In the end it took working evenings and some weekends to get my inks done by the start of October, and even then it wasn’t really until the 4th that I was actually done. With no time to waste I jumped straight into colouring.
This is the biggest project I’ve ever coloured, in fact it’s probably more pages than I’ve ever coloured in the past combined. And to be honest, I’ve never been all that confident at colouring. Looking back at past projects, I’ve always enjoyed the process but regularly gone overboard with it, favouring a rush of eye-catching colour that has too often made my images oversaturated and overproduced. It’s the curse of being completely self-taught combined with the additional character flaw I have of refusing to do anything but learn on the job. And with deadlines looming, it’s there’s little time for me to take a breather and indulge in colour theory 101.
Fortunately, as I was wrapping up inking I took an evening to flat out a couple of pages and show them to some comics friends to see what they thought. The response was good, and I came away with some good pointers about creating more contrast through variations in hue, value and saturation. It seems obvious to me on reflection, but it has made a big difference to how I’m going about working, making me more thoughtfully consider how bright and saturated my colours are across the page, and varying those values for effect.
With this toolkit in place I’ve been able to charge forwards at quite a pace, hoping to be done colouring by the end of October.