just the hair, the skin too (actually, to me skin is very important, most than the hair), and the clothing well, that is not that important always, but the skin! Is key to not make your coloring look yellow, which sometimes people select as the skin tone and I personally think looks…not pretty, of course, unless the character has like literally yellow skin.

So where do I start?

First, you need a place where to save your color scheme. I personally use OneNote from Microsoft, like a lot, to me is the best place to keep your info, any type of info. But if you don't have it, you can use notes or something similar.

But my true secret is!!!!!!! *drumroll please* I personally save EVERY single graphic I make, not just the .jpeg or the .png files, but the photoshop extension file which is .PSD  (On GIMP this type of file has .xcf extension). What happens when you save in that format? Well, here is a graphic example:



As you can see on that gif, EVERY thing I did on that coloring is there, in other words, it allows you to modify that original graphic once again, as a difference from .jpeg or .png that doesn't allow that, if you save a coloring or any other type of graphic as jpeg or png, it is going to state like that forever. Hopefully you understand what I just said here =).

If you wonder why did I bring that up, is because this allows me to use the skin tone color I've been using on my manga colorings, I now can take that number/code and use it on the new one we're gonna work on, this just made my workflow easier. What I just need is look for the layer I did the skin tone, and with the eyedropper tool (in GIMP is called color picker tool) and select the skin tone and the color will appear on the little color selection panel…confused? Please see the following gif to make things more clear:


I did something extra here, I increased the opacity to get the exact color I need.

But Haine, I've never done a manga coloring, how am I supposed to find the skin color, or any color to match my manga coloring? Glad you asked my talented artist! We're going to do some image search!

So, since I picked Haikyuu! I'm going to google official manga art and official pictures from the anime, and I selected the ones that are more rich in color (or the ones that have better colors), here are my selections:


If you are coloring a manga that doesn't have an anime yet, search for those colored scans that every mangaka does from time to time, that will also help.


Please elaborate on that color scheme thing you talk about.

Open both images on your software, and use the eyedropper tool/color picker tool and select the lightest tone you find on the skin:


And open your notes (in my case OneNote) and copy/paste the numbers there:


Do the same with the second skin tone color, and repeat the process with the rest: hair, eye color, clothe and background (if you want).  Another way to do this is to create a new file (400x300 pixels) and instead copy/paste the numbers, take the brush tool and create small circles and add 'tag' each color, something like this:


Repeat the process with the rest until you have everything you need:

Save this image and open it every time you need reference.


And guys, that's it for today~ tune in tomorrow for day 4, and this time, for real, we're gonna color, i promise!!!

Oooh that list tip is a great way to help set up palettes in other art stuff too so its helpful everywhere. Thanks for the idea!

And now, for real, we're gonna do some color!
 
 
So open your image and  the color scheme and create a new layer on top of the image and name it "Skin", from the color scheme, select the color that looks more peach….

 
HOLD ON!  Then why did you made me choose 2 skin colors?
 
Oh right…sorry about that, the reason I made you choose 2 colors I because is upon your criteria to choose which of the 2 skin tones looks better, I personally choose the one that looks more peach, it usually works perfect. What I usually do after having both colors is to test them, then I decide which one looks better, but if I were you, choose the peach-est color possible =)
 
Now back to your regular broadcast….
 
After you created your new layer and name it, you have to change the mode of that same layer to Multiply:

 
Now start coloring on the skin using the brush tool:


 
Unfortunately, I didn't like this skin tone, so I decided to play a little more with colors and when I felt the color was the proper one I re-do the skin part and now it looks like this:
 
 
Do the same step above (create a new layer on top) but this time name the new layer 'Hair' and also set it to 'multiply' select the lightest color from the scheme and start coloring the hair:


 
Continue doing the same steps for the cloth and the bag and the tiny sakura flower, until you have the final result:


 
It does look nice ^_^ and you are done!
 
Really, are we done?
 
Well, no actually, there's so much more you can do to this, but I will teach you a little bit about shadows and light. I want to point out I'm not an expert on this, nor I have taken drawing classes that teaches exclusively this, but I've done a few manga colorings and I kind of get the feeling of this.
 
So, let's go back to those colored pictures you used to take the skin tone color, I decided to use as reference the one from the anime, because those you can see better the shadows and light, look close that picture and then return to your coloring, and try to identify where are the shadows (Or you can also imagine that there's a sun in the picture and look for the natural shadows), of course there are some obvious ones, but keep looking for the rest. In my case the shadows are mostly on the left side of Hinata, so what I will do is simple, taking the skin tone color and moving it to a slight deeper one:


 
And then start coloring those parts that need shadow, at the end your picture will look like this:
 
 
But that shadow looks a bit too harsh, let's blur it!


 
Here is the final result! That looks a lot better:




Now add some light, once again pick the base color and move it to the lightest part:


 
Instead of using Multiply for light, change it for soft light, having this result:


 


 
And now officially you are done!
 

Tune in tomorrow for our final part of the tutorial!

So you teached us what we need for to make manga colorings, now what?

Hello and welcome to day 5!

This day is mostly to work on graphics (and the shortest), I mean, after all that hard work, you need to show off! So, here is some simple stuffs you can do!

Let’s pretend you want to use this graphic for the forums, remember that the size for signatures are 450x150 px, so create your new file, copy and paste the finished coloring, resize it until you feel is ok, and add this code color 00011c to a new layer on top of the manga coloring, and set the layer to Exclusion. Add some text and here is your new signature!


Another coloring I like to use is 001c1a (or around that color)


So there are infinite ways! and very simple if you only want to highlight the coloring more than anything.

Other type of signature you could do is having a colorful background, for this you just only need to delete all the white on the original scan and add a new layer below this one and add the color of your choice.


One of my favorites is just add a sort of 'light' to it, with just one color, for this one, take your brush tool and expand the size around 114 px, it could be any size actually, create a new layer on top of the coloring, select a color on the colors palette, is better to choose a bright color. Place the brush in any part of the signature (on the new layer of course) and set this to screen or lighten.


Honestly there's much more! I've seen manga animations, like the character closing the eyes, but for that you need to know how to draw, I've seen so many amazing stuffs that It could take a special class to do graphics with manga coloring.


This conclude the beginner part of this tutorial, I hope you found this useful, and if you have questions don't hesitate to ask them. I might expand this, but for a more advanced tutorial, that will be at some point on the guilds so if you haven't joined it's time to do it! plus you will find pretty awesome stuffs and other tutorials =D.

Just wanted to share the coloring I tried (and failed wow shadowing sucks). Awesome tutorial - thanks for sharing!

Image:

Edit: WOW OKAY ignore the pink stripes O.o

Puu that's really nice!!! =D you got good spots for the shadows, remember to blur those so it doesn't look that harsh. also, under usagi's bangs you can add a little more shadow since it's under 'the light'

Keep practicing and you'll get better at shadowing~

I tried so hard to blur but my dumb tool was being dumb xD Thank you!!

I really wanted to try this out after seeing your tutorial, so I did this one tonight! I'm going to go back and try to add the extra shading and highlights tomorrow. ^^

flat colors:

Fully shaded:

EDIT: Finished the shading.

I have to commend your for you efforts Haine.
This looks like it took a long time to put together.
You've explained everything so thoroughly.

JupiterThunderCrash wrote:

I really wanted to try this out after seeing your tutorial, so I did this one tonight! I'm going to go back and try to add the extra shading and highlights tomorrow. ^^

flat colors:

Fully shaded:

EDIT: Finished the shading.

Nice job! your shading was super awesome! remember to add some blur to the shade so it doesn't look that harsh =)
 is it my monitor or Hinata looks a bit yellow? ._."

Roro wrote:

I have to commend your for you efforts Haine.
This looks like it took a long time to put together.
You've explained everything so thoroughly.

Thanks Roro =D!
It took me around 3 hours for each day (except day 1), glad is helping everyone!! 

Thanks! I probably do need to go back over the shading edges and mess with them some more. The blur tool wasn't quite cutting it, so I'll try smudging first. And believe it or not, the first color I picked looked yellower than the skin color I settled on. XD I might have to pick a less yellow shade for the shadows though.

Try the one I used for the tutorial, and work it until you like it =)



Use the first one the lighter, the other one I use it for shadows. remember try to pick the one that looks more peach, that's the key!!!


EDIT: which software are you using?, I think I can help you with the blur part but using a brush, I just had this crazy idea xD

I'm using Photoshop 2, and I'm working on a second image that I think has a slightly better skin tone than the first one I tried. A lot more peach than yellow. XD

In-progress:

that looks better =D!

Photoshop cs2, right? ok, when you use the blur, use gaussian blur and set the radius to 3, that will make it smoother. also another trick is using the brush tool, if you change the hardness to...example 30 it will smooth out too =D

Thanks, I just tried that out, and it looks a lot softer now! ^^

Just realized I never posted the completely finished version ^^

Finished:

 WOW~

NICE JOB!!!!!! 

Thanks so much for this tutorial!  I've been manga coloring for a little bit before this, but I learned some really helpful stuff from this; you explain it so well and the gifs definitely help a lot.
Here's my favorite coloring I've done so far:

Usagi's First Transformation:

The shading/highlighting is hard to see, because I was afraid of it looking too harsh ;-;
Hope you like it

Sailor Gallifrey wrote:

Thanks so much for this tutorial!  I've been manga coloring for a little bit before this, but I learned some really helpful stuff from this; you explain it so well and the gifs definitely help a lot.
Here's my favorite coloring I've done so far:

Usagi's First Transformation:

The shading/highlighting is hard to see, because I was afraid of it looking too harsh ;-;
Hope you like it

Oh that's beautiful!

@Sailor Gallifrey: NICE JOB! =D I can actually see some of the shading you did, but don't be afraid to try with darker colors ^^

@Sailor Gallifrey: That's really good! Very pastel colored. ^^

Haine, this is so awesome! I've been reading through it little by little and finally finished just recently xD You have so much solid information in here, and it's great!! I can only imagine just how much time and effort went into organizing all of this!

Verdandi wrote:

Haine, this is so awesome! I've been reading through it little by little and finally finished just recently xD You have so much solid information in here, and it's great!! I can only imagine just how much time and effort went into organizing all of this!

You're welcome Verdi!!

It took me several hours but it was worth it if you guys find it useful =D

Wow this is really cool! I'll have to try it out and see what I can do! Thanks for posting this awesome tutorial!

Anait Zelleire wrote:

Wow this is really cool! I'll have to try it out and see what I can do! Thanks for posting this awesome tutorial!

I would love to see your results!
Glad it helped you