Comic Book Coloring with Steve Firchow

In this third DVD of a series on comic book illustration techniques, Steve Firchow gives an overview of how to color a comic cover from beginning to end in Adobe Photoshop®. He begins with setting up a piece of black and white line art and describes his process for choosing colors, making rendering decisions and balancing color, light and detail. In addition, he discusses techniques for improving speed and the differences between coloring covers vs. interior comic pages.

• Preparing Black & White Line Art for Color in Photoshop®
  
• Establishing a Foundation of Light/dark Values
  
• Picking/Establishing a Palette
  
• Working with Imported Textures
  
• Finishing/Balancing Final Colors and Values

1. Setting up Black + White line art
   
2. foundation gradients + textures
   
3. border colors
   
4. decorative elements / flags / mountains
   
5. Mountains / buildings / the horse
   
6. Finishing the horse
   
7. Starting the figure: Skin tones
   
8. Rendering the hair / starting the armor
   
9. Detailing the armor
   
10. Rendering the cape + swords
    
11. Rendering the shield / tweaks + cleanup
    
12. creating depth + separation
    
13. color + value balance / light bloom
    
14. RGB/CMYK conversion

• Product Code: SFI01
• ISBN: 1-59762-884-0
• UPC: 805366016807
• Duration: 180 minutes
• Formats: DVD-ROM

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Steve Firchow

Art Director, Spark Unlimited
Comic Book Artist

Steve Firchow is a 2D and 3D artist with fifteen years of experience in commercial illustration and comic book coloring and five years in console game development. He has collaborated with many premiere artists in the comic industry and has created traditional and digital illustrations for Image Comics, Darkhorse Comics, Mattel, Sega, TSR, Wizards of the Coast, Ace Books and many other advertising and publishing agencies. While continuing as a freelance illustrator he began working full-time in game development in 2002. He worked on Call of Duty: Finest Hour doing mainly texturing and storyboards and is currently the art director on Spark Unlimited's first person shooter, Legendary.