Flatting

I'm not educated in the lingo of publishing, illustration or arts.
I know what I know because I've had to learn it. If you'd've asked me what a flatter was years ago, my answer would've had more to do with laying carpet than comics.

Personally, I find flatting takes the most time, and shading, blending, low-light and highlighting things are what I'm quicker at.

Below are some examples of flats, and then the finished colours.
the Kings Watch pages were provided by Nate Cosby for one of his Colourist Hunts,
the X-men pages were provided for the Chris Sotomayor course - Intro to Colouring,
and the Halloween lineart was provided by Lar de Souza of the webcomics Least I Could Do and Looking For Group..and of course, his cartooning / caricaturing.

Kings Watch flats

Kings Watch colours

Lar's line art flat

Lar's line art coloured

 

Spider-Man Coloured

And here's the coloured version.

The clouds were giving me some grief until I remembered a few things.
I think I prefer an instruction of "please add clouds" to a colourist instead of the artist drawing them in, as this can produce a more natural kind of cloud formation. But that's my opinion.

Spider-Man flats

I was making some decent time on flatting this and the day got away from me. Phone calls, laundry, errands... and now here I am, 12 hours later, finishing *just* the flats.

And that's fine - for now. Because it's not a job, I'm not paid to do this. [yet]

Normally I'd leave colouring effects - especially text effects, until last, but I was curious if my initial idea for the 'thwak' would balance or further unbalance all that sky.

More from class

I actually own this comic, which is a little thrill - to me. 'Cause this means I can hold up [once I find it] the published article against what I've gone with and see the differences and all the rest of everything there on the pages.

I have no idea [off the top of my head] who the female characters are..and that bothers me.
Guess I better go look them up!