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David REVOY

French freelance digital artist

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Friday 04 jun. 2010 category : Tutorials 14 comment(s)

Comics inking and coloring with Gimp-painter

1) Scan the pencil drawing :

First step is the scanner acquisition with Xsane of my drawing (HB pencil on A4 paper ). I scan it in Gray levelat 300dpi. To produce a beautifull result , I play with the level to clean white.

the original pencil drawing

2) Inking :

I start to convert my pencil artwork in a light blue range of colors ; I use the tool colorize ( Color > Colorize ).

the colorize tool in action

With the G-Pen tool of Gimp-painter I start to ink my drawing, on a separate empty layer. The screenshot aboveshow the setting I use with G-Pen.

starting the inking process

At the end, I add a white layer under my line-art to finish my inking. When it's finish , I save my work, and Isave in another file a copy of the final Line-art layer ; I will need it later.

finishing the inking with a white layer under

3) Multi-Fill

This is probably the main section of this tutorial. I add a new layer under my line art, and I start with a thinnerG-pen in red to draw the limit of each different color zone I want. I flatten the layer when it's finish.

preparing the zone for the cell-shading

I launch the script 'Multi-Fill' with the same setting as in the screenshot above and I let the script detect eachclosed zone, and fill with a random color.

the flatting-tools script in action

When it's finish ; delete the layer above with Line-art + red limits ; and load ( load as new layer ) your old copyof final Line-art ( the one without red lines ).

the result of the flatting tools

As you see on the animation above; the advantage of this script is in the clean result of the colorisation : eachzone frontier are right in the middle of the thickness of your black lines.

importing the line-art over the result

4) Colors

With the Fill bucket tool ( with the option 'fill similar color' and a low 'treshold' ) , it's easy now and fast toreplace each automatic psychadelic colors of the Multifill script. Open a large color palette to make this processeasier. For most of the fast cartoons with a cell-shading rendering ; this step can be the final.

coloring by replacing the colors

If you want to add a bit more of life, you can brush with a rounded basic brush over the colors layer with somebrighter strokes and a low opacity. You can play with the balance of colors to warm up the overall too.

adding life with a rounded brush

the final RGB colorisation

5) Export for print

For exporting in CMYK I still use my license of Photoshop CS2 ( with Wine ) cause I still don't know how todo it with the security of a corect result with only FLOSS. Be sure when I will know it, I will be the first to useit.

I want here to have all the color using the CMY cartbridge colors only and the line-art using pure Black color

ink. Also, I want to prepare under the line-art a dark grey to make the black look deeper when it will be printed.

selecting the line-art layer

shrink the selection of 1 pixel

Fill the selection with grey on a new layer

I prepare the grey layer in Gimp ; I use the 'Alpha to selection' on my line-art layer combined with a 'Shrinkselection' of 1 pixel. When it's done, I fill the new selection with a dark grey. To give the file to Photoshop, Isave in PSD.

On Photoshop, I convert my file using the layer group properties to restrict the channel; on the black ink , I useonly 'K' , and on the color and the grey channel I use only 'CMY'. I change the color on the layer of line-art touse only Black 100% and on the grey I setup the grey of my publisher : C=80% M=70% Y=70%. I finish withsaving to the TIFF file format , with the CMYK ICC profile asked by my publisher too, here a 'Europe ISOCoted Fogra27'.

For saving disk space, I allow a LZW compression. That's all !

Result of the CMYK conversion with Photoshop CS2

Download :

Here is an archive file with the final RVB file in xcf and the CMYK in TIFF.

gimp-painter-color_source-file.tar.bz2

Sources :

Flatting Tools : http://gimp-registry.fargonauten.de/node/14051(FR) "Colorisation de BD Du traditionnel au numérique" (FR) de Stéphane Baril, Naïts (http://www.editions-eyrolles.com/Livre/9782212115086/colorisation-de-bd )Almost same technics with Photoshop , ( http://www.questionablecontent.net/tutorial.php)

Licence :

All the text and the pictures and the files of this tutorial are under the licence CC-By-Sa-Nc ; for more info visit: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/

14 comment(s)

erik90mxSunday 06 jun. 2010 at 03:08

Hi

I want install in my Ubuntu Gimp-painterbut... I have a 64 bits version.

And when a friend bought your DVD, he experimented the same problem :Sbecause in the DVD only was a .deb for a 32 bits version.

What may we do?

Greetings

David RevoySunday 06 jun. 2010 at 11:16

Hi erik90mx,

I think you have to compile it :How-to in english : http://swiss.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1364346How-to in french : http://blenderclan.tuxfamily.org/html/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?post_id=309395#forumpost309395How-to on the documentation of Ubuntu (french) :http://doc.ubuntu-fr.org/gimp-painter

Maybe another way to consider is to start from 'Gimp-studio' a code source already patched withmany tools and brush asset directly installed on :http://code.google.com/p/gimp-studio/downloads/list

You can give feedback using the thread of 'Chaos&Evolutions' DVD on :http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=179695Good luck !

exvionSunday 06 jun. 2010 at 19:53

Thanks, David. Great tutorial.

Skiri-kiMonday 07 jun. 2010 at 19:35

He I knew I had seen this kind of technique before over at QCGood to know there's a multi-fill script for Gimp as well.Now I've gotta try this on a real sketch (I just doodled something for testing).

Thanks David

p.s. is there a special reason to reimport the ink as new layer? I just duplicated the ink andbackground layers, merged the duplicates and the red lines, hid the original ink layer and un-hid itafter the script.

David RevoyMonday 07 jun. 2010 at 19:52

exvion : thanks!

Skiri-ki : Hey thanks for the tips of duplicating the ink layer before merging with the red; that tipssave minutes of filebrowsing. I will use it ;)

erik90mx : From another comment in this blog of Prawn-shushi ; thanks him : a PPA repositerywith Gimp-painter for 64bit , for karmic : https://launchpad.net/~mizuno-as/ archive/ppa

maxMonday 07 jun. 2010 at 22:00

David, i recently bought your dvd, and is one of the best art tutorials i've seen. very easy tounderstand, and i liked that it has text instead of a voice over, its not distracting, and great art. I toohad the problem of not finding gimp-painter for 64bit ubuntu. I just saw the PPA above, and waswondering if anyone knows if its from a reliable source. thanks in advance and sorry forquestioning about the PPA but i always try to check.

amhphp

Friday 11 jun. 2010 at 06:10

From what I have seen so far, your work has been an inspiration. Good artists are known by theirart, and your work speaks for itself I think. Hope you continue inspiring people.

Was wondering where I can get the script multifill for GIMP? The version of GIMP that I amusing on Ubuntu 10.04 does not have multifill under Filters > Script-Fu. After a quick googlesearch and checking the plugin registry for GIMP, I did not find it. Any help would be appreciated.Thanks.

David RevoyFriday 11 jun. 2010 at 11:11

@ max : I cannot be sure this PPA is 100% safe, but all user who tested it seams to be happy.That's a good indicator imho. Btw, I will install it on a Lucid machine to be sure in less than fewweeks.

@ amhphp : Thanks for your comments on my work ! The link to 'multifill' is in the 'source'chapter of the article but not really visible and the script have another name than the functionmultifill itself : "Flatting Tools" ( http://gimp-registry.fargonauten.de/node/14051 ).

erik90mxFriday 11 jun. 2010 at 22:52

Finally!!

It was very dificult ;) (trying to install form the terminal :S )

I used the last link and dowload a 64 bits version .deb

these are the links:

64bits

https://launchpad.net/~mizuno-as/+archive/gimp-painter/+files/gimp_2.6.8-2ubuntu1.1+painter~lucid3_amd64.deb

32bits

https://launchpad.net/~mizuno-as/+archive/gimp-painter/+files/gimp_2.6.8-2ubuntu1.1+painter~lucid3_i386.deb

Thanks a lot

Greetings

Skiri-kiSunday 13 jun. 2010 at 22:41

the easy way with this ppa would have been to use Synaptics and add this repository ppa:mizuno-as/gimp-painterrefresh repositories and update gimp to gimp painter. This way Synaptics chooses whether to usex64 or x86 plus it'll automatically install updates once they are available.

David RevoyMonday 14 jun. 2010 at 10:26

Thanks Erik90mx and Skiri-ki for the feedback, all this info gathered after Chaos&Evolutionsmake me the idea to build in next blog post an article special on how to install Gimp-painter onvarious system. This last ppa make things really easy for beginner. Cool !

GodzilluMonday 21 jun. 2010 at 23:29

Nice tutorial and good spirit. Thanks for the sharing.

ChocoboMasterThursday 01 jul. 2010 at 02:35

Vraiment beau travail monsieur revoy.J'aime ce que vous faites.

RomanThursday 17 fev. 2011 at 15:55

Hello David. Thank you very much for this tutorial. I'm totally new to Gimp as my first graphiceditor. One question if I may.. you write: "With the G-Pen tool of Gimp-painter I start to ink mydrawing, on a separate empty layer."Have you been using a mouse for this part? I cannot get straight lines no matter how hard I try.Thanks in advance!

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