Gray snob or Color nazi?

[VinnieD]

Don't mind the title. Just trying to equally offend both sides.
But let's discuss, shall we? Which is your stance? Is your comic color or gray (or monochrome for that matter), or a mixture of the two? More importantly why? What is your reasoning for going the route you've gone?


I'll add my own thoughts on the matter after a few replies.

[Joel Fagin]

Colour, here. Firstly because my art just looks flat and bland without it and secondly because this is the web! Monitors can display four billion colours absolutely free. Why not use them?

- Joel Fagin

[Jackhass]

Greyscale. Why?

1) I find colour often distracts from the line-work and drawing, paritcularly if it's just slapped on and not thoughfully done.
2) Most of my inspiration comes from the various great newspaper comics morso than other webcomics or comic books or anything like that. Most of the great comic strips were mostly done in black and white and with strict restrictions put on the size of the strips. So I work with size restrictions and in black/white/grey.
3) I'm not particularly good with colour. Or perhaps more accurately, I'm totally anal about colour and I *think* anything I do with colour sucks. I wouldn't just be able to slap a blue sky and green grass on my comic then colour my monkey brown and be done with it...I'd end up agonizing over it for hours.
4) I'm lazy.

[Dr Neo Lao]

I started gray and worked my way up to colour.

As Joel said, there's no real reason not to do webcomics in colour (as opposed to 'real world' publishing in colour) except as a stylistic or artistic device. A colour strip could do a grayscale one day to heighten the "moodiness" or because it's a flashback or w/e.

Generally, I just skip over any grayscale / black + white comics unless the artwork is really good. Flipside Comics comes to mind (note: definately nsfw if you go looking for it).

[Jackhass]

Generally, I just skip over any grayscale / black + white comics unless the artwork is really good. Flipside Comics comes to mind (note: definately nsfw if you go looking for it).

DISCRIMINATION!

[Mvmarcz]

color

why?

Because I suck at greyscale


trust me

[Kemmy]

Generally, I just skip over any grayscale / black + white comics unless the artwork is really good. Flipside Comics comes to mind (note: definately nsfw if you go looking for it).

Aw...!

Like Jackhass, I'm following newspaper format...so I do six black-and-white strips for every one colour strip. I like the clarity of the black-and-white format, plus I know I'm not so good at colour yet (my colours are too bright, and I'm frightened of shading). I grew up admiring the (apparent) simplicity of the b&w newspaper drawings and don't see why the mere fact of the existence of the Internet has to change that.

Oh yes...and I'm lazy. Or busy. Or a little bit of both.

[Black Sparrow]

Both.

I prefer color, when I can, but when I'm coloring, I go all-out with shading and lighting. It's very time-consuming, and burns me out pretty quick. Therefore, the bulk of my current comics are "sloppy" black and white, while I switch back to color for title and art pages.

[Killbert-Robby]

I like using color, but sometimes I find my work in just black and white looks classier than in color. So I tend to keep cartoons in color, and serious pics in black and white.

[Robin Pierce]

colour
why?
Because I suck at greyscale
trust me

what she said

[The Neko]

Black and white is good if you can pull it off.

Colour is great if you can pull it off, but if you can't, it will make things look worse than they were before.

[Swikan]

I love b&w and greyscale art and even attempted it once in my comic when my photoshop was on the fritz.

My comic, though, is in color because my sketching and line art isn't good enough to stand on its own. (not that my coloring is that great either)

Did someone send you an nasty email, Vinnie?

[CSchaefer]

Greyscale, both to reduce the "uncanny valley" effect of using CGI for artwork, and to build on the noir feel that I'm aiming for. (More the latter than the former -- I had decided to do it in black and white from the very beginning, the uncanny valley dampener was a happy side effect.)

[Mo]

I usually colour my comic stuffs, but quite a few of the recent IMO pages are black/white simply because I had to stick to the updating schedule for the Lazy Grind and didn't have time to colour.

I like colours because they add a lot to the mood and emotion of the comic, are appealing to the eye of most webcomic readers*, and colours make my art look MUCH better. I enjoy good colour use in other people's comics as well, however, 18 out of the 36 webcomics on my regular reading list are black/white or grayscales.

It takes more effort to make a colourless comic look good, but if it's pulled off right, the lack of colour doesn't bother me at all. In fact, black & white art can be just as expressive as coloured art or even more so. It really depends on the type of comic.

There is a comic idea floating around in my head that I'll never have time to realize, but if I did it would be partly colour and partly grayscales because it would play in different periods of time.
(...incidently, it would involve Nazis, but they would be in grayscales.)

Edit: *That is not to say that colours make a comic automatically prettier. There are comics that turn me off visually because of the use of colour. Sometimes it's because of the artist's lack of technical know-how to colour properly (leaving white pixels at the edges of the lineart for example), other times it's because they just don't have a feel for what colours are appealing to the eye and what colours make my brain hurt (Kagerou comes to mind, the technique is ok, but the choice of colours ARGH).

[The Neko]

Greyscale, both to reduce the "uncanny valley" effect of using CGI for artwork, and to build on the noir feel that I'm aiming for. (More the latter than the former -- I had decided to do it in black and white from the very beginning, the uncanny valley dampener was a happy side effect.)

Uncanny valley only happens when it looks close to realistic.

[Rkolter]

Mine's in color. But, my comic is done entirely on computer, so color doesn't involve any extra steps. When I actually -draw- my comic, it's most often in grayscale.

[Laemkral]

I like to say God does all my coloring and shading, so I'd hate to piss the big guy off by going grey. That being said, I still like comics in both formats because it really depens upon the comic.

[Dogbomb]

I use color in a sort of restricted fashion. My characters are always straight black. I usually use white for items that can be manipulated by the characters, and then I try to use a single vibrant color for the world around them. So, really I only use one color per strip. In the cases that I use two, its usually just a different shade of the same color.

Why? I just like the way it looks. It's like I'm using rubber stamps on colored construction paper. I have been using multiple colors in some of the more recent strips, but I try to keep with my own color format.

Overall, I'd say I do a B&W comic with a color backdrop.

[Robin Pierce]

I enjoy good colour use in other people's comics as well, however, 18 out of the 36 webcomics on my regular reading list are black/white or grayscales.

... so half?

[TheSuburbanLetdown]

I like the way black & white reproduces, and it forces you to try and push different textures and use more line weight variation. Pus black and white has a nice look when it's reproduced.

A lot people will colour their comics because they think it looks better, but I see tons of people that have no business applying colour to their works. If you don't know how to use color, it ends up looking like an eyesore.

A for preference, I like both. Good examples of color are Blacksad and the various works of Chris Ware. Some good examples of black & white art are Cerebus, Usagi Yojimbo and Joe Sacco's work.