Comic Report #104.2 - Shades of Grey (Patreon)

This week I focused mainly on getting comic work done.  I put some time into day job artwork but Dead Winter Game work is on pause until this page goes up.  I'd mentioned it last week but I don't expect the backgrounds here to give me a lot of trouble so I'm planning to have this page posted this weekend, so keep an eye out for that textless post coming up soon.  Since I've been working on this that also means there isn't a gamedev report for this week, but once the page is done I expect to have Lizzie's melee stuff all wrapped up and I can start work coloring Alice's primary attack combo, that will probably be next Friday's report.

Earlier this week I received a very kind compliment about my use of greyscale in my artwork, and I think this page is a good example of one of the principles I focus on when I am painting, and that's grouping my greys to make sure everything is clear.  Since I work digitally I really only have 256 shades of grey I can work with, but not all of that range is useful, since a lot of colors look very similar to colors around it.  You can probably reasonably condense the range of 256 greys into 32 distinct grey colors you can use, with 7 shades of grey between each key grey point which can be used for shading and gradients.  So rather than think of working in greyscale as just having one color, it's sort of like having 32 colors that are all monochrome, plus my red for accent.  I use black for my outlines so I don't really want anything else to be #000000 black, and I use #ffffff white for eye highlights, so I try not to overuse the high-end colors so that when I apply a dash of white it has enough contrast to pop.  Everything else is based on clusters of grey in between those points.

What's useful about this page in talking about this point in particular of painting in greyscale is the current unfinished state of the bottom panel.  Before I paint in my highlights and shadows I will block in my base greys and build from there, to make sure every shape is clear and distinct how I need it to be.  Each character is planned out in a way where their value shapes are distinct from one another- here you can see Lizzie's dark shirt, Alice's light shirt and Lou's medium shirt are all distinct values.  Even Lizzie's sweatshirt is a darker shade than Alice's while still being lighter than Lou's, it's all relative and it can all change with scene lighting but the relationships are something I try to maintain with my greyscale clusters.  

Tonight I am going to finish up painting that last panel and then this weekend, mostly tomorrow probably, is going to be background painting, and then this page will be ready to go.  I don't expect this to carry over into Monday so I'm planning to have the textless page up pretty soon.  Thank you for your patient support!  I'll be seeing you again sooner than later.