PROCESS VIDEO // flow, part 1 (Patreon)

I finally put together the process video for Flow! The total process was about 6 hours, so I divided into three parts that are each sped up to twice the original speed. You can speed them up or slow them down using the gear button!

My starting point for this process was a thumbnail that I made earlier this year which you can see here. I basically took the sketch that I had there and started cleaning it up, so that I had a more detailed version of that thumbnail sketch (including the black & white values on a separate layer).

From that point, I had to start adding color. I don’t really have a set method for adding color to greyscale artwork, even though that’s something I’ve been doing more and more lately. I just mess around until I feel like it’s working. Some of the techinques I use to add color are:

• Using color balance & selective color sliders on the black & white value layer

• Changing the color of the lines and multiplying that onto the values, which adds a bit of a color accent

• Using the feathered lasso tool to select some areas and amp the color there with color balance (more info on how I do that here)

• Creating a new layer set to “overlay” and painting colors onto that layer, which blends in an interesting way onto the layers below it

So basically I constantly switch through these different techniques until I feel like the colors are working! The reason I do it this way is mainly because I just haven’t really figured out a workflow that works every time. What bothers me a lot when adding color to greyscale is that it just feels lifeless to me when the darker and lighter values are too similar to the base color, so that’s something I’m always fighting against.

Around the 30 minute mark I settle on the color scheme and start painting on top of the image, although throughout the rest of the process I sometimes go back to adding color with color balance / overlay / etc. I used mostly a hard round brush for the majority of the painting process.

Hope you enjoy this and the next video is coming right up!