Behind the Scenes: Generation Gap
[dc]I[/dc]n the notes for Monday’s comic, I mentioned I hit a bit of a snag during clean-up. I decided to use watercolor paint in the third panel, to color my cartoony Cthulhu.
Like signing Yahoo Serious to a multi picture deal, it was a great idea–in theory.
Yet, I forgot one important fact until after the paint dried: I always delete the comic’s color channels in Photoshop.
Gasp! I can see your blue lines! Final version.
Good-bye, Blue Lines
I delete color channels in Photoshop to get rid of my comic’s blue lines. I sketch and letter with blue lead—deleting the color channels makes all my messing sketching and lettering guide lines disappear. Computer magic!
More like computer tragic this time around. Say good-bye to all my painting work (poor Cthulhu would just be a black mass).¹
The easy solution was to just drop the painted Cthulhu into another copy of the comic—after I deleted the color channels and switched it back to RGB mode. Pasting Big Green in the same spot in the black and white version wasn’t difficult (dropping the opacity helped with lining stuff up).
Lines Through My Face and Hands
No, the big chore was deleting the lettering guide lines running through Cthulhu.
Pardon my close up.
Granted, if my watercolor paint was darker, I doubt the blue lines would even show in the first place. Had I thought ahead (ha!) before painting, I would have erased the lines. But I didn’t think ahead (d’oh!) and spent some quality time in Photoshop using the Spot Healing Brush Tool. This actually worked better than I hoped (Hooray! More computer magic!). The Spot Healing Brush Tool samples an area of the image and smooths everything out. I think it looks for differences. I dunno. The Spot Healing Brush Tool is like Velcro: it just works and I don’t ask questions.
But Wait! More Erasing!
There was still more work to do, as I had to clean up the edges of my painted Cthulhu after dropping him on top of the black and white version.
A helpful Photoshop art clean-up tip: I placed Cthulhu on a blue background and hid everything else. This made the white edges easier to spot and erase (using the Magic Wand and Erase tools).
Begone, foul edges!
I enjoyed coloring this comic with watercolor paint, and I would like to use it more in the future. Next time though, I’ll be better about planning ahead.
Maybe.
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¹ Whoa, Cthulhu and black mass in the same sentence? This should net me some interesting search engine results.
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