Thank you everyone who has volunteered their time for coloring! It's a long but fulfilling process and we hope you enjoy doing it. Here is the guide for coloring the frames in MOUSE-TACHE:
The frames you receive will have the following:
LINES: Put the colored lines on this layer COLOR: Color on this layer LAYER 0: Has the original frame, eventually to be colored black 1) Select Layer 0 in the layer window and go to the channels tab to the right of the layer menu. Click the red dotted circle button furthest to the left at the bottom of the channels window. This selects the white space around the scanned lines. Without deselecting, go to EDIT --> FILL, and select black. 2) Still without deselecting, go to SELECT --> INVERSE to select the lines. Click on the LINES layer and change the foreground color #804446 (R: 128 G: 68 B: 70). Either use EDIT --> FILL or a large paintbrush to color the lines. 3) Deselect and then go to FILTER --> BLUR --> GAUSSIAN BLUR. Set the Gaussian blue to 1.0 pixels and click OK. Make sure you're on the LINES layer when you do this! With the lines colored and blurred, click back on Layer 0 and cover it completely in black to remove the original frame. 4) Start cleaning the lines on the LINES layer. The black background makes it easier to find and clean excess lines. Make sure the LINES layer is on top of the other layers. 5) You're ready to color! Click on the COLOR layer and select the Polygonal Lasso Tool. Find an area to color and zoom in to create a selection along the lines. It's easier to color areas that will be eventually overlapped partly by other colors so that you don't waste time selecting areas that are going to be recolored anyway (for example: color the Villain's entire head with the main color first and don't bother going around the ears and mask, as those will be colored later anyway). Coloring is the longest process so do it in small parts. It's best to do 5-10 frames per day and stick with only one color at a time (for example: pick 5 frames for a day and only color the Hero's main skin tone in those frames). It takes 15-25 minutes to color a frame, so it's far better to do it in small parts. 6) MAKE SURE YOU ARE COLORING ON THE COLOR LAYER, with the LINES layer on top and Layer 0 on the bottom. It's very easy to accidentally color on other layers. Keeping separate layers is important in case something needs to be changed. 7) When a frame is completely cleaned and colored, set the visibility of Layer 0 to OFF. Save as a PSD in a separate folder for the scene's colored frames. 8) The frames are now ready for compositing! If you find any shortcuts you can use through actions/other methods, feel free to use them and TELL OTHER PEOPLE. Your idea may be beneficial to everyone else and the ones in charge are always happy to listen to suggestions! If there's a section where you're confused on which color goes where, ask and we'll point you the right way. |
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February 2011
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