Hyperguy colors Ayako with the efficiency of a Hyperguy coloring Ayako :D

[Hyperguy]

Sup.

There's a series of three Variable Geo novels.  In other words, they're text heavy...but they also have some pictures in them! =D

Anywho, I was thumbing through the Satomi novel (the one where a lesbian schoolgirl comes on to Satomi) and I found this image of Ayako that I just had to have...

The Satomi Novel (It's title is something like "Burning Phoenix" or something. I forgot...) :


This was released in 1998 I believe.  There are two other Variable Geo novels, one for Jun Kubota(which has more backstory on her and her relationship to her Terry Bogard lookalike boyfriend), and the other's for Yuka Takeuchi (I think it follows the story of Advanced Variable Geo 1 and has Yuka fighting Miranda in a bare knuckle fight on one of the pages.)



...So I carefully ripped it out of the book, scanned it, and now I want to color it.

I started on it yesterday.  Coloring takes a really long time.  Natch, scanning, touching up, and laying flats takes a long time.  Here's my progress so far:



Once I'm done laying flats (that is, flat layers of color) I can start adding light and shadow, and after that, spruce it up to be all pretty and schtuff.  I'm going to post my progress here as I continue to color an Ayako with the efficiency of a Hyperguy coloring Ayako. =D

[Ellendesu]

That shit is the mad notes dawg.

Seriously, that's really good, you could make a crazy goal of colouring black and white manga for the masses.

Of course, as long as it doesn't interfere with The Mission.

[Hyperguy]

Well, I do have this Variable Geo doujinshi by Lapis Lazuli that has very crisp and clear linework that I'd like to scan and color, but a project like that would take a good 1-2 months to complete, and I've already got my hands full with scanning the VG doujin anthology + maintaining the site and school.  Well, now that I think about it, scanning it could probably be done in two days since it's only 48 pages, but coloring each page would take a good amount of weeks it would seem.  Still, gotta try, right?  I'll consider doing that after I'm finished with my other scanning project.

Okay!  I'm just about finished with flats.  This took a good hour and a half or so, but most of the flats are done:


(I still need to color her belt.  Her hair was actually really difficult to figure out since not all of the lines indicated what counted as hair and what counted as whitespace.  I guessed the best I could, and if I'm wrong in some areas, at least I can just go back and fix it later.)

Here's what the flats look like without lineart:



On closer inspection, there's still lots of gaps in the flats;



So I'm going to have to put in another session in order up to tighten up the flats.  Tightening up the flats is especially important for making the color blend naturally into lines, and usually takes a good 30 minutes.

After that, I'll finally be able to start on the shadows, and then after, lighting effects.

[Ellendesu]

What we have here is a man who obviously worshipped Crayola as a diety in his youth.

Because Coloring is Serious Business.

[Snow Puma]

Just a quick critique on the colors: her skin-tone and her shirt look extremely similar. I think you'll get a better effect if you change the base color fo ehr shirt into a more saturated pink/magenta and/or you shift the hue of her skin into something more yellow/orange/brown as opposed to the red it is in now. Of course, you can also deliniate boundries by using sudden value changes and gradiations of value when you shade the figure. Additionally I notice that you're laying flats with what looks like the paintbrush/pencil tool. I personally find it much easier and cleaner to use the pen/vector tool (depending upon your version of photoshop) to lay down flats that are much nicer to work with and virtually impossible to create holes or thin areas in.

Finally, might I just add that this rocks hard and I can't wait to see this killer doujinshi in even the ever-more bad-ass format of digital color.

[Hyperguy]

About the colors, they were taken from character portraits from the game.  Trust me, they'll probably make more sense after I've added light and shadow.  And you're right--you can get much cleaner flats when using vectors, but at the same time, vectors also take much more time to use, or at least, I'm not as experienced with laying vectors as quickly as filling pixels.  The final will be in cell style and I'm going to stick to Ayako's original colors as close as possible so that it looks like something straight out of the OVA.

[daitanuki]

I'm looking forward to seeing how it turns out.  How long does it normally take you to color something like this?  I haven't had much experience with coloring on the computer yet.  I've mostly just been scanning inked stuff and color filling to see what I think of costume designs for some projects of mine.

[Hyperguy]

I work in sessions of 30 minutes to an hour, and an estimating it'll take me another 2-3 sessions to finish.  I try to work on it on weekends or when I'm not busy.  However, I'm often busy with school + maintaining the site so I really don't know when I'll be finished, just that if I keep working on it a bit it'll be finished before I know it.

[KingNitros]

wow, that looks really cool!

[TheS3rpent]

Great Job Hyperguy!