David REVOY

French freelance digital artist

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Friday 04 jun. 2010

category : Tutorials
14 comment(s)

Comics inking and coloring with Gimp-painter

1) Scan the pencil drawing :

First step is the scanner acquisition with Xsane of my drawing (HB pencil on A4 paper ). I scan it in Gray level
at 300dpi. To produce a beautifull result , I play with the level to clean white.
 the original pencil drawing

2) Inking :
I start to convert my pencil artwork in a light blue range of colors ; I use the tool colorize ( Color > Colorize ).
 the colorize tool in action

With the G-Pen tool of Gimp-painter I start to ink my drawing, on a separate empty layer. The screenshot above
show the setting I use with G-Pen.
 starting the inking process

At the end, I add a white layer under my line-art to finish my inking. When it's finish , I save my work, and I
save in another file a copy of the final Line-art layer ; I will need it later.
 finishing the inking with a white layer under

3) Multi-Fill
This is probably the main section of this tutorial. I add a new layer under my line art, and I start with a thinner
G-pen in red to draw the limit of each different color zone I want. I flatten the layer when it's finish.
 preparing the zone for the cell-shading

I launch the script 'Multi-Fill' with the same setting as in the screenshot above and I let the script detect each
closed zone, and fill with a random color.
 the flatting-tools script in action

When it's finish ; delete the layer above with Line-art + red limits ; and load ( load as new layer ) your old copy
of final Line-art ( the one without red lines ).
 the result of the flatting tools

As you see on the animation above; the advantage of this script is in the clean result of the colorisation : each
zone frontier are right in the middle of the thickness of your black lines.
 importing the line-art over the result

4) Colors
With the Fill bucket tool ( with the option 'fill similar color' and a low 'treshold' ) , it's easy now and fast to
replace each automatic psychadelic colors of the Multifill script. Open a large color palette to make this process
easier. For most of the fast cartoons with a cell-shading rendering ; this step can be the final.
 coloring by replacing the colors

If you want to add a bit more of life, you can brush with a rounded basic brush over the colors layer with some
brighter strokes and a low opacity. You can play with the balance of colors to warm up the overall too.
adding life with a rounded brush
 the final RGB colorisation

5) Export for print

For exporting in CMYK I still use my license of Photoshop CS2 ( with Wine ) cause I still don't know how to
do it with the security of a corect result with only FLOSS. Be sure when I will know it, I will be the first to use
it.

I want here to have all the color using the CMY cartbridge colors only and the line-art using pure Black color
ink. Also, I want to prepare under the line-art a dark grey to make the black look deeper when it will be printed.

selecting the line-art layer

shrink the selection of 1 pixel
 Fill the selection with grey on a new layer

I prepare the grey layer in Gimp ; I use the 'Alpha to selection' on my line-art layer combined with a 'Shrink
selection' of 1 pixel. When it's done, I fill the new selection with a dark grey. To give the file to Photoshop, I
save in PSD.

On Photoshop, I convert my file using the layer group properties to restrict the channel; on the black ink , I use
only 'K' , and on the color and the grey channel I use only 'CMY'. I change the color on the layer of line-art to
use only Black 100% and on the grey I setup the grey of my publisher : C=80% M=70% Y=70%. I finish with
saving to the TIFF file format , with the CMYK ICC profile asked by my publisher too, here a 'Europe ISO
Coted Fogra27'.

For saving disk space, I allow a LZW compression. That's all !

 Result of the CMYK conversion with Photoshop CS2

Download :
Here is an archive file with the final RVB file in xcf and the CMYK in TIFF.

gimp-painter-color_source-file.tar.bz2

Sources :
Flatting Tools : http://gimp-registry.fargonauten.de/node/14051
(FR) "Colorisation de BD Du traditionnel au numérique" (FR) de Stéphane Baril, Naïts (
http://www.editions-eyrolles.com/Livre/9782212115086/colorisation-de-bd )
Almost same technics with Photoshop , ( http://www.questionablecontent.net/tutorial.php)

Licence :
All the text and the pictures and the files of this tutorial are under the licence CC-By-Sa-Nc ; for more info visit
: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/

14 comment(s)

erik90mx
Sunday 06 jun. 2010 at 03:08

Hi

I want install in my Ubuntu Gimp-painter

but... I have a 64 bits version.

And when a friend bought your DVD, he experimented the same problem :S
because in the DVD only was a .deb for a 32 bits version.
 What may we do?

Greetings

David Revoy
Sunday 06 jun. 2010 at 11:16

Hi erik90mx,

I think you have to compile it :

How-to in english : http://swiss.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1364346
How-to in french : http://blenderclan.tuxfamily.org/html/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?
post_id=309395#forumpost309395
How-to on the documentation of Ubuntu (french) :http://doc.ubuntu-fr.org/gimp-painter

Maybe another way to consider is to start from 'Gimp-studio' a code source already patched with
many tools and brush asset directly installed on :
http://code.google.com/p/gimp-studio/downloads/list

You can give feedback using the thread of 'Chaos&Evolutions' DVD on :

http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=179695
Good luck !

exvion
Sunday 06 jun. 2010 at 19:53

Thanks, David. Great tutorial.

Skiri-ki
Monday 07 jun. 2010 at 19:35
 He I knew I had seen this kind of technique before over at QC
Good to know there's a multi-fill script for Gimp as well.
Now I've gotta try this on a real sketch (I just doodled something for testing).

Thanks David

p.s. is there a special reason to reimport the ink as new layer? I just duplicated the ink and
background layers, merged the duplicates and the red lines, hid the original ink layer and un-hid it
after the script.

David Revoy
Monday 07 jun. 2010 at 19:52

exvion : thanks!

Skiri-ki : Hey thanks for the tips of duplicating the ink layer before merging with the red; that tips
save minutes of filebrowsing. I will use it ;)

erik90mx : From another comment in this blog of Prawn-shushi ; thanks him : a PPA repositery
with Gimp-painter for 64bit , for karmic : https://launchpad.net/~mizuno-as/ archive/ppa

max
Monday 07 jun. 2010 at 22:00

David, i recently bought your dvd, and is one of the best art tutorials i've seen. very easy to
understand, and i liked that it has text instead of a voice over, its not distracting, and great art. I too
had the problem of not finding gimp-painter for 64bit ubuntu. I just saw the PPA above, and was
wondering if anyone knows if its from a reliable source. thanks in advance and sorry for
questioning about the PPA but i always try to check.

amhphp
Friday 11 jun. 2010 at 06:10

From what I have seen so far, your work has been an inspiration. Good artists are known by their
art, and your work speaks for itself I think. Hope you continue inspiring people.

Was wondering where I can get the script multifill for GIMP? The version of GIMP that I am
using on Ubuntu 10.04 does not have multifill under Filters > Script-Fu. After a quick google
search and checking the plugin registry for GIMP, I did not find it. Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks.

David Revoy
Friday 11 jun. 2010 at 11:11

@ max : I cannot be sure this PPA is 100% safe, but all user who tested it seams to be happy.
That's a good indicator imho. Btw, I will install it on a Lucid machine to be sure in less than few
weeks.

@ amhphp : Thanks for your comments on my work ! The link to 'multifill' is in the 'source'
chapter of the article but not really visible and the script have another name than the function
multifill itself : "Flatting Tools" ( http://gimp-registry.fargonauten.de/node/14051 ).

erik90mx
Friday 11 jun. 2010 at 22:52

Finally!!

It was very dificult ;) (trying to install form the terminal :S )

I used the last link and dowload a 64 bits version .deb

these are the links:

64bits

https://launchpad.net/~mizuno-as/+archive/gimp-painter/+files/gimp_2.6.8-
2ubuntu1.1+painter~lucid3_amd64.deb
 32bits

https://launchpad.net/~mizuno-as/+archive/gimp-painter/+files/gimp_2.6.8-
2ubuntu1.1+painter~lucid3_i386.deb

Thanks a lot

Greetings

Skiri-ki
Sunday 13 jun. 2010 at 22:41

the easy way with this ppa would have been to use Synaptics and add this repository
ppa:mizuno-as/gimp-painter
refresh repositories and update gimp to gimp painter. This way Synaptics chooses whether to use
x64 or x86 plus it'll automatically install updates once they are available.

David Revoy
Monday 14 jun. 2010 at 10:26

Thanks Erik90mx and Skiri-ki for the feedback, all this info gathered after Chaos&Evolutions
make me the idea to build in next blog post an article special on how to install Gimp-painter on
various system. This last ppa make things really easy for beginner. Cool !

Godzillu
Monday 21 jun. 2010 at 23:29

Nice tutorial and good spirit. Thanks for the sharing.

ChocoboMaster
Thursday 01 jul. 2010 at 02:35

Vraiment beau travail monsieur revoy.

J'aime ce que vous faites.

Roman
Thursday 17 fev. 2011 at 15:55

Hello David. Thank you very much for this tutorial. I'm totally new to Gimp as my first graphic
editor. One question if I may.. you write: "With the G-Pen tool of Gimp-painter I start to ink my
drawing, on a separate empty layer."
Have you been using a mouse for this part? I cannot get straight lines no matter how hard I try.
Thanks in advance!

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