Color Palette | Commentary (Patreon)

While I'm working on getting things going on the PTA Mom story, it seemed like a good time to talk about color palettes.

For the the sake of my sanity, and for unity of a comic, I make a color palette for each comic.

Limiting down the colors to a small-ish batch of colors saves a lot of time in the coloring process. I'm not looking to figure out the colors everytime a new item is introduced. It needs to fit into the range of colors that have been already decided. This actually started all the way back during Con Artist.

This also does a lot to make each comic series look different from the others at a quick glance. They all have the same style and the same artist. But colors of each comic are hopefully unique enough to tell them apart.

Above you can see the color palettes used for Open Trade, PTA, Dress to Thrill and Final Exam.

With a single sketch, I'd be more inclined to let no other colors besides the selected ones into the art. Substituting a known color (like a red apple) with one of the other colors that might be close, or still get the idea across.

With the longer form comics, I'm willing to add all different colors for skin tones and hair. Even as the story keeps going, I end up adding new colors to the palette.

With as long as Open Trade and Con Artist are, colors got added as the stories grew. Open Trade adding orange and pink as we got near the end. Especially with Lexi's wardrobe. Certain colors kept showing up and would need to be added on a regular basis.