Colorists See the Light
If you look at any comics sales chart, one thing you’ll notice is that color titles far outnumber those in black and white. This is far from an earth-shattering observation, as the same holds true of movies and television. In most cases, though, movies and TV shows are filmed in color in the first place, and when someone tries to transform a black and white film into a color one . . . well, purists get kind of nervous. Most comics start out as black-and-white pencil-and-ink, so someone has to put the color in. That someone is a colorist, an artist whose contribution to the comic is often overlooked, even as the artform of coloring itself has grown tremendously over the last decade.
Up until the late 80s and early 90s, most of the most popular color titles were printed on inexpensive newsprint, so they had the quality and durability you would expect from your local paper — namely, not too much. Inks got smeared, pages were flimsy, and sometimes the things were darn near illegible. This inevitably affected the quality of comic book color. Comics (and most other publications) are printed in a four-color process, in which four dyes are mixed together to produce all the color that you see. This is often referred to as CMYK printing, for the four dyes in question: cyan, magenta, yellow, and black; a printed page actually goes through four presses, one for each color. (If you’ve ever seen a newspaper with a color photo that looks like one of those old 3-D movies, with a ‘halo’ of one color or another, it’s because the page wasn’t lined up perfectly as it went through one of the presses.) Each pass puts a series of dots on the page, which hopefully blend together to create the variety of colors we perceive. The smaller the dots, the better the blending. In the case of those old newsprint comics, the dots were often quite noticeable, and because the paper couldn’t hold much ink, the color was often faded.
Furthermore, the colorist could never be sure that his or her work would be exactly reproduced. The colorist might use paints or markers to color a black and white copy of the line art, but that colored page would then be broken down into a set of instructions for each of the four presses by a separator. These instructions could not be very complex — the printer could fill all of a given area with a particular color, fill half of it with the color, or fill a quarter of it. Colorists and separators only had a total of 64 combinations available, so subtle gradations in tone were impossible. (In contrast, my computer monitor can display millions of different colors, and even the stripped down ‘web-safe’ palette in my web design software includes 256.) Even when comics publishers used a higher quality paper to achieve brighter, more vibrant color, they were still limited to those 64 colors. Comics color, therefore, was very flat.
Today, better paper quality and advances in scanning and reproduction mean that the colorist’s work can be transferred directly to the printing presses. Separators are not confined to the 64 combinations anymore, and those colorists who work digitally can actually prepare their own separations, ensuring greater fidelity to the colorist’s vision. Pages can hold more ink, so colors can be deeper, more saturated, and more vibrant. The flat colors that used to be the end product are now only the beginning, as colorists can enhance the artwork with highlights, shadows, subtle gradations in tones, and special effects such as lens flares. In fact, some colorists employ assistants or subcontractors called flatters to handle the initial stages of the process. (Check out this side-by-side comparison of comic colors from different periods to see the difference.)
To fully realize the potential of this technology requires a highly talented artist, whether the colorist uses ‘traditional’ paints or does the work digitally through Photoshop as many of today’s colorists do. Either way, the colorist must be keenly aware of how light interacts with the world to create our color perceptions, and translate that awareness onto the page in a way that preserves (or enhances) the visual information needed to develop the narrative while also connecting to the reader on an emotional level.
“Bad color can distract from the artwork and thus the story,” says Brandon McKinney, a penciller who uses Photoshop to add gray tones to his line art, in essence ‘coloring’ the book in black and white. (The effect can be seen in the upcoming AiT/Planet Lar graphic novels Planet of the Capes and Switchblade Honey.) “But a well colored book can be mind blowing. I think the stuff that Laura DePuy, Moose Bauman and Paul Mounts produce is gorgeous — they really know how to set a mood with their color choices and themes.”
There’s more to the color theory that colorists must grasp than I could ever hope to describe, but there are three key factors, or colormaking attributes, that must be considered. (Check out handprint, an excellent resource, for more info on color theory.) Hue is what we would call the actual basic color itself. Value is the amount of light reflected or sent to the eye by a colored object — the lightness or darkness of the color. Finally, saturation is the intensity of the color — how deep or pure we believe it to be. The artist must know how to balance these variables to create the proper effects.
“There are two things that separate a good colorist from the pack,” says Laura DePuy, colorist of CrossGen’s Ruse. “One, the ability to create a mood, and two, the ability to define light sources and volume, to create depth and shadow where there was none. The first is based on color theory; the second, on visual interpretation of the black and white artwork.”
While colorists’ achievements are impressive, the comics industry itself has not been so quick to recognize the talents and contribution of these artists. If you look at the cover of most comics today, the writer, penciller and inker are usually credited, but not the colorist (or the letterer, for that matter, but that’s a topic for another time). There are exceptions — Warren Ellis makes a point where possible to credit the colorist on his books, and CrossGen Comics credits the colorist on all its titles. But they are few and far between.
This might seem like a trivial issue, but it’s one that fundamentally shapes the way people look at comics. I admit, until I kept seeing Laura DePuy’s name on the cover of Planetary, or Caesar Rodriguez’s on Sojourn, I tended to think of colorists as an afterthought — a necessary part of the production, and capable of doing some fine work, but not really a ‘creator’ in the same way as the penciller. Looking back, I realize that’s ridiculous. Just look at this month’s cover image. As great as Bryan Hitch’s pencils are, Paul Mounts’ colors are essential to the impact of that picture. (See a side by side comparison of the two pieces.)
Unfortunately, I’m not the only person to come to such ridiculous conclusions.
“I can’t tell you how often I’ve heard the phrase, ‘I don’t really pay attention to the coloring,'” says DePuy. “Ack! That’s like saying, ‘I don’t pay attention to the spices in the chili. I’m just there for the beans.’ How can you NOT pay attention to the color!”
It’s not merely a question of credit or recognition, important as those things are. The nature of comics today is such that many artists are freelancers, working far apart and sending pages around through FedEx or swapping digital files. The vision of pencillers, inkers and colorists don’t often get the chance to fully mesh, which can lead to communication breakdowns and other problems. As the last people to touch the art, colorists are often expected to make up lost time or clean up any lingering mistakes. (The message board at Comic Colors — another nice website with tutorials and other coloring info — is full of the late-night posts of colorists trying to stay coherent long enough to meet a deadline.)
“Ever hear of the ‘we’ll fix it in post’ attitude?” asks Red Star colorist Snakebite. “Well, in comics colorists are considered ‘post.’ I’m not saying colorists are key, but we’re damn close to it. Colorists are artists and should be treated like one. Anywhere you see a penciller credit or inker, you should see a colorist.”
“Without colorists everything would be black and white . . . I’m not bitter, I’m just aggressive and tell it like it is. I see a shift of the attitude. More artists are making themselves more savvy and therefore more compassionate to our position in the creating process . . . now if we could only get the editors to see the light of day.”
For more in-depth conversations with the colorists quoted in this article, and samples of their work, check out the full Q-and-As.
Laura DePuy
Brandon McKinney
Paul Mounts
Snakebite
About Dave Thomer
Born and raised in Philadelphia. Studied philosophy at Fordham University in the Bronx, where I made many great friends and met my wonderful wife. We moved back to Philadelphia, where I studied philosophy some more and became a teacher. Online and off, I'm looking for ways that we can be better citizens and build stronger communities.