I was reading one of Dean Trippe’s Livejournal entries about how he and Jason Horn are working on the colors a new comic mini-series, currently titled The Division for Arcana written by Ed Brisson and penciled and inked by Damian Couceiro.

Sometimes a colorist will do what’s called flatting. This is where you quickly lay in flat color over the inked art. Then you go back and start adding the shading and details. Flatting is a great technique to help you work out color combinations and lighting. You can think of it as being somewhat equal to sketching or penciling prior to the finished inked art.

Dean mentioned that they were using a Photoshop plug-in to help them do the flatting. Of course, you are relying on a computer to pick colors so this is just a tool in your toolbox to help speed up the grunt work of flatting.

Leave a comment about how you may be using other tools and techniques to help you with flatting.