Flatting: A Crash Course Part 1

Almost two years ago now…I started to spread my wings from just penciling, inking and dreaming about comics into more actual artwork including digital art.  I practiced a little coloring but really didn’t know what I was doing.  A few web searches brought me to some sites explaining it a bit.  When I first read about this strange thing called flatting I just sort of blew past it with very little thought.  Then a month or two later I had a comic creator ask me if I had ever done any flatting.  I said, “Uhhh…well…sort of?”  That led to a few simple pages even though they took me some where in the neighborhood of 5 hours each!  I did them for free for the guy just so I could get a little experience.  It wasn’t until a few months later when I picked up Hi-Fi Color for Comics did I actually read some solid step-by-step information on how flatting should be done and how it could be done quickly. Flash forward a year and you’ll find me most nights up until the wee hours working on pages. Follow me on twitter.com/geekywhiteguy if you don’t believe me about my late nights. I’m not quitting my day job just yet for it but it certainly keeps me busy. Its a real thrill for me to see this amazing artwork come across my screen every day. I love it! Yes, there are a million flatters out there that are much faster (I only work nights & weekends) and probably better than me at it…and, sure I have aspirations to do more in comics than flatting but for now I’m just really enjoying it.  Plus i think I do a good job and I think keep my clients are happy.

If you have Brian and Kristy’s book, Hi-Fi Color For Comics, then you already have read Chapter 2 and know all about flatting! If you don’t have the book then 1) you should go get it because it really is a good book and 2) there’s a very good chance that you have no clue whatsoever about what flatting is. So just a short 350 words into this weeks column…let me get to the point! In this 2 part series I’m going to talk a little bit about flatting.  What is it? Why is it important? How is it done? Why should you care? So lets get to it!

Flatting? What is it?

After a penciler and/or inker gets done with their work they create high resolution scans of those pages. Then its off to the colorists who pushes a big red EASY button and the pages pretty much color themselves. Ok…as much as publishers would like the process to be that easy….it doesn’t work that way. The colorist has to get in there and paint in all the colors, shadows, highlights and special effects to every page, panel, object and character. To accomplish that each shape on the page needs to be selected and then have a color assigned to it.  The problem is…if they were to go and select each piece individually as they go…it would take a month to color each page. As deadlines are these days…that ain’t gonna fly! This is where the flatting comes in. In Photoshop, a flatter selects all the individual shapes and fills them each with their own flat colors.

So, for instance, if I were flatting this quick sketch I drew of myself (what a handsome devil, huh?!) I would fill my whole face with a flat skin color, my hair would be a flat hair color, the glasses, shirt and finally pants.

Each item that is going to be rendered later has to have it’s own flat color applied to it. Keeping in mind that all same objects on page uses the same flat color. )ie: all the skin on character A is the same on the whole page) Below you can see a detail of all the separate flatted parts pulled out.

Why is is important?

Now that we understand a little bit of what flatting is…you may be saying, “That seems really tedious and time consuming. Why do we have to do it?” Well…it IS time consuming and tedious…and that’s exactly why flatters are important. When you’re working as a colorists there are typically (at least) two things going against you.

1) Time.

2) Money.

Your publisher/editor/boss has a schedule which, a lot of times, does not accounts for the time it actually takes to get the artwork done (see above: big RED easy button).  You’ve got just a couple days or something to get a full 20+ page book completely colored. If you want to give the pages the attention they deserve you just can’t spend your time flatting.  You want to spend that time actually coloring the page.  Naturally from a financial stand point the more you can color means you’ll get more pages you’ll get done and since you get paid a rate per page it makes sense to not spend your day flatting. Get them pages out as fast as possible so you make more money.  Everybody likes more money, right?

So now you have a pretty good idea about what flatting actually is and basically why it is important to the coloring process. Next time in the Tribal Council we’ll take a look at HOW to flat and I’ll fill you in on why you should care about flatting and flatters.