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Jordie Bellaire Shows Us Her “Marvel”ous Coloring Technique [Process Art]

By | December 17th, 2012
Posted in Columns | % Comments

Following up on our chat with her earlier today, Jordie Bellaire was kind enough to walk us through her process of coloring a page, from initial inked image to finished product. The page is question is from “Captain Marvel” #9, written by Kelly Sue DeConnick and ilustrated by Felipe Andrade.

Here is the inked pages from Andrade:

I send the lineart to be flatted and it comes back like this:

I then go through and “color correct” the file. I match things for costume, setting or any clear notes given to me by my team. Specific colors for the room or the time of day.

Then I just tweak the colors slightly and begin rendering. I try and change it up, painted backgrounds and cut characters or gradients and cuts. Whatever strikes my fancy or the look of the book. Here I started thinking about maybe giving the screen a pink glow and having screens in Tony’s lab be pink but then I regretted it and went on to just make his whole place green!

After everything is pretty much rendered I just nail out a few little details with values here and there. Maybe to push something back or bring a character forward.

So now the final version looks like this and the walls have been darkened and overall the page has been “refined”.


Brian Salvatore

Brian Salvatore is an editor, podcaster, reviewer, writer at large, and general task master at Multiversity. When not writing, he can be found playing music, hanging out with his kids, or playing music with his kids. He also has a dog named Lola, a rowboat, and once met Jimmy Carter. Feel free to email him about good beer, the New York Mets, or the best way to make Chicken Parmagiana (add a thin slice of prosciutto under the cheese).

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