Let's start with opening our lineart. I chose
this image.
As for the background color, most of the time I pick a
pale color that won't show up too often in the coloring itself.
This time I chose
#708090 as color so I can tell where I made some mistakes on filling in and where it needs to be fixed.
Now, there are two ways of filling in the flats that I use. One would be just filling in the color with the
brush tool and erase everything that needs to be erased. (It's pretty easy with a graphic tablet) And the other one would be using the
Magic Wand-Tool, I guess most of you guys do that? Most of the time, I am using that method as well.
You have to make sure that
every single layer you create for filling in colors is located below the lineart itself, like
this.
The next step would be filling in colors I guess. Select the Magic Wand Tool and leave the settings on
default, Tolerance should 32 I guess? If not, change it. So when you select the parts you want to fill in,
make sure to be on the lineart layer, otherwise it would just select the whole canvas.
A little tip on the side: If you want to select multiple parts with the Magic Wand-Tool - Make sure to hold down SHIFT when using it. A little Plus-symbol should appear right next to the Magic Wand itself. This means that you are able to connect more than just one area.
Now back to our document. You should now have the selected everything you want to fill in it should somewhat look similar to
this. (
Now before filling in, make sure to go back to one of your other layers, in my case it would be the skin layer) And this is the part where most of the people are wrong, you should
never fill in the color
right after selecting your desired areas! It could be the case that it looks good on some linearts but it's almost never like that. On most of the linearts it will just look like
Brook's coloring. (
From OPB, I made this tutorail especially for him) Notice how some of the parts look kinda bad, like there is color missing between the lineart and the filled in flats? That's exactly what we don't want.
So after we selected our desired area and switched, in this case, to our Skin layer again we go to
SELECT > MODIFY > EXPAND > 1px. I think by just looking at those words you know what's going to happen next, exactly. The selected area is going to be 1px bigger and thus, got the space covered up between the area and the lineart.
Most of the time after filling in the color you will see that due to that expansion some color is showing
outside of the lineart. You can simply erase that or select your layer by pressing the little Layer Thumbnail and holding down SHIFT. Then you chose your selection Tool of course, right click and chose
SELECT INVERSE then you need to press the DEL-key (Delete-Key) to delete
some of it.
After you've done all that you should have a perfectly colored lineart. Like I said sometimes you may need to pull out the eraser tool and get rid of some parts. And I think what you will always need to do is filling in corners. The Magic Wand tool does not reach the end of most corners so keep an eye out and color the edges and ends of some parts - This is especially important for the hair!