Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Coloring guide for Superman#42 by Ordway


Hello again! For the uninitiated, in the pre-computer coloring days of comics, when the color separations were done by hand, on overlays, and not with Photoshop, we used to prepare these guides for the separators to work from, with a limited palette of colors based on increments, or percentages of red, yellow and blue. Superman's "red" was a mix of red and a little yellow, for example. On covers we were allowed limited use of grey as well. You had to choose carefully, though, and keep it light in value, as on this one, with the monster's pant leg color, of yellow with a 10-30% greytone on top. Anything darker and you might just wind up with a dark shape, with no line detail seen underneath:) For flesh tones, I liked using a small percentage of blue added to the fleshtone formula, for shadows. The idea was to be creative, and to squeeze the most variations out of the limited palette, for the coolest results. Best,JER

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